Interviews with Park Sang Hak

Amongst the defectors from North Korea and the other North Korean defectors organizations, overall there is a general consensus but there are differences with the South Korean government and the NGOs of South Korea because we believe we need to remove the regime of Kim Jeong Il along with their military presence in order to resolve the human rights issues in North Korea. Our goal is to terminate the Kim Jeong Il regime. However in South Korea there are some people who are optimistic about the North Korean regime. They still believe that by means of reforming and opening up the North Korean regime they can still make North Korea a member, a responsible member of the international community. However we have been direct victims of the regime and we have been responsible people in the North Korean society.

So we do have a very clear-cut answer. It is very obvious for us that we cannot coexist with the Kim Jeong Il regime. They are forgetting about the 20 million of North Korean people that have suffered so much under the regime. The South Korean government thinks that they should be the counterpart of the North Korean government when the North Korean people should be the counterpart. So they forget that the Kim Jeong Il regime is responsible for inflicting pain to the North Korean people. There will be no room for human rights for the North Korean people unless this dictatorship is removed. So I think that a lot of South Korean people are confused about this situation.

In North Korea the leader is the absolute dictator so once Kim Jeong Il collapses, the entire government will collapse as well. Kim Jeong Il is considered the god of the North Korean people. We have to show to the North Korean people that he is not to be idolized in such a way and that as a human being he does not have any absolute powers. The North Korean people think of Kim Jeong Il as a moral person and a superior person. Kim Jeong Il likes to show to the North Korean people that he understand their suffering by eating poor food and eats this kind of food together with some people. However in the last decade when three million North Korean people were starved to death, in the summer he used airplanes to import ice cream from France and caviar from France and he brings in shark’s fin and prostitutes from overseas while his people are suffering.

It is important that the North Korean people truly know the way he is. But they are brought up in a way that they cannot imagine life without Kim Jeong Il. For example they don´t know that Kim Jeong Il has wives or that he even has children; everything about his personal life is kept a secret. They do not have a choice but to follow his rule but they need to find out what he really is in order for the North Korean people not to follow him anymore since he is a bad person. We criticize him because he is responsible for creating this type of system. So in our leaflets that we send to North Korea we focus on criticizing Kim Jeong Il because he is the Achilles heel of the North Korean regime and that once the North Korean learn how to be angry for his ways that they will begin to be angry at Kim Jeong Il and change the way they think.

Park Sang Hak is the chairman of Fighters for a Free North Korea, which uses balloons to send leaflets, DVDs, transistor radios and USB flash drives from South Korea into North Korea. Because the North Korean government tightly controls information within the country, the materials deliver valuable information about the outside world and serve to undermine the propaganda the North Korean government uses to keep itself in power. Park is the son of a former North Korean spy who defected to South Korea with his family at his father’s urging. Following the family’s defection, an uncle in North Korea was beaten to death in retaliation. Park met with President Bush in September 2008.

North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is a country of 23 million people in northeast Asia, ruled by Communist dictator Kim Jong-Un. His deceased predecessors—father, Kim Jong-Il, and grandfather, Kim Il-Sung – respectively retain the titles of “Eternal President” and “The Great Leader.”

The Korean War began in 1950, when Kim Il-Sung, backed by the Soviet Union and China, attacked South Korea. The conflict ended in a cease-fire rather than a peace treaty, and the border between the two Koreas remains tense and heavily militarized.

Kim Il-Sung employed harsh tactics to consolidate his power and propagated an extreme personality cult that has been continued by his successors. A blend of communist doctrine, state terror, xenophobia and hyper-nationalism has given North Korea its unique ideology. Despite some recent openings, North Korea remains largely isolated from the rest of the world.

With the end of Soviet communism and withdrawal of economic support, North Korea’s economy collapsed in the 1990s. A massive famine, aggravated by the regime’s indifference, killed as many as 2 million people between 1994 and 1998. While conditions have improved, even today, North Korea faces problems of malnutrition and insufficient access to food.

Tensions between North and South Korea remain high. In 2010, North Korea sank a South Korean naval vessel, killing 46 sailors and attacked a South Korean island, killing four civilians. North Korea has developed and tested nuclear weapons in contravention of several international agreements. The country withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 in order to test ballistic missiles and eventually a nuclear device. Multilateral negotiations have so far failed to constrain North Korea’s arms buildup and nuclear program.

North Korea is among the world’s most repressive states, engaging in widespread and systematic human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions, torture, forced abortion, arbitrary detention, and denial of the rights of expression, association, assembly, and religion. The government pervasively regulates all aspects of the lives of its citizens, each of whom is categorized as “core,” “wavering,” or “hostile,” according to the history of his or her family’s relationship with the regime. Access to housing, employment, education, and other social and economic goods depend heavily on these security classifications. The government determines where each citizen will live, and travel within the country is strictly limited.

Emigration is prohibited. Refugees who have escaped to China have frequently been forcibly returned to North Korea where they are imprisoned, subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, and sometimes executed. The government operates a network of forced labor camps for an estimated 120,000 political prisoners. While persons convicted of ordinary crimes serve fixed sentences, those convicted of political crimes are confined indefinitely. Punishment is extended to three generations – the offender’s parents, siblings, and children are also incarcerated, as a way to pressure North Koreans to conform. Political offenders are often denied food, clothing, and medical care, and many die in prison.

Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report classifies North Korea as “not free” and as one of nine nations whose lack of political rights and civil liberties are considered the “worst of the worst.”