Day: February 15, 2023

O Hye-son is the wife of Thae Yong-ho, who in 2016 was North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom when the family decided to defect from the North to resettle in the South. Thae became the highest ranking North Korean official to switch sides. 

Less than four years after they arrived in Seoul, Thae won a local election and became a member of the National Assembly representing the wealthy Gangnam district of Seoul. 

Though South Korean and Western media have been eager to tell Thae’s former North Korean diplomat defector turned South Korean politician story, very little about the rest of the family had garnered much attention, until now.

In O’s recently published book, “The Pyongyang Lady Who Came From London,” she discusses her background as a member of North Korea’s elite class, her impressions of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the family’s experiences abroad and how and why they decided to defect. Do Hyung Han of Radio Free Asia’s Korean Service spoke with O to learn more about her family’s story. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

RFA: You were born into one of the more privileged classes in North Korea, the so-called “anti-Japanese partisan” class, so you grew up enjoying enormous privileges compared to most people. What is it that made you think that maybe something was not right?

O: When I was a student at the Pyongyang Foreign Language Academy, there was another person from an anti-Japanese partisan family like me, but I saw the entire family disappear overnight. No matter how much power a partisan might have, I always felt that it could happen to me like that at a moment’s notice. 

When I lived in North Korea, I always thought that the hard life we all experienced would be temporary, but I realized that everything was so different when I came overseas. The way you live is different. I learned about the corruption of the Kim family in North Korea. I often thought that North Korea offered no prospects for our future.

RFA: During your first stint in the U.K., you  watched your children growing up in a situation so different from North Korea, what was it like when you all had to go back in 2008?

O: My kids were glowing with happiness in the United Kingdom. They knew freedom and how to solve their problems in a democratic way. They had known nothing but happiness, but then we went back to North Korea. After a year there, they became skinny. I began to worry. “Will I lose my children? Will they become ill?” 

Since my oldest child was very sick [with kidney disease], I was concerned that he would get sick again and again. My children were always frowning. Of course, they tried to hide it, but I could tell. When we lived in the United Kingdom, there were orderly norms like right and wrong. Like, if I do this, I’m a good kid and I should do such things. But North Korea is a country without laws. I felt like my children were becoming bad kids. I was upset with how things were changing like that.

RFA: In the book, you said that when you were living in the United Kingdom, you talked with your husband a lot about defecting. Specifically, when you talked about your children, you said that the conversation always ended with the decision that the children should stay abroad. Can you elaborate?

 O: There is an exercise course that allows us to return in an hour from the North Korean Embassy. Every night before dinner, when we walked there, I led the conversation and talked about the uncertainties in our future. Every time, the conclusion was that we had to leave the children here, not making them go back to North Korea. Then, when North Korea told us to send my children back in, my husband asked me again if I’m really determined to defect.

RFA: What was the reaction when you told your children that the family would defect from North Korea?

O: The first thing they said was “thank you.” I didn’t know that they would react that way. I was determined that I had to take my children no matter what, but I was worried about what I should do and how I would accept it if they said no. 

My child went to talk to his father and said thank you. He said, “If Dad thinks so, I’m thankful.” So we came to realize that it was something they had been waiting for. 

My youngest also said thank you. Even now, they are still grateful. They say that their Mom and Dad did everything they could do for them. They said that we did everything we could to bring them to South Korea.

RFA: If the two of you had no children, would you have still defected?

O: I don’t think so because we have family members in North Korea. I think mothers have strength because they have children. With no fear, I must do whatever I can for my children, no matter what. I could not let my children live such a terrible life [in North Korea.]

RFA: In the book, you evaluated Kim Jong Un as “a dictator who surpasses his predecessors.” In what way is he worse than his father Kim Jong Il, or his grandfather Kim Il Sung?”

O: He’s ruthless. There is a documentary film that showed how he guided the training of the People’s Army units. It’s a film meant to introduce Kim Jong Un. He instructed the training of the military units onsite. The training regimen he led was a round-trip long distance swim in which generals older than himself were made to wear military uniforms and then had them swim to and from a destination out at sea. As I watched it, I thought that even Kim Jong Il had never driven such older people so hard into the sea. 

RFA: In your book, you said that Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un have turned North Korea into a large prison. What exactly do you mean? 

