Human rights improvement is the road to a peaceful Korean peninsula

On February 16, domestic and foreign NGOs and human rights activists, including four from the Human Rights House Network, filled Kwanghawmun, downtown Seoul. As to end the 6th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights held in Sogang University, Seoul, for three days, conference participants gathered in front of the Chosun Ilbo newspaper offices – the only place permission was obtained to urge for North Korean human rights improvements. (24-FEB-05)

This article, written by Yang Jung, was first released on www.dailynk.com 16 February. It has been edited for republication here.

As it happened, the last day of the 6th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees, followed immediately by a downtown demonstration, took place on North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il’s sixty third birthday. When learning about the conference, this was also North Korea?s only objection; that the country saw it as particularly offensive to be demonstrated against on their ?dear leader?s? birthday.  

Peaceful demonstration to urge for North Korean human rights improvement, Feb.16, Seoul 
 

-South Korea must get more involved in solving North Korea?s problems
Prior to the protest, Susan Sholte (above), president of the Defense Forum Foundation read out the joint statement, which pointed out that the North Korean government must close down the detention facilities and stop torture, biological experiment, and other human rights abuse activities, that the Chinese government must stop repatriation of North Korean defectors and allow UNHCR to work in the Sino-Korean border area, and that the South Korean government must actively engage itself to solve the problems of North Korean defectors and North Korean human rights.

Therese Jebsen of the Rafto House is reading the names of the prisoners. 

Hundreds of prisoners? names read out
Later, human rights activists from all over the world each read names of the two hundred prisoners in North Korean gulags who were repatriated to North Korea, human rights activists arrested in the People´s Republic of China, and the identified prisoners in North Korean gulags, and urged for their release and return to home.

Volunteers’ performance on North Korean defectors in detention facilities 

-Give peace a chance
Volunteers’ skit on how North Korean defectors are arrested by the Chinese border patrol heightened the participants’ enthusiasm. The participants sang Arirang, a traditional Korean song, and shouted phrases protesting the South Korean and Chinese governments with John Lennon’s song, ?Give peace a chance?.

Activists for North Korean human rights from all over the world 

Protests against the conference, too
In the morning of the same day, fifty members of the “Unification Alliance for the Realization of the 615 South-North Co-Statement and Peace of Koran Peninsula” had a “protest against American manipulation of the international conference” in front of the US embassy in Seoul. The members of the Unification Alliance gave a statement saying that the International Conference was held thanks to the direct financial and other support of America, and performed a skit where they threw water balloons to a mock Statue of Liberty. At the opening of the conference, two days earlier, participants were met by a similar, yet totally silent, protest.