Graphic displays may be key to N.K. human rights awareness

The drawings start with prisoners being stripped naked by scowling guards and severely beaten. This is their entry into a North Korean prison camp, and it only gets worse.

Another picture shows dozens of emaciated prisoners sleeping side by side in cramped quarters. A man standing 170 centimeters tall shrivels to 38 kilograms, at which point there is almost no chance of survival, even if released. Weak prisoners attempt work in caves and erecting walls that sometimes collapse, killing them, while enduring regular beatings from guards.
And those who die sometimes have no one who can be troubled to bury them; they are left in a room to be eaten by rats.

Those seeking to draw more attention to North Korean human rights may have hit upon a new strategy: Get more graphic. 

Kim Sang-heon of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights said that he started employing this method earlier this year when he was invited to address a Japanese NGO on the subject. Encouraged to show, and not tell the audience what people regularly suffer in North Korean prison camps, Kim employed the drawings of an artist who happens to be a prison camp survivor.
“Ideally we’d like to give the people something visual,” he said. “Then a greater number of people will be interested.”

The horrific drawings resulted in a request for Kim to address the Japanese NGO again in the future, which indicates to him that the strategy works.

Kim showed the drawings as part of his address to the North Korean Human Rights Speaker Series Wednesday night at the Artreon Toz in Sinchon. The series, sponsored by the North Korean rights group NKNet, is meeting every Wednesday night from April 25 to May 16 to hear presentations and discuss what can be done to help victims of human rights abuses in the North.

Kim’s goal is to see a resolution condemning North Korea’s human rights violations at the United Nations. At present, about 120 nations support it, about 20 are opposed and the rest have abstained. Though 120 nations constitute a clear majority in the 193-member body, two of the nations opposed are China and Russia, permanent U.N. members who can veto any resolution.

However, Kim takes heart from what happened in Libya last year, when worldwide outrage over Moammar Gadhafi’s actions prompted a U.N. resolution calling on international intervention. Russia and China, though initially opposed, abstained from the vote, allowing the mission that led to Gadhafi’s downfall.

If 150 nations support the measure, Kim believes Russia and China will not stand in the way.

“They find it very difficult to support a very wicked and evil force,” Kim said.

To win more support globally, Kim is looking for help in creating more presentations, from those skilled in designing them, plus people who can provide a soundtrack or voice narration. He also hopes to see talented film directors and actors capable of providing dramatic reenactments of these human rights abuses.

Kim would also like to see South Koreans become more passionate about the issue, and thinks that the anti-communism campaigns that started under the South’s authoritarian leaders have made people here indifferent to Northern suffering. He feels this can be reversed by, for starters, lifting restrictions on what South Koreans can read and watch about the North.

“Why can’t we watch North Korean (state) TV?” he said. “Why can’t we read (their newspapers)? There would be no stupid guys who want South Korea to be like North Korea.”

More can be learned about the speaker series at en.nknet.org.

By Rob York (rjamesyork@heraldcorp.com)