On Tuesday, December 12, at 2 p.m., the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations will hold a hearing on “Protecting North Korean Refugees,” to examine what more the U.S. can do to push China to protect North Korean defectors and grant them international protection.

    “As the Congress continues to look at ways to best apply maximum diplomatic and financial press on the regime of Kim Jong-un, this hearing will explore the strategic relevance of further pressing the Chinese government to protect North Korean refugees and evaluate the impact of surging outside information into North Korea,” Smith said.

Who:               Chairman Smith (NJ-04), Senior Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations; other members of the Committee

Witnesses:         

Panel I

Ms. Hyeona Ji
North Korean Defector
Co-Chairperson
Worldwide Coalition to Stop Genocide in North Korea

Ms. Han Ga Hee (alias)
North Korean Defector
Announcer and Sound Engineer
Free North Korea Radio

Panel II

Mr. Greg Scarlatoiu
Executive Director
The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea

The Honorable Robert King
Senior Adviser, Korea Chair
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Former U.S. Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues

Ms. Suzanne Scholte
President
Defense Forum Foundation
Chairwoman
North Korea Freedom Coalition

What:              House hearing on protecting North Korean defectors

When:             Tuesday, December 12, 2017 2:00 PM

Where:            Rayburn House Office Building, Room 2200 (second floor)

    In July and August of 2017, 41 people fleeing human rights abuses in North Korea were detained in China, the group Human Rights Watch reported. This continues a decades-long trend of China detaining North Koreans fleeing the dictatorship and repatriating them, where they face the prospect of severe punishment by the state, when they should instead be granted protection as refugees.
   
    North Korea is known as one of the worst human rights abusers. In 2014, a report by the UN Commission on Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea found that “systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations” had been committed by the dictatorship, and that “in many instances, the violations found entailed crimes against humanity based on State policies.”

    These abuses, the UN Commission found, included “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.”

    “This hearing will explore the current situation facing North Korean asylum seekers and assess both China’s obligation to protect refugees and global efforts to stop what the UN Commission on Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea called crimes against humanity experienced by refugees,” Smith, Chairman of the subcommittee, stated.

    North Korean citizens caught leaving the country illegally could face severe punishment including interrogation, torture, and a sentence in the country’s forced labor camp system. Yet among those who do escape the abuses of the Kim Jong-un regime, China has maintained a “rigorous policy of forcibly repatriating citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea who cross the border illegally,” the UN Commission report said, despite the fact that these people should be treated as refugees and given “international protection.”