Interviews with Kim Seong Min

The people of North Korea are educated from when they are very young that Kim Il Sung [Kim Il Sung was the founder of North Korea’s communist state and ruled from 1948 until his death in 1994, when he was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong Il.] and Kim Jong Il [Kim Jong Il was the dictator of North Korea from 1994 until his death in 2011.] are the greatest leaders in the world. The faith that they have for Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il go beyond the normal faith of world religions. It is not until they escape that they realize that it is all lies.

The North Korean people are led to believe that they have free healthcare, free education, and pay no taxes and that they cannot function in any other system so they become proud. The North Korean people have no way of comparing because of the restrictions on news and information. The North Korean regime uses this to their advantage. For example in the textbooks, in their broadcasts, and in the media they only show few countries that are loyal to the Kim Jong Il regime such as Cuba and some African countries on how they export to North Korea or how they are loyal. They are also taught that in capitalistic nations such as South Korea, that if you don´t have money you can’t go to school or receive healthcare.

So it is with this distorted information that the North Korean people are unaware of the outside world and therefore makes them slaves to the Kim Jong Il regime. In regards to Kim Il Sung, aside from the education I got in North Korea, when I came here I did some searches on Kim Il Sung’s personality and discovered that he was a real partisan and fought against the Japanese colonial rule. It is questionable how sincere he was, but at the very least he wanted to liberate the Korean peninsula from the Japanese colonial rule.

After the liberation from the Japanese colonial rule he made the wrong choice and made a decision based on two political visions. The first one was backed by the US which was a free market democracy and the second one was USSR led which adhered to the socialist bloc. Kim Il Sung chose the Soviet style system and wanted to imitate the proletarian system of the USSR. Kim Il Sung created the Worker’s Party and the North Korean Army, which both serve to commit atrocities against the North Korean people today.

This kind of tyranny was passed down to his son Kim Jong Il and he is still ruling under that system. According to the standards set by the international community, North Korean is following none of them. It creates nuclear threats, smuggles drugs, and is engaged in counterfeit activities. I am not sure what history will state about the regime but I am positive that the North Korean people will curse and punish the Kim family.

Kim Seong Min was born in 1962. He grew up and received his education in Pyongyang, North Korea. Kim is the son of a poet and was trained as a writer. After serving ten years in the military, he worked in one of the regime’s propaganda offices. Troubled by the society in which he lived, Kim escaped to China in 1997. He eventually arrived in Seoul, South Korea in 1999, and ever since has fought for the liberation and democratization of his homeland.

In 2004, Kim established Free North Korea Radio (FNKR) to broadcast messages about freedom to those being oppressed and exploited by the regime in Pyongyang. These tireless efforts have been recognized by several international awards, including the “Prize for Press Freedom” from Reporters Without Borders and the “Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award” from the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy. Recently, Kim was elected as a Representative of the Coalition to Promote the Democratization of North Korea, an alliance of North Korean defector organizations based in South Korea.

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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.”