Former soldier recounts cruelty as US president prepares for summit with leader Kim Jong-un, where dire human rights record is unlikely to be broached
L ee Cheol cannot remember how many times he was forced to gather with his fellow soldiers at an airfield outside Pyongyang in North Korea and watch as firing squads executed enemies of the state. But one thing he does remember is that these public displays of violence increased under Kim Jong-un.
“I was very traumatised, I couldn’t eat or sleep for days,” Lee says, recalling the first time he was made to watch teams of soldiers unload their AK-47s into the condemned. “I remember the sound of a person being hit by a bullet, it’s very different from the sound of a target, but after seeing it so many times I became numb.”
Lee spent nearly eight years in the North Korean army, starting when he was 16. It was his only chance at a better life, and of going to university. But his military career was marked with intense violence that included public executions and regular beatings doled out on his unit as a form of collective punishment.
It is estimated that between 80,000 and 120,000 political prisoners are detained in four large political prison camps in North Korea, according to a landmark United Nations inquiry that compiled evidence of a raft of crimes against humanity.
The UN commission of inquiry found the regime’s crimes included “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation”. The targets included people the regime considered a threat to the political system and leadership of North Korea.
Human Rights Watch says North Korea remains one of the world’s most repressive states despite recent diplomatic openings with South Korea, the United States, and other countries.
Despite this, North Korea’s plethora of human rights abuses are unlikely to be discussed in depth at a landmark summit between Donald Trump and Kim on 12 June in Singapore, with officials singularly focused on convincing the North to relinquish its nuclear weapons program. Luxury for some, starvation for others
Lee worked in a construction brigade, toiling on government buildings and apartments for the country’s elite. His faith in the regime began to deteriorate when he was assigned to one of Kim’s vacation homes.
“We were told everyone in North Korea was going through hardship together, but they were living in luxury,” he says.
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GRASP/Korea Beatings, killings, gulags: North Korea rights abuses likely to be ignored at...