O: First of all, you can’t go out, you can’t come in. You can’t hear things freely. You listen to this. You don’t listen to that. You can sell this or you can wear that. You are allowed to say these things. What country regulates life in such ways? You can only control people like that in prison. Don’t look, don’t listen. I think it’s wrong to treat North Koreans this way.

RFA: What made you decide to write the book? Also, what plans do you have for the future? 

O: The reason I wrote this book is to cherish freedom. I wrote it with the hope that the readers would also cherish freedom. What I wish for in the future is that I would be able  to tell people more about the lives of North Koreans and to write something that connects the broken physical and emotional bonds between the people of North and South Korea.

RFA: Your father passed away before you defected. What would he say if he saw how you and your family were living today?

O: I think he would say “Good job, I’m glad you left, and I hope you live well.”

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong.

A Buddhist monk who joined a peaceful march organized by an opposition party official that called on the Cambodian government to restore social ethics was ousted by the head monk of his temple for disrupting the public peace. 

Venerable Soy Sat, 72, was expelled from the Phnom Plouch Pagoda in Kampong Speu province on Feb. 9 by pagoda chief Oum Harm, who warned him that he would be defrocked if he refused to leave.

“The chief monk expelled me because he accused me of inciting to destroy peace,” said Soy Sat.

In early February, the monk marched along with Rong Chhun, the new vice president of the opposition Candlelight Party, and other demonstrators from the capital of Phnom Penh to Pursat province in the western part of the county. They had permission for the march from the Interior Ministry. 

The move comes five months ahead of an election showdown between the opposition Candlelight Party and Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party, or the CCP. The prime minister has targeted opposition leaders, arresting and detaining them on what critics say are politically motivated charges in an apparent attempt to remain in power.

Buddhist monks, who occupy their own social class in Cambodia and are given a great deal of respect by the public, frequently participate in demonstrations, but ousting them from a temple is unusual.

Soy Sat denied that he intended to disrupt the public peace and said he would continue to participate in social advocacy.

The monk said he is currently living in an undisclosed location for security reasons, but he is running short on food and needs a permanent place to live. He asked monks at four other temples if they would take him in, but they all refused. 

“I urge other chief monks to allow me to stay because I didn’t commit any crime,” he said.

RFA could not reach Oum Harm for comment Wednesday. Cambodia’s Cults and Religion Minister Seng Somony refused to comment on the case but said he would investigate it.  

Support for the ruling party has fallen in the past decade amid chronic corruption within the party and the government, which opponents say has led to human rights violations, deteriorating social ethics and a culture of impunity.

Rong Chhun, a labor leader, said he organized the protest before the party appointed him to his current role, so that the protest had nothing to do with politics. 

Rong Chhun said he was displeased to learn about Soy Sat’s ousting, adding that the head monk should not have taken such a measure and that it now serves as a precedent and a threat for other clergy members who participate in peaceful protests

“Monks are symbols of the nation who preach to the people,” he said, “but now they are facing problems.”

Translated by Samean Yun for RFA Khmer. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

Myanmar’s Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s appeal of two corruption charges, sources close to the court told Radio Free Asia.

Suu Kyi, 77, was sentenced by a military junta court in October to three years in Naypyidaw Prison for two corruption cases that involved charges of accepting money from Maung Weik, a businessman linked to the military.

Maung Weik has testified that that money was not given to Suu Kyi, but donated to be used at the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation, which supports education, healthcare and rural investment.

Suu Kyi’s lawyers have argued that she’s innocent of corruption because the money that Maung Weik gave was found in the foundation’s bank account.

The reason for the Union Supreme Court’s denial of the appeal was unknown.

“The right to appeal is in Article 19 of the Constitution. The right to appeal must be given to anybody,” a court source who has knowledge of the decision said. “It’s ridiculous that the Union Supreme Court did not even grant an appeal.”

The Nobel Peace Prize winner served as Myanmar’s state counselor from 2016 up until the Feb. 1, 2021, coup. She has been sentenced to a total of 33 years in prison in 19 cases. 

Suu Kyi’s lawyers filed an appeal to the Union Supreme Court on Tuesday for five cases in which Suu Kyi and President Win Myint were accused of buying and leasing a helicopter under the NLD government. They were sentenced on those charges in December.

