Sixth Form attend House of Lords meeting on North Korea

On the evening of 28^th June the Sixth Form had the privilege of attending a Joint-Party Committee meeting in the House of Lords, chaired by Lord Alton of Liverpool, on human rights abuses in North Korea.

The 2 hour meeting consisted of listening to the testimonies of 2 escapees from this most secretive and abusive communist regime, followed by a presentation and plea for support from Amnesty International.

The first testimony came from a lady, Kim Hye-Suk who, via a translator told of the horrors and abuse she suffered whilst detained in Prison Camp 18. Between 1978-99 and 2005-07 she and her family were forced to work 15 hour days in a coal mine, pushing coal carts weighing 2 tonnes a total of 2km a day in the pitch dark. She talked of the lack of food being the focus of everyone’s thoughts, with a family of 7 only being given 2 cups of acorns a day to share. She punctuated her talk with naïve but highly graphic pictures she had drawn during her time in captivity. They depicted scenes of torture and execution, often a result of nothing more than stealing a little bit of corn.

The second testimony came courtesy of Kim Joo-Il, a former Captain in the North Korean Army. His evidence gave greater clarity to the degree of brainwashing that the regime perpetuates through the 10 Principles, which make up North Korea’s constitution. In one video-clip there is a scene taken during the Seoul Olympics in which a coach load of female North Korean cheerleaders forcibly and dangerously make the coach driver  stop when they spot by the road a large poster of their own supreme leader, Kim Jong-Il  , fearful that rain might fall on his image! The degree of anguish and determination was clearly visible on all their faces. There were also clips, taken illegally, of ‘public trials’ in which members of the public are being tried for such ‘offences’ as using a mobile phone, a ‘crime’ which can result in a public execution. We were informed that the number of public executions has risen 6 fold in the last year.

Kim Joo-Il also described how extensive the general food shortage is in the whole country, with aid from China and South Korea being siphoned off for the benefit of the regime and its supporters.

With access to North Korea being highly restricted, organizations such as Amnesty International have a very hard time assessing North Korea’s human rights record. Testimonies such as these are extremely important in the work that they do, giving credence to suspicions they have of the regime, gained from satellite images. We saw some of these images where you could see the extent of the crop failures and get a sense of the imminent starvation that is already beginning to blight the abused citizens of this country.

We think of the Houses of Parliament as places where party policies are debated and where laws are formed but we forget that they also offer essential forums where issues like this can receive a proper audience. It is through shining a light in this way that pressure, intelligently asserted, can bring about change.

The Sixth Form is very grateful for the invitation from Lord Alton to attend this meeting.