• Text size  | | |
• Email this document
• Printable version

Amnesty International Report 1996 - North Korea

Reports suggested that citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) forcibly returned from foreign countries may have become prisoners of conscience. Official reports on the fate of possible prisoners of conscience could not be confirmed. No information was available on the number of death sentences passed or executions carried out.

The posts of President of the DPRK and of General Secretary of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea remained vacant. Kim Jong Il, son of former President Kim Il Sung, was widely expected to succeed his father during 1995. However, reports in the first half of the year indicated that Kim Jong Il would not assume formal leadership roles until the end of an extended mourning period for his father.

In August and September floods destroyed significant amounts of arable land, crops and infrastructure, rendering an estimated 500,000 people homeless and affecting millions more. There were reports that substantial sections of the population were at high risk of famine and epidemics. Reports that dozens of people had left the DPRK for northeastern China as a result of the floods could not be confirmed by the end of the year, and the legal status such people would have in China also remained unclear.

Amendments to the Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law were reported to have been introduced to bring legislative provisions into line with international human rights standards. The minimum age for imposition of the death penalty was reportedly raised from 17 to 18 years and articles punishing “crimes against the state” were reportedly amended to restrict their scope.

The first periodic report to the UN Human Rights Committee on the implementation by the DPRK of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, overdue since 1987, was reported to be nearing completion. However, it had not been submitted to the Committee by the end of the year.

Reports suggested that DPRK nationals forcibly returned from foreign countries may have become prisoners of conscience. A number of DPRK nationals in the Russian Federation were apparently forcibly returned to the DPRK, where they were at risk of imprisonment for having attempted to remain in Russia. They included Choi Gyong Ho, who had gone to Russia as a forest worker in 1990 under a governmental agreement between the then Soviet Union and the DPRK. In 1993 he had married a Russian citizen and in February 1995 he had sought permission from the DPRK authorities to remain in Russia. He was arrested in March by Russian authorities, and appeared to have been forcibly returned to the DPRK later that month. Since then his wife had been unable to contact him. If detained, Choi Gyong Ho would be considered a prisoner of conscience, detained solely for exercising his right to freedom of movement.

Other former logging-site workers, forcibly returned to the DPRK in 1994, were also feared to have been detained for attempting to remain in Russia or other parts of the Commonwealth of Independent States. They included Choi Yen Dan, who had worked at a logging site in Russia since 1986. He was arrested by police in Moscow in June 1994 and was apparently released into the custody of DPRK diplomats shortly afterwards. Lee Sung Nam, also a former logging-site worker, was reportedly forcibly returned to the DPRK after being detained by DPRK officials in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 1994.

Official reports on the fate of possible prisoners of conscience could not be confirmed. Hwang Sung Kuk, Hwang Sung San and Hwang Sung Chon, three brothers born in the DPRK who had been living in Beijing, China, since 1993, were reportedly forcibly returned to the DPRK in June, at the request of the DPRK, and were detained there. They were sent back to Beijing in October. According to DPRK officials, the brothers were not detained while in the DPRK.

Cho Ho Pyong had left Japan for the DPRK with his family in the 1960s and had reportedly been detained, possibly as a prisoner of conscience. According to official reports, Cho Ho Pyong had been imprisoned for espionage in 1967 but escaped from detention in October 1974. The authorities claimed that he had been killed the same month, together with his wife and three children, while trying to leave the DPRK in a boat which he and his family had seized, killing a soldier; that the boat had been pursued and destroyed; and the bodies of Cho Ho Pyong and his family were never found. Amnesty international remained concerned that Cho Ho Pyong might have died in suspicious circumstances. The organization retained similar concerns about Shibata Kozo (see Amnesty International Report 1995).

According to official reports, there had been few executions in recent years, but no information was available on the numbers of death sentences passed or executions carried out during the year. According to unofficial reports received in December, dozens of people had been executed in various provinces as a result of criminal offences committed after the floods, but this could not be confirmed.

In April an Amnesty International delegation visited the DPRK to discuss legal reforms and prisoner cases, meeting senior government officials, members of the judiciary and legal scholars.

In August Amnesty International published a report summarizing its continuing concerns about the fate of Cho Ho Pyong and his family. In December it published DPRK: Human rights violations behind closed doors, summarizing the results of the organization’s visit to the DPRK and detailing further reports of imprisonment received during the year.