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

Hong Kong police received more than 400,000 tip-offs last year to a hotline for reporting violations of a draconian national security law criminalizing public criticism of the authorities, suggesting a brisk trade for political informants.

Police Chief Raymond Siu said clamping down on crimes under the law will remain the top priority for the city’s police, who were widely criticized for violence against mostly unarmed protesters in 2019, amid a mass movement against the loss of Hong Kong’s traditional freedoms under Chinese rule.

By the end of December 2022, police had arrested 236 people under the law and charged more than 140 of them, Siu told journalists.

“Our priority is to continue to safeguard national security and engage the whole community to counter terrorism,” Siu said. “We have to guard against the threat of extreme violence of home-grown terrorism that is going underground.”

He said the national security and “counter-terrorism” hotlines would continue to play a key role. “Citizens should notify the police as soon as possible if they find anything suspicious,” Siu said.

“Police will keep trying to improve intelligence gathering and proactively raise public … awareness and responsiveness towards terrorist incidents through different media and activities,” Siu said, but gave no details of specific “terrorism” cases.

In July 2021, a Hong Kong court convicted motorcyclist Tong Ying-kit of “terrorism” and “secession,” handing him a nine-year prison sentence for flying a banner carrying the banned slogan “Free Hong Kong! Revolution now!” at a protest.

Atmosphere of fear

Barrister and former lawmaker Dennis Kwok said the number showed just how many people were willing to help create an atmosphere of fear in Hong Kong.

“This figure is absolutely incredible,” Kwok said. “If they have had 400,000 tip-offs, that means at least a few thousand a day on average.”

“If there really are so many people endangering national security, then why isn’t the government enforcing this law?” he asked.

Forty-seven former opposition politicians and activists are currently standing trial for “subversion” under the law after they took part in a democratic primary aimed at maximizing the number of opposition seats in the 2020 Legislative Council elections.

Former pro-democracy lawmaker Ted Hui said the hotline also accepts reports from informers around the world, as the national security law applies to acts and speech anywhere in the world that are deemed to be “secession,” “subversion of state power,” “terrorist activities,” or “collusion with foreign powers to endanger national security.”

“The whole situation is worrying,” Hui said. “The scope of the national security law is not limited to Hong Kong, but applies overseas, and not just to Hong Kongers.”

“Anyone who criticizes the Hong Kong government or holds critical or dissenting opinions could be affected by the fear of informants, which is partly the intention of the [ruling Chinese Communist Party] regime,” he said.

“A lot of Hong Kongers have emigrated overseas, so they are using these informant hotlines to create invisible tensions, threatening those who continue to speak out overseas,” he said.

Mass exodus

Hong Kong has seen an exodus of middle-class professionals in the wake of the crackdown on the 2019 pro-democracy movement, which called for fully democratic elections but instead was rewarded with changes to the electoral rules preventing pro-democracy candidates from running at all.

The British government has accused Beijing of failing to fulfill its promises made in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration governing the 1997 handover to Chinese rule, in which China promised to let Hong Kong people rule Hong Kong and to maintain the city’s traditional freedoms for at least 50 years.

“Twenty-five years on from the handover, the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities are undermining the rights and freedoms promised to Hong Kongers under the Sino-British Joint Declaration,” the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office said in a six-monthly report on the status of Hong Kong last month.

“Hong Kong’s autonomy is declining, and the pervasive, chilling effect of the National Security Law seeps into all aspects of society,” the report said.

For its part, China has accused British and U.S. officials of interfering in its internal affairs, claiming that “hostile foreign forces” have been trying to foment a “color revolution” in Hong Kong through successive waves of mass protests in recent years.

Beijing recently appointed hard-line former security chief Zheng Yanxiong, who made his name cracking down on the rebel Guangdong village of Wukan amid a bitter land dispute in 2011, as its new envoy in the city.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Neineh Plo is an ethnic Karenni activist working with the Coordination Team for Emergency Relief (Karenni) in eastern Myanmar’s Kayah state, situated along the country’s border with Thailand. A former spokesperson for the Karenni National Progressive Party who worked with the deposed National League for Democracy government on Myanmar’s peace process, he recently joined four Karenni organizations in publishing a report documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by junta forces in Kayah state and surrounding areas between May 2021 and September 2022.

