By Gaia Martini
On the 21st of March Leiden University hosted an event in the Wijnhaven building with two special guests: Lee Young-Hyeon (1st North Korean defector to become a lawyer in South Korea) and Lee Byung-Lim, in which they told the public their stories on how they escaped North Korea. The president of the PSCORE Organization (People for Successful COrean REunification) Kim Tae-Hoon was also present and he gave a speech in which he remembered the ties between South Korea and the Netherlands.
Elena Guido, who works at the United Nations where she researches the collaboration between North Korea and Russia in the Russia-Ukraine war, was another guest. She highlighted the ties between the two countries in the European conflict, explaining that last summer Russia and North Korea signed a political military treaty (the Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership) that entails that in case of invasion of one of the countries the other one must intervene and provide military assistance. Most of the North Koreans deployed in Ukraine admitted that they were told to commit suicide if ever caught. Some of them were even as young as 20 years old and their family probably didn’t even know that they are doing their mandatory circumscription outside of the country. When North Koreans flee to South Korea, they get automatically granted the citizenship, but since these soldiers were deployed in Russia, if they defect and get caught by the enemy army they can get sent back to North Korea where they are going to be punished and where they might put their families at risk.
Lee Young-Hyeon is the 1st North Korean defector to become a lawyer in South Korea. He was born in Hamhung (a coastal village that faces the Sea of Japan), as the son of a poor fisherman and a farmer. He escaped 28 years ago in 1997 when he was only 14 years old. He decided to escape because he was close to starvation, and he knew that if he hadn’t left the country, he would have died of hunger as it had happened to his grandma. He tried to cross the border with his uncle, but he was swept away by the strong waters, and he died in front of him. He managed to get to China where he lived alone as an illegal immigrant until he was 18. During these years he worked in construction. He was underpaid, but he had to keep a low profile, fearing that if the Chinese authorities had found him, he would have been sent back to North Korea. During his stay in China, he met a U.S missionary who helped him pretend to be an orphan of Chinese missionaries. He managed to get to Mongolia and in 2002 he finally reached South Korea. At the age of 18 he enrolled in a high school in Busan where he struggled a lot to keep up with the studies. He admitted that he thought multiple times about dropping out, but he never did because each time he would remind himself of the time when he wanted to study but couldn’t. While getting his diploma he started dreaming of becoming a human rights lawyer and although it was not easy for him (he admitted that he failed the law school admission test once and the final exam 3 times), he still cherishes those moments. In 2019 finally he became the first North Korean defector to become a lawyer in South Korea.
The second guest, Lee Byung-Lim, is a defector who escaped her country in 2010, and she is now involved in activism in hope one day to see again her son, who was forcibly repatriated and sent to a political prison camp. She told the story of her escape and of her son of who, till this day, she has no news. Although the thought of not knowing where her son is still haunts her, she hopes one day to be able to meet him again.
Through the years North Korea has ratified five UN Human Rights treaties that supposedly safeguard its citizens, but that are not respected by the government daily. These treaties protect basic rights such as the right to privacy and freedom of expression (articles 17 and 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), the right to education and the right to an adequate standard of living (articles 13 and 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights).
In 2020 North Korea passed the “Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act” (반동사상문화배격법) that prohibits the consummation of any kind of media produced in South Korea, punishing whoever breaks the law with up to 15 years of hard labour camps for the consumers and the death penalty for the people distributing the illegal material. All these actions allow North Korea to create and to perpetrate an isolated regime that controls and suppresses its people and that, according to the defectors, is becoming more and more repressive under Kim Jong-Un rule.
References
Khun, Anthony, “The Treaty between Russia and North Korea signals a new era on 2 continents.” NPR, November 15th, 2024. https://www.npr.org/2024/11/15/nx-s1-5188400/russia-north-korea-treaty.
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