Interviews with Han Nam-su

Once you escape North Korea and enter China, you face various risks because the Chinese police are always searching and on alert to find and arrest North Korean refugees. North Koreans are considered illegal residents of China. Once you are arrested by the Chinese police, you are sent back to North Korea.

This is why North Koreans who escape to China will probably stay out of the public eye and often live in rural areas or take up difficult jobs.

They must hide their origins; they are always on alert, and always distrustful of people.
So even if a North Korean decides to go to China, it doesn’t mean a good life is ahead of them. They enter the country with a shred of hope that things will be slightly better than in North Korea.

Han Nam-su was destined for a life among North Korea’s elite. The son of a military officer, Han and his family were afforded privileges that ordinary North Koreans didn’t have.

Things changed after Han’s father commented on the country’s need for economic reform; he was instantly branded a traitor, tried in a military court, and executed. Han was subsequently expelled from his university and exiled to a remote corner of the country with his family.

On Christmas Eve, 1998, Han decided to leave North Korea and pursue a better life elsewhere. He crossed the frozen Tumen River into China and remained there for the next six years working various odd jobs. In 2004, Han escaped to South Korea where he started a new life in a free society.

Attending Sogang University, Han majored in Diplomacy and Political Science. While there, he decided to raise awareness of the human rights abuses happening in North Korea and founded the Young Defectors’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights. As the organization’s leader, Han works to empower North Korean defectors through trainings, seminars, forums, and various campaigns on democratic governance.

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.”