N.

Korea seizes on defectors

inaccuracies, but rights advocates focus
on bigger picture

No
rth Korea has seized upon recent admissions by Shin Dong-hyuk a prison-camp
escapee who now says parts of his story about his life and escape from North Koreas
Camp 14 were inaccurate to seek to dismiss all human rights efforts against it. (Jason
Decrow/AP)

By Anna Fifield January 20 at 7:00 PM

SEOUL North Korea has seized upon recent admissions by Shin Dong-hyuk, the
prison-camp escapee who now says parts of his harrowing tale were inaccurate, using
them to try to scupper the international campaign to condemn the totalitarian states
human rights abuses.

But human rights advocates say Shin is just one of hundreds of defectors from North
Korea who have together painted a collective picture of brutal treatment at the hands
of the regime.
Just because there are clouds, it doesnt mean there is no sun, said Kim Seung-chul,
a defector who started North Korea Reform Radio to try to get information into the
tightly sealed state. Maybe Shin exaggerated some details, but that doesnt change the
reality that terrible human rights violations are being committed in North Korea.
North Korea is trying to argue otherwise.
Calling Shin human garbage, Uriminzokkiri, a semi-official Web site with close ties
to the North Korean regime, said that it wasnt just parts of Shins story that were
wrong but that all of it was lies and based on fabrication.
His admission of inaccuracies showed that the human rights push and new sanctions
from the United States were a serious insult to us and a deception of the international
community, said Uriminzokkiri, which acts as a mouthpiece for the regime.
Shin, thought to be the only person to ever escape from one of North Koreas total
control prison camps, had become the star of the human rights movement. He gave
speeches at the Waldorf Astoria and was featured on 60 Minutes; he received awards
and appeared alongside former president George W. Bush.
So his admission last week that he had spent most of his childhood at Camp 18 not
at Camp 14, known as the most brutal and that he had escaped twice before his final
breakout undermined large parts of his narrative and sent shockwaves through the
community of activists pushing for change.
There will definitely be an impact on the North Korean human rights movement
because our movement has been tarnished, said Jung Gwang-il, who spent three years
in North Koreas Yodeok prison camp and now heads No Chain, a group for North

Korean political victims.

We feel discouraged by this, but its not going to stop us from speaking out about
political prisons in North Korea. This doesnt change the reality of human rights
violations in North Korea, Jung said.
Michael Kirby, the Australian judge who led a groundbreaking U.N. commission of
inquiry into North Koreas human rights abuses, agreed, calling Shins revisions
trivial.
This is a traumatized person, and the fact that he misstated some things is not at all
surprising, Kirby said in a phone interview. This is one witness out of 300 his
name is in the report only a couple of times and North Korea should not get away
with riding on the back of this disproportionate coverage, he said, criticizing the
media attention to Shins revisions.
But Shins admission came as the push to hold North Koreas leaders accountable for
crimes against humanity, after years when human rights took a back seat to nuclear
issues, was gaining unprecedented momentum.
A resolution to refer Kim Jong Un and his cronies to the International Criminal Court,
sparked by the U.N. commissions report, is on the agenda at the Security Council.
Winning approval there has always been expected to be a hard sell, given that China
and Russia, two allies of North Korea, are veto-wielding permanent members.
Still, the efforts have clearly alarmed the North Korean regime, which has in recent
months started to engage on human rights, issuing its own human rights report and
sending representatives to hearings.
Now, many of those who have been behind the push have suddenly gone to ground,
apparently awaiting the full story from Shin, who arrived back in Seoul from abroad

Monday.
Privately, many activists and analysts in Seoul are saying they had doubts about Shins
story from the outset, in particular questioning how someone who had no concept of
money could have stolen and traded his way through North Korea and into China.
But part of the reason Shin became the star of the movement was that his story was so
horrifying. Born into a camp and expected to die there, he said he never received
affection from his mother, who viewed him as a rival for scarce food.
He said he betrayed his mother and brothers plan to escape, was forced to watch their
subsequent executions, and was tortured by being suspended over a fire. Shin now says
these events did happen, just at different times and places than in his previous tellings.
Analysts say this is partly a result of the intense interest in North Korea and a
willingness to believe almost any story that comes out of a state held together by a
personality cult. Tales of the banality of life there the everyday hunger and
repression dont capture that interest. That means defectors, many of whom suffer
from post-traumatic stress disorder after their lives in, and harrowing escapes from,
North Korea, embellish their stories to make them more sensational.
A variation of this appears to have happened in Shins case, said Ahn Myong-chol, a
former North Korean prison guard who is close to Shin, describing how local
journalists reported his story once he arrived in South Korea. The Washington Post
also carried an article based on an interview with him in 2008.
The media hasnt given him a chance to tell his story, Ahn said, explaining that local
journalists set Shins narrative in stone before he realized what was going on.
He is not a celebrity, he is an uneducated defector, Ahn said. It was just a matter of
time until all this came out.

Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.

Anna Fifield is The Posts bureau chief in Tokyo, focusing on

Japan and the Koreas. She previously reported for the Financial Times from
Washington DC, Seoul, Sydney, London and from across the Middle East.
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