Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Co-Chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (TLHRC), today held a congressional hearing—his twelfth on North Korea—on North Korean human rights movements and the obstacles imposed by the South Korean government.

                In a dangerous development, Smith said, under President Lee Jae Myung, “South Korea is abandoning human rights and is beginning to look more like North Korea and Communist China.

                “Not only is Lee failing to advocate for the victims of the North Korean dictatorship, but he is abusing his own citizens’ freedoms.”

                In his opening remarks, Smith warned of the South Korean government’s “democratic backsliding” and called out its “poor treatment of the North Korean human rights movement” and “violations of core freedoms within South Korea.”

                Tara O, a member of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation’s Academic Council and a witness at today’s hearing, underscored the erosion of democracy, capitalism, and the freedoms of speech and religion currently taking place within South Korea.

                “Increasingly, the measures to suppress freedom are being codified into laws, and now, they are even trying to change the constitution,” she said.

                “Those in South Korea who are supportive of the communist parties of China and North Korea, and who are anti-US, anti-ROK, anti-Japan—are trying to change the fundamental nature of the ROK by deleting freedom from the constitution, and adding a socialist agenda into it, which would essentially turn South Korea into a satellite state of Communist China.”

                Witnesses also described how the government of South Korea has intensified its crackdown on North Korean activists, threatening their freedom of speech and making it exceedingly difficult for them to perform their essential duties.

                “We now have an administration in the Republic of Korea that is abandoning its constitutional obligations in multiple ways to ensure the Kim dictatorship continues,” testified Suzanne Scholte, the Chair of the North Korea Freedom Coalition and Free North Korea Radio.

                “For the first time, the Republic of Korea has ended all its radio broadcasting to North Korea, and for the first time, the Republic of Korea has ended all support for the North Korean defector organizations. It is vigorously enforcing an anti-leafletting law that was declared unconstitutional.”

                Closing out his opening remarks, Smith said, “Policies that suppress the flow of information into North Korea, or that penalize those seeking to expose the truth, are not neutral acts. They have consequences. They affect whether the people of North Korea hear alternative voices. They affect whether defectors can continue their work. And ultimately, they affect whether the cause of human rights advances or recedes.

                “North Korean defectors are agents of change, strengthening and educating the hearts of the people of North Korea. That’s why our government should help, and South Korea should help, amplify their words into the North. As one defector testified, ‘what the North Korean regime fears most…is outside information.’”

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