 Image: Eunpyeong Future Alliance |
Democratization of North Korea is both a
fundamental solution to the humanitarian issues, a prerequisite for unification and the key to liberating the North Koreans from their
slave-like shackles and guaranteeing them universal human rights, according to Ryu Jae Gil,secretary general at
the Zeitgeist think tank.
“For the past 13 years, we have been
working on establishing a North Korean democratic government in China, one that
will denounce the Kim regime,” Ryu said at a lecture on North Korean
democratization held at the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights on the 11th.
Ryu operated in China from June 1996 until
March 2012, when he was arrested, along with three other activists, by Chinese
police. In July 2012, he was permanently exiled from the country.
“Building an anti-regime faction from
within North Korea is an impossibly difficult task, so we thought it would be
necessary to set up base in a third-party country, like China. Because there
are many defectors in northeast China, especially in Yanbian, we knew that
recruiting them first would be the best plan,” he asserted.
“I met the defectors in
secret and tried my best to show them that the regime’s propaganda idolizing
Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il is nothing but lies and deception. I also made them
realize the only way to free the North Korean people is for the system to
change.”
Some of the defectors saw eye to eye with Yoon and his colleagues, agreeing to help by operating from both across the Chinese border and inside
North Korea. Unfortunately, Ryu was ultimately caught by the Chinese authorities, thwarting the team’s plans to change the system and establish a democratic government within North Korea. They were, however, “able to bring the current state of North Korean human rights to the
world stage while bringing the people news from the outside world.”
Ryu pointed out that civil liberties are a
key concept to democratization in the North. Guaranteeing the “right to live”
over personal freedom is a viewpoint “incapable of facing the reality of a
changing North Korea.”
“North Korea’s food shortage and subsequent
starvation of the population [during the famine of the mid 1990s] happened because the regime deprived the people of
their freedoms. If the regime would have given the people the freedom to
produce and sell goods, freedom of movement, and guarantee property rights by
law, both the food shortage and failing economy could have been resolved from
the onset,” he noted.
Since then, North Korea’s food supply and economy have made great strides, but “economic class disparity and corruption are more
rampant than ever,” Ryu warned, underscoring the fact that “now is the time to put civil liberty at the forefront of
the North Korean human rights discussion.”
Moreover, Ryu criticized the claim that publicly
raising issues with North Korea’s human rights problem and adding international
pressure only weakens inter-Korean relations without yielding results.
“Human rights violations in the North Korea
have gradually been toned down, even as the regime has opposed the
international community’s criticism,” he pointed out. “Even if it’s only to just defy
international pressure, the regime has had no choice but to address the issue.
How can one look at this and say that making noise about North Korean human rights
is ineffective?”
