North Korean human rights and reunification activists discussed international efforts to improve conditions in North Korea and prospects for reunifying North and South Korea, highlighting the need for regime change in North Korea at a panel at the Elliott School of International Affairs Tuesday.
Hyunseung Lee, a North Korean escapee, Inteck Seo, co-chair of Action for Korea United — a coalition for Korean reunification — and Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary and former North Korean prisoner, said the most realistic scenario for Korean reunification would be for the North Korean people to facilitate a complete regime change in the country with support from South Korea and the United States. The GW International Affairs Society hosted the event and the group’s Director of Programming Wyatt Christian moderated the discussion.
The United States and the Soviet Union divided the Korean peninsula along the 38th parallel in 1945, forming a communist government in the North and a democratic one in the South, which was cemented by the end of the Korean War in 1953. South Korea remains a democracy, while three generations of the Kim family have maintained authoritarian rule in North Korea.
Seo said there needs to be a clear, “overarching” consensus in citizens from both North and South Korea regarding reunification. He said the reunification movement should be “bottom-up,” starting with broader support from South Korean citizens.
“Because the division was so long, 80 years, and the new generation came in and they’re thinking this division is our destiny, that they cannot change the situation,” Seo said. “When you look at the geopolitics of the Korean peninsula, it is an opportunity for reunification.”
Seo said the United Nations and other international organizations have “good will” and intentions to provide humanitarian aid in North Korea, however the aid hasn’t shown any tangible improvements to the human rights situation in the secluded country. He cited North Korea’s worsening economy and stricter laws against citizens smuggling South Korean media into the country as evidence of the deteriorating conditions.
He said North Korea’s human rights issues stem the current leader, Kim Jong-Un and the Kim regime, which since 1945 has enacted an authoritarian rule limiting freedom of speech, arbitrary killings or torture and extreme surveillance. Seo said without a regime change and unification, there won’t be improvements for human rights for the North Korean people.
“It means we have to acknowledge that, admit that the efforts we’ve made, the good will they made, that’s totally fail,” Seo said.
Lee, who defected from North Korea in October of 2014, said though he had lived a much better life than other North Koreans while living in Pyongyang — the nation’s capital — and worked as a business representative for the North Korean government, he would still see government officials he was close to getting executed and taken away during a crackdown in 2013 that led him and his family to make the decision to escape.
He said once he escaped and arrived in the United States, he realized he needed to reveal the human rights violations to the U.S. government and amplify other defectees’ voices for more effective policy against the North Korean regime, efforts he continues today.
“We have to work to reveal the human rights violations in North Korea, and what we experienced in North Korea, what we had in North Korea, so that U.S. policymakers in this community realize what’s happening,” Lee said.
Lee said realistically, even if Kim died tomorrow, North Korea wouldn’t immediately collapse and the nation’s top agents would continue to run the same system. He said for regime change to occur, the potential new leader would have to be from a different family for there to be space to discuss and open reforms inside the country.
“That person will be free from the past human rights violations and doesn’t have a reason to lock the country,” Lee said.
He said he sees the first stage in unification as allowing people travel across the border and exchange phone calls — something that is currently prohibited between North and South Koreans. He said North Korea would then need a transitional period lasting longer than ten years to reduce the economic, political, educational and cultural gap between North and South Korea.
“Match the gap, and it might be good unification without any burden from the South Korean population,” Lee said.
Bae said the best case scenario for unification would be a regime change, which he said could be possible given there is no reliable successor of the North Korean regime — aside from Kim’s thirteen year old daughter who he said would barely be old enough to rule in a decade. He said the United States’ conflict with Iran shows that President Trump is not tolerating nuclear weapons held by adversarial states, suggesting the Kim regime could face increased foreign pressure.
“As we know Kim Jong-Un is not going to give up, he knows the capacity of the U.S. forces, so we’re getting into very tough situations,” Bae said.
Bae said the North Korean government sentenced him to a labor camp for two years while he was doing missionary work in the country, making him the first American sent to a North Korean labor camp since the Korean War. He said he was released in 2014 after former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper negotiated with North Korea to bring him home.
He said he realized during his time in the labor camp that the North Korean population was living as a “prisoner in their own system,” and after his release he founded a nonprofit based in the United States and South Korea aiming to help North Korean refugees readjust to their new lives. He said the main goal of the organization is providing education and mentorship to younger refugees, specifically helping them learn English as they enter high school and college.
“We as people, regardless of whether you’re preachers or not, what faiths you have, we just need to make sure they need to survive as human beings,” Bae said.
