One North Korean defector recently succeeded where many before him had failed, by becoming the first North Korean to meet with and question a top North Korean official on human rights issues.
Kim Joo Il, who lives in the UK and acts as both vice president of the Association of Korean Residents in Europe and head of the UK arm of the organization, met face-to-face with the chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly, Choi Tae Bok, where he took the chance to request information on the lives of 254 inmates in North Korea’s political prison camps.
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The Daily NK met Kim during a recent visit to London, to better understand the background to the meeting.
According to Kim, the meeting came about thanks to an invitation from Greg Hands MP, a member of the ruling Conservative Party and parliamentary representative for Westminster and Fulham, an area of London where many Koreans reside, to attend an event organized by Lord David Alton, a member of the House of Lords. Kim was invited as a witness to North Korea’s human rights atrocities, the very existence of which the North Korean regime persistently denies.
Kim said that he attended the event unassumingly, appearing to be South Korean, before the opportunity to ask questions arose, at which point he was introduced as a North Korean defector and immediately raised the issue of North Korean human rights. A flustered Choi refuted the notion of poor human rights conditions in North Korea, saying, “For the international community or North Korean defectors to say anything is wrong with the human rights situation in North Korea is a lie,” while Ja Sung Nam, the North Korean Ambassador to the U.K., left the room, returning ten minutes later.
Asked about the event in another recent interview, Lord Alton explained, “(Choi) was very measured; he didn’t want to receive any documents from the defector who was there, but he stayed at the meeting. It was a tense moment, there was a tense exchange.”
Kim believes that to get the opportunity to meet Choi in such a way required a long time spent building a relationship with those in the British government with an interest in North Korean issues, such as Lord Alton and Baroness Cox, who head up the British All Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea and were responsible for inviting Choi to visit.
Elsewhere, Kim also explained his organization’s main role. While the Association of Korean Residents in Europe’s work involves informing the international community of North Korean human rights issues, he said, the Association of Korean Residents in the UK focuses instead on creating networks and unifying North Korean defectors in the UK, to ease the communal burden of transition.
The UK is broadly welcoming of defectors, he explained, but there are myriad official and very confusing processes to pass through before being allowed to officially enter British life or receive state assistance, and it is with these that defectors really require help.
