North Korean defectors say U.S. should do more

WASHINGTON—A group of North Korean defectors converged Monday to call on the Obama administration to do more to help them topple dictator Kim Jong-un’s oppressive regime.

“You know what are the most effective tools against the regime by the way the regime reacts,” said Suzanne Scholte, chair of the North Korea Freedom Coalition. “The people in this room are regularly targeted for assassination.”

Scholte introduced some two dozen defectors at a National Press Club event to kick off the 12th annual North Korea Freedom Week. Their efforts to get information in and out of North Korea—through radio broadcasts, balloon drops, and other means—have led the country into the information age, ignited capitalism that is curbing starvation, and helped some 26,000 persons escape, Scholte said.

“Because of their bravery, the world knows about the horrific suffering of North Korea,” Scholte said.

The defectors include a variety of organization leaders, prison camp survivors, and eyewitnesses to human trafficking, drug smuggling, propaganda dissemination, and illegal weapons trading. Following the National Press Club appearance, they will participate in various events throughout the week, including providing testimony to Congress on Wednesday and at the United Nations in New York on Thursday.

Kim Seong-min, the Freedom Week co-chair, said the defectors have three objectives: call on Congress to move forward with additional sanctions—including re-instating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism; call on the U.S. government to financially support defectors; and call on the Chinese government to end its policy of repatriating North Korean defectors.

Twice this week the defectors will gather for events outside the Chinese Embassy in Washington, which has refused to treat North Koreans as refugees.

“China is a huge factor in all of this,” Scholte said, noting more people die on the North Korea-China border than in the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea.

Scholte and Seong-min said defectors have proven highly effective at influencing the regime’s activities, but they don’t have the resources they need to do their jobs. Seong-min said the State Department has ended North Korea programs or severely cut funding over the last five years.

Last year, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights released a report detailing the brutality of widespread human rights abuses in North Korea, but the international community has taken little action. Seong-min said because the international community has hesitated, the Kim regime is gaining more and more power.

Despite that, he said, defectors refuse to quit: “The North Korean regime continues to threaten the people in this room, but they will not be intimidated.”