The extraordinary human rights abuses and possible crimes against humanity in North Korea were the topic of a congressional hearing held Wednesday by U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04), chairman of the House global human rights subcommittee.

    Smith said the world needs to be fully aware of “the systematic abuses of human rights in North Korea, which amount to crimes against humanity by perhaps the world’s most repressive totalitarian regime,” and cited the recent United Nations Commission of Inquiry report on North Korea that said the country seeks to dominate every aspect of its citizens’ lives and terrorizes them.

    “We must summon the necessary conviction to address the sufferings of the people of North Korea,” Smith said, forewarning the panel about the intensity of the testimony, particularly that of Shin Donghyuk, the only known prisoner to escape from a "total-control zone" political prison camp in North Korea. He is also believed to be the only person to have been born in a North Korean political prison camp to escape from North Korea. “The torture he endured – and not simply physical torture, as horrific as that was – was a psychological barbarity of such ruthlessness that once you have heard what he underwent, your imaginations will forever be affected,” Smith said. Click here to read Smith’s opening statement.
 
    The  congressional hearing, entitled “Human Rights Abuses and Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea,”  featured (click on name to read testimony)Lee Jung-Hoon, Ambassador-at-Large for Human Rights, Republic of Korea; Andrew Natsios, Co-Chair, The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea;  Shin Chang-Hoon, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Global Governance Asan Institute for Policy Studies, and; Shin Donghyuk, Survivor of North Korean prison camp. Click here to watch the hearing.

    Shin Donghyuk gave riveting testimony about his life.

     “I was born in the political prison camp,” he said. “My existence in the political prison camp in North Korea was an existence not fit for human beings or even animals. My father and mother who gave birth to me were political prisoners also, and the moment I was born, I too became a political prisoner as well.”

    He recounted how at age 14 under the rigid environment of the harsh prisons, he followed regulations and reported his own mother and brother for talking about trying to escape. The authorities reacted by first torturing him, then making him watch his mother and brother be executed. His horrible life was captured in a N.Y. Time s best-seller in 2012 entitled “Escape from Camp 14.”

    “I am not here in the US right now to go on sightseeing tours, or to visit tourist spots. I am not here to go on a tour of the US Capitol either,” Donghyuk said. “I am here today to testify and to tell all of you, the distinguished and esteemed members of the US Congress, sitting here before me – to help and save the political prisoners in the North Korean political prison camps who are dying and suffering right now.”

    Natsios said the totalitarian nature of the North Korean state, economy, and political culture is the reason that there is no protection for virtually any human right even at the most minimal level.

    “North Korea has no rule of law, no independent court system, no civil society, and no private institutionalized religion,” Natsios said. “It has no independent news media as a break on the abuses of the state, no independent political parties (other than the single legal party, the Workers or Communist Party), no freedom of expression, and no choice of competing candidates on the ballot for public or party office. Without these check and balances, there is no restraint on the abuses of the state against its own citizens.”

Chang-Hoon Shin, Director of the Center for Global Governance at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, an independent and private think-tank based in Seoul, said his observations are based upon personal interviews conducted with North Korean defectors who worked inside North Korea’s nuclear facilities such as the reprocessing facility located at Yongbyon1 and the uranium mine in Pyongsan.

    “North Korea is an extremely closed and rigid totalitarian regime which controls the flow of any sensitive information especially between the workers in its nuclear facilities. However, this harms the health of the workers and hampers the development of safety and security culture in the nuclear and uranium mining facilities,” he said.

    Lee Jung-Hoon said the U.N.’s March 2012 Commission of Enquiry (COI) on North Korea looked at an extensive list of possible human rights violations, and represents a significant milestone in how the world views and deals with the human rights crisis in North Korea: “The COI Report characterizes North Korea as a “totalitarian state” that has committed serious human rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity - extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation. Since the release of the Report, the international community, both private and public, has come together as never before on this issue.”