Earlier this month, Neineh Plo visited Washington, D.C. and met with U.S. officials, lawmakers, NGOs and U.N. agencies to discuss the report’s findings and how the international community can help hold the junta accountable for its rights violations in Myanmar. During his visit, he spoke with Nay Rein Kyaw of RFA’s Burmese Service about promoting cooperation between Myanmar’s resistance groups in the pursuit of removing the country’s military dictatorship and establishing a federal democratic union.

The following interview has been edited for clarity:

RFA: First of all, thank you for visiting RFA. We have three questions. The first question is, what were your first impressions during your trip to the United States?

Neineh Plo: Well, my first impression during this trip is that the U.S. enjoys freedom of expression. It is freedom of expression that makes programming like RFA’s possible. And it is with this freedom that we enable the voices of the oppressed to be heard by the international community. When these voices are heard, the international community can take action to help liberate them within the societies that oppress them, such as Burma. So, I really appreciate the fact that people have the freedom to express themselves … as that is something we don’t have in Burma right now. Burma is under a military dictatorship and all kinds of free speech are banned … so you only hear from the military dictatorship what they want to tell the people. I want to tell the world the concerns of the oppressed people.

RFA: The world is watching the situation in Burma every day. Can you discuss the achievements of the resistance movement within the past two years [since the coup]?

Neineh Plo: Since the military coup two years ago … the people have suffered a lot. More than 1.5 million people are currently displaced internally in the country. But at the same time, we have many young people seeing this injustice and joining the resistance movement, whether it is armed resistance or other forms. And also, we see other people from Burma who were not aware of the plight of ethnic people in the country. Now they have become aware of the oppression that ethnic people have been facing at the hands of the military dictatorship – discrimination, lack of rights in the country. So this resistance movement, in a way, has brought people together against a common enemy, which is the military dictatorship, and then to work together and fight against this dictatorship – to remove it once and for all – and then bring about a new system to this country through the establishment of a federal democratic union.

RFA: So you are seeing more unity in Burma, right?

Neineh Plo: Yes. Now it is the kind of unity that we had not seen before the coup. Before the coup, it was mostly the ethnic groups who were fighting for equality, democracy, self-determination and federalism. Since the coup, we and other groups from Burma have had the opportunity to work with ethnic groups on a common principle, which is a federal democratic union.

But there’s a lot more work to do. We are not there yet, but at least we have started this conversation and have worked together on this issue. It is not something that we are all in agreement about … But at least we have a common understanding on the future of the country, which is that unless we can establish a federal democratic union, we won’t be able to make progress. So, I think that is a big achievement.

Sadly, the military dictatorship is still in place and we need to remove them and bring people back home [who have fled since the coup]. And the people of Burma cannot do it alone. We need the international community’s help to remove this military dictatorship, to bring about a regime change in the country, so that we can enjoy sustainable peace.

Unity and international support

RFA: The people of Burma and the international community would like to know whether this movement can win and when that might happen. What is your opinion?

Neineh Plo: First, we need to build unity among all these groups … We have a lot of ethnic resistance organizations, the [shadow] National Unity Government, and the [anti-junta] People’s Defense Force [paramilitary groups], as well as many civil society organizations. All of these groups have to be able to come together and have a single vision … which is the establishment of a federal democratic union for the future of Burma. With that kind of unity, we will be able to address many different things on the ground.

We also need international support. International support can come in many ways. Currently, we need immediate humanitarian support, and then we will also need international support to hold the military accountable [for its atrocities]. We also need international support to cut supplies to the military and disable the whole military apparatus in the country and eventually remove the military from politics. The people of Burma cannot do it alone – we need coordinated international support, otherwise it will not be effective.

RFA: Do you see a timeframe for victory?

Neineh Plo: I don’t want to make a prediction, as I’m not in a position to do so, but if there is unity among the people of Burma and the international community, and if we can build momentum, victory will come sooner than we expect.

North Korean state media have been highlighting leader Kim Jong Un’s daughter, Kim Ju Ae, in recent months. Coverage of her accompanying her father at important military and political events has fueled speculation that she could be next in line to lead the country. Ju Ae, thought to be born in 2013, would be the fourth hereditary leader of the Communist nation founded by her great-grandfather Kim Il Sung in 1948.