I lived in the world’s most isolated country, North Korea, for about 30 years. As you know, North Korea is a country where the Internet, reading foreign publications, and foreign information are strictly prohibited. All North Korean TV broadcasts, newspapers, radios, and publications are published daily with thorough supervision and approval from the North Korean dictator. North Koreans have lived in this giant prison for 75 years, blocked from the outside world. Like a fool, they listen only to what the Kim regime says and comply with it and still live that way. Do you know why they cannot change their lives? Because they have no knowledge and no information.
Before I start my main topic, I would like to share with you a story of a friend of mine.
There was a young man who grew up and received a good education in North Korea. He was young, but with the trust of the North Korean regime, he was given the opportunity to work abroad. However, a change occurred to the young man who was faithful to his duties. He read a book on the Internet one day, written by Lee Han-young, a former member of the Kim family. Having learned the ugly nature of Kim Jong-il and his family in that book, he escaped and settled in the United States, raises a family, and lives as much as the middle class in the United States. The reason I shared his story with you is because I wanted to talk about how a single book changed a person’s entire life.
As you all know, knowledge is power. And information is the foundation of knowledge. Through various information platforms, people get the information they need and make the development and change of society.
In the free world, free acquiring information is taken for granted, but in a one-man dictatorship of North Korea, all media platforms deliver information fabricated by the regime to its people.
North Koreans now live in isolation of information more than anywhere else in the world. This is not the result of their will or choice, but the result of the oppression of freedom and human rights committed by the Kim Jong-un regime.
In my speech today, I would like to explain to you the two fundamental reasons why we should send information to North Korea.
To begin with, I would like to emphasize that sending information to North Korea is education for North Korean citizens.
The current South Korean government and the ruling party are making a ridiculous logic that sending information to North Korea would provoke the Pyongyang regime and create tension between the two Koreas, thus hindering peaceful coexistence.
The reason why schools teach students is to teach them more information so that they have the power to improve their quality of life. It is the same reason we send information to North Korea. It is intended to help North Koreans make their own choices and improve their quality of life through truth and information. This is the same logic as teaching students at school, and it is an educational revolution that enlightens North Koreans who only see and hear the propaganda of the regime with the truth and justice of society. Our desire for democratization and change from North Koreans without any education is like asking kindergarten children to solve differential and integral math problems.
Today, however, North Korean defectors face tremendous challenges in bringing news and information to their loved ones and our fellow North Koreans. The South Korean moon administration and ruling party politicians are trying to completely block the critical means of sending truth and information to North Korea by establishing a law banning leaflets to North Korea.
South Korea’s adoption of a law to prevent sending information to North Korea is blocking the North Koreans from having the right to have information and ignore them to live as slaves to the North Korean dictator, which can be interpreted as the Moon administration and ruling party do not consider North Koreans to be South Korean citizens and it is an anti-constitutional bill that openly denies the value of the South Korean constitution.
Also, as a responsible member of the United Nations, South Korea is directly denying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 19 states:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
South Korea’s introduction of a bill of banning leaflets to North Korea that denies all of its constitutional values and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is to help the North Korean dictator who fears inhumane human rights abuses and truths will be known to North Koreans.
Withholding information is the essence of tyranny and control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.
As a result, the South Korean government and the ruling party’s law of banning leaflets to North Korea help North Korean dictator’s tyranny, and they try to become tools of the dictatorship of the Kim regime.
The Moon administration insists on cooperation, dialogue, and peaceful coexistence with North Korea. However, their idea is they will cooperate, talk, and have peaceful coexistence with the dictator, not cooperate with the people in the North, talk with them, and discuss peaceful coexistence. They should know that true dialogue, cooperation, and peaceful coexistence with North Koreans are sharing truth and information with them.
On top of that, one of the major reasons for sending information to North Korea is that North Koreans do not know the true definition and meaning of freedom and human rights.
The international community is raising its voice that North Korea’s human rights situation should be improved, but we are missing something really important. The residents, elites, and even those people in authority who commit human rights abuses do not know the correct definition of human rights.
In North Korea, neither the victims of human rights abuses are aware that they are being violated, nor the perpetrators of human rights abuses are aware that their actions could be a crime. Some say all North Korean elites who are supportive of North Korean dictators impose the suppression of human rights on its residents.
However, it is a misjudgment to think that North Korean elite know all about human rights abuses and atrocities committed in the North.
The North Korean regime strictly blocks the information being shared, not only from outside but also from within the country. So, they barely have accessed the details about what’s happening at the border, the atrocities at the concentration camp, the suffering of the residents, unless it’s the relevant department or local officials.
If such information is circulated in North Korea, the Kim regime claims that it is a rumor, and people are being punished for delivering those messages. And the so-called “inconvenient truths” are not even reported to the dictator. No one in North Korea is willing to talk about this “inconvenient truth” to the dictator because the three generations of the person who hurts the dictator’s feeling will be executed.
I have also never heard of North Korean women being trafficked, sold as slaves to China, and arrested and tortured while escaping North Korea when I was in North Korea. I’m sure not only me, but also most of the people and elites in Pyongyang are not well aware of the situation.
In order to truly improve human rights in North Korea, we must inform the people living in North Korea that the pain they are suffering is human rights abuses, and also need to inform those perpetrators who tortures and executes citizens without any sense of guilty that their actions are crimes against humanity, and they will be punished by law if North Korea is liberated.
In addition, when the reality of North Korea and the truth of the outside world are well known in North Korea, the North Korean public would be able to think about fighting for their human rights, and the perpetrators would look back their actions which are against humanity.
North Korea’s dictatorship system is not a collective leadership but a single-man dictatorship. Every power and decision-making in North Korea are held by the single dictator. And North Korea’s elite is nothing but a ruling means of dictatorship.
So, we must let the elite group stand on the side of the people to help them find freedom and on the side of justice to bring justice in North Korea, not on the side of the dictator.
In conclusion, All North Koreans are thirsty for information. They need a piece of information to enlighten their awareness rather than the rice aid from South Korea. The power of citizens armed with information would change the history and changes their future.
Just as a single book has changed my friend’s life, sending information to North Korea is a method to educate North Koreans and a motivation of human rights movement to improve human rights situation in North Korea.
Furthermore, it is a prerequisite for North Koreans to find their own universal values of freedom and human rights and achieve democratization.
