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North Korean defector and Chosun Ilbo journalist Kang Cheol-hwan, left, speaks at a conference on human rights in the Stalinist country held in Washington on Tuesday as Israeli neocon guru Natan Sharansky looks on.
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The largest conference on North Korean human rights in the United States opened on Tuesday at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C. Some 1,000 advocates of human rights in North Korea, including about 300 from Korea, were present amid much interest from the press. The Voice of America Korean-language service broadcast five and a half hours live from the conference to North Korea.
The meeting started at 9 a.m. and lasted 12 hours. Starting with an opening address by U.S. Congressman Jim Leach, a sponsor of the North Korean Human Rights Act, the conference featured the films ¡°Seoul Train¡± depicting the journey of North Korean defectors to South Korea, and ¡°Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story¡±, which tells the story of Japanese kidnapped by North Korea. There was also testimony from defectors, a discussion between Israeli neocon guru Natan Sharansky, a survivor of the Soviet gulag, and North Korean defector and Chosun Ilbo journalist Kang Chol-hwan. The closing reception was attended by Paula Dobriansky, a U.S. under secretary of state.
The discussion between Sharansky, a former Israeli politician, and Kang Chol-hwan was one of the highlights of the event. Sharansky said after reading Kang¡¯s ¡°The Aquariums of Pyongyang: 10 Years in the North Korean Gulag¡±, he was surprised that despite the differences in culture, history and background, the fundamentals of fear and the mechanisms of resistance were the same. He said his happiest day in the Soviet gulag was when U.S. president Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an ¡°evil empire.¡± He said Reagan had made it clear that as long as the Soviet Union locked up its own citizens, the U.S. could not befriend it, a strategy Sharansky claimed could also pay off with North Korea.
Kang said North Korea killed at least tens of thousands in its prison camps over half of century. That such a place exists in the civilized society of the 21st century is a blot on humanity, he said, he said, expressing frustration that the international community speaks of human rights and freedom but is unable to resolve that problem. He said by focusing exclusively on the nuclear issue, it missed the fundamental problem, a fact he said North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was well aware of. Kang said human rights issue and the nuclear dispute are inextricably linked, and that if North Korea doesn¡¯t fundamentally change, the international community needed to put pressure on it by withholding aid.
Kang said the human rights situation in North Korea deteriorated over the last eight years of South Korea¡¯s ¡°Sunshine Policy¡± toward Pyongyang. Rashly offering help to North Korea without appropriate criticism of the human rights issue could be seen as ethical backsliding, he added.
The conference was organized by Freedom House, a group promoting U.S. leadership in bringing about global democracy using some of the US$1.87 million the State Department has set aside for such events. The group said it planned similar conferences in Seoul this year.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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