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ALBRIGHT and KIM :"Here's to slavery, famine & torture"
Posted on 05/22/2006 8:14:00 AM PDT by areafiftyone
LOS ANGELES - Six North Korean defectors -- the first refugees the United States has admitted from the totalitarian nation -- arrived in Southern California on Saturday bearing accounts of famine, sexual enslavement, torture and repression.
The group was met at Los Angeles International Airport by leaders of four large Korean congregations in Southern California, all members of the Korean Church Coalition, which has pushed the government to take in North Korean refugees.
They hugged each of the refugees and handed them bouquets of fresh flowers as they emerged near the baggage area, accompanied by Chun Ki Won, the missionary who helped them escape via an underground railroad through China and Southeast Asia. Before leaving the airport, church leaders joined hands with the defectors and prayed for North Koreans still living in the Hermit Kingdom or hiding in China.
"This is the moment we've been hoping and praying for for years," said Sam Kim, an attorney and member of the Bethel Korean Church in Irvine.
The refugees, four women and two men ranging in age from 20 to 36, got off the plane wearing vivid new clothes, jeans and bright-colored sweat gear of a kind they said would have been forbidden in North Korea.
While it is not certain where the group will ultimately settle, church members have offered to help the defectors start new lives in California, which is home to the largest number of Koreans outside the Korean peninsula.
In interviews with a reporter in Washington last week, group members told harrowing stories of their path from North Korea to the United States.
Chan Mi Shin, 20, spoke of foraging for grasses to make a broth, the only ersatz food the family could find, and of being so hungry during the famine that killed millions that she started hallucinating that an accordion's keys were cookies and candies.
Speaking through an interpreter, she and the three other women, Na Omi, Young Nah "Deborah" Choi, and Ha Nah, explained how each had been sold as brides or prostitutes to already married Chinese men who paid the equivalent of a few hundred dollars for them. Shin said she was sold into marriage three times within a year of turning 16.
Choi, 24, who stands about 5 feet 7 inches, is taller than the others, perhaps because her father, a party official, had a higher standard of living than most North Koreans. But after Choi's father was sent to prison for five years, the family was ostracized and Choi was banished from school.
She paid a broker to help her escape to China in 2004, but she said the agent instead sold her to a married man who confined her to a small room and raped her repeatedly for two years.
Na Omi's family was slowly starving when she fled to China. She said a man she hoped would help her instead sold her as a bride to a Chinese man, whose family treated her like a slave. She said she was eventually deported and spent time in a North Korean prison before once again crossing into China.
The 2004 North Korean Human Rights Act mandated that the United States take in refugees, but before this month none had been admitted, in part because South Korea and China thought such a move would set back six-nation talks aimed at getting North Korea to dismantle nuclear weapons.
A handful of North Koreans who first resettled in South Korea have applied for asylum in the United States, claiming they were treated badly in South Korea. One such application was granted in April.
Around the same time, Jay Lefkowitz, the special envoy on North Korean human rights appointed by President Bush last summer, signaled a sharp change in U.S. policy. In a meeting with a House of Representatives subcommittee, he said, "We will press to make it clear to our friends and allies in the region that we are prepared to accept North Korean refugees for resettlement here."
"The United States has a tradition of being a refuge to vulnerable people seeking haven from despotic regimes and we will do our part to help this vulnerable population," said Lefkowitz, who is said to be close to Bush.
Like many defectors, new U.S. arrival Young Chul "Joseph" Shin, 32, the brother of fellow refugee Chan Mi Shin, went to China in 1997 during the famine seeking food for his family. He recalls his astonishment upon seeing the abundance of food even in the rural areas just across the river from North Korea. Dogs were being given rice porridge to eat, he recalls, "big bowls of it." Rice is a luxury in North Korea, he said, eaten only on one's birthday and New Year's.
Shin said he was sent back to North Korea three times in six years, each time crossing the river back into China. He spent 18 months in labor camps, prison and torture facilities.
During a few days in Washington last week, the refugees began many of their meetings with officials by thanking Bush, members of Congress and others who helped them reach the United States. "If it were not for their efforts, we'd still be in China being sold, experiencing severe racism," Na Omi said.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who was instrumental in getting the refugees to the United States, said the meeting he and Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and two U.S. representatives had with the refugees "was one of the most profound I've ever had."
The North Korean refugees have workers' visas and Social Security numbers that are valid for one year, after which they can apply for permanent residency, and within four years, for citizenship.
there's a big surprise...
Communism ain't no joke...
Bump.
I feel so bad for those people.
ALBRIGHT and KIM :"Here's to slavery, famine & torture"
I'll never forget Albright running after Arafat after he walked out of a meeting. WHAT A FOOL SHE WAS AND STILL IS!
Thanks for posting. It is too bad the mainstream media completely ignores the horric abuse in North Korea and China, where people are tortured and killed daily (as is typical of communist countries).
This story needs to get out...daily.
How is this possible? Ted Turner was just there and he said he didn't see any torture.
Don't cha know its more important to report on BUSH and his killing of those poor poor Iraqi terrorists! (/sarcasm)
Ted also said he didnt see any famine. In fact, everyone was riding bikes and looking healthy.
Maybe they should be telling this to the majority of the South Korean people [that we shed American blood keeping free] that have a lower opinion of America than of their loving brothers to their North.
bump
Thank you God above for installing this nation to do what most nations would not. Man do I look forward to a 1,000 reign under Christ.
I wish them well too, but mass resettlement in the US isn't the answer to the horrible suffering in North Korea. We should be taking in as many as can get here, temporarily, to provide them with military, intelligence, and other training to prepare them to retake and rebuild their country.
I really don't think that many will be able to leave North Korea. It's not an easy thing as you can see. Most of them trying to leave will end up in jail never to be seen again. Don't think a mass exodus of North Koreans will be a problem.
Quite a few are managing to make it to China is deporting them back again. Not as aggressively and efficiently as before, but a large number are still getting sent back. If the reasonably sane members of the international community could set up an effective program to house, feed, and train them in various locations outside North Korea, China would stop sending them back. Right now, China is just not equipped to handle a huge number of NK escapees, and is also concerned about political risk with the NK government. I gather that China is well past the point of being interested in actively supporting the NK regime as "fellow communists", but they are understandably wary of setting off Dear Leader when he's so near by.
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