Slavery in North Korea

There is a fairly nondescript bronze statue of a man seated in a chair in Harvard Square. It’s on a large traffic island in front of Harvard’s Johnston Gate. Most people either do not notice the statue or, if they do, do not recognize the man. The simple small bronze plaque at the base has six letters in relief: Sumner. Or easily “Summer" if you don’t pay close enough attention. I should mention an interesting historical tidbit about the statue itself. The winner of the anonymous competition in 1875 for a model sculpture of Sumner for the Boston Public Garden was sculptor Anne Whitney but the prize was revoked when the committee in charge found out that the winner was female. Runner up Thomas Ball’s model was selected instead and that's what you see today in the Garden. A quarter century later, Whitney’s friends commissioned the first prize statue and installed it in Harvard Square. I walk by the statue almost every day and I am in the habit of looking up at the man’s face every time. Charles Sumner was a prominent leader of the abolitionist movement who dedicated his life to the abolitionist cause and to equal rights for freed slaves--many abolitionists believed in emancipation but not necessarily equal rights. He was also a US Senator from Massachusetts who was brutally beaten, nearly to death, for his speech against the authors of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. If Sumner were alive today, I wonder what he would have said and done about North Korea, which is arguably the largest slave camp in existence. The term slave has been used to describe North Koreans in the past but it recently gained wider currency due, in large part, to Thae Yong-ho, a high profile North Korean diplomat who uses it to describe his and his family’s status before their defection. But, are the North Koreans really slaves?

The OED defines a slave as “one who is the property of, and entirely subject to, another person, whether by capture, purchase, or birth.” North Koreans are entirely subject to the Kim family by birth, by capture (South Korean POWs and later abductions from South Korea and Japan), and by deception (about 93,000 Korean residents and their Japanese spouses moved to North Korea over a period of two decades). They are the property of the Kim family the same way that livestock might be for a farmer. Though as inadequate as they may be, there are laws, policies, and guidelines to protect livestock in the U.S. But no such laws even exist for the people of North Korea. Sham judicial proceedings and legal codes aside, North Koreans have no rights. None. None of the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights applies to them, but one, sort of, Article 16 (Right to Marriage and Family) which has three sub-articles. I say “sort of” because North Koreans are only allowed to marry other North Koreans. North Koreans are prohibited from marrying foreign nationals. If a North Korean and a non-North Korean national fell in love and wanted to get married, the North Korean would have to defect. They would become a traitor and his/her entire family would be sent to labor camps—labor in this case is a euphemism for death. So there goes Article 16.1, which states that everyone of "full age" has "the right to marry and to found a family” with no "limitation due to race, nationality or religion.” Tragic love relationships are part of any human society but inevitably the North Korean version is more complicated. In North Korea, most families typically do not allow their children to marry anyone who is from a lower rung of the most macabre hereditary caste system. Each member of society is assigned to a hereditary ranking based on their family's alleged revolutionary or counter-revolutionary background. As a result many marriages are entered into without “free and full consent” as specified in Article 16.2. Now moving on to Article 16.3, which states that "The family is...entitled to protection by society and the State.” I’ll just give you an example of how the State treats families and let you decide on its merits. In North Korea teenage girls are often subjected to a state inspection. There is a department in the Party responsible for this task: Department No. 5. They go around the country every year in search of “beauties.” Beauties for, who else, the Kim family. The desirable ones are marked (or, as North Koreans say, they become “objects of Department No. 5,” considered a prestigious designation, really) and they are observed over a period of time. Most North Koreans are used to hearing "so and so is an object of” or “was selected by Department No. 5.” It’s a great honor for most families perhaps not unlike slaves in the Antebellum South who were chosen to be servants in their master's house and thus exempted from hard physical labor. Once these girls are subjected to a thorough background check and a physical examination, which includes a virginity test they are taken away. Their families will not hear from them again until they are discharged, since their work allegedly involves their Leader’s security.

I, on the other hand, as a citizen of the United States, have all the rights enshrined in the Declaration. Defectors who resettle in South Korea have similar rights. The two Koreas are divided by the DMZ, which is about 2.5 miles wide. A mere 2.5-mile swath separates over 25-million enslaved people in the North from the over 51-million free in the South. Never mind that North Koreans are citizens of South Korea according to the South Korean constitution, the leaders of the free society in the South have so far failed to take any meaningful stance against this slavery and the most atrocious human rights violations in the world. They would rather maintain the status quo than risk upsetting Kim Jong-un. They may believe they are acting in their country’s best interests but their appeasement-at-all-cost policy will (as it has in the past) not only embolden the North Korean regime but will also expose South Korea to further exploitation by an increasingly desperate Kim Jong-un. If South Korea, with all the pertinent facts and witness testimonies at their disposal, refuses to speak up and act who else will? China? In China, escaped North Koreans are in reality fugitive slaves, as well as refugees. Xi Jinping may well be called the leader of modern day fugitive slave catchers. There are bounties on North Korean refugees in China and most fugitives who successfully reach China fail to make it out. In fact, it’s estimated that for every successful escape to freedom there are three or more people who fall victim to trafficking (sold as wives or prostitutes) or repatriation. I am drawn to abolitionist history largely due to my fascination with those who are involved in the underground railroad for North Korean defectors. I want to know who these people are and what gives them the courage and determination to help North Korean defectors - fugitives who most people have no interest in other than for exploitation. These modern day abolitionists hide and feed North Koreans just as their predecessors did for slaves escaping from the South. Many risk their own safety and sometimes their lives to help North Koreans, as did the abolitionists in the U.S. They are the Sumners of our contemporary world.

When my son was born several years ago, I had two middle names for him on my list. One was the name of one of my family members in North Korea and the other was Sumner. On the day he was born, the family name won but, I hope, even though his middle name is not Sumner, he grows up to be just like his father's abolitionist superhero, who fought for freedom and equal rights for the enslaved.
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As I publish this there are reports that Kim Jong-un has made conciliatory gestures to Seoul. As with his father Kim Jong-il and his grandfather Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong-un's gestures are yet another attempt to buy time; test US resolve; but, more importantly, weaken international sanctions and the US-South Korea alliance. As before, the gestures will be hailed as significant concessions of singular importance by the so-called pragmatists and proponents of engagement with Kim Jong-un. The airwaves will be filled with calls for positive US response and engagement, and hopeful pronouncements for the future. And yet again human rights an ever so inconvenient road block for peace and prosperity will be swept under the rug. Are we really prepared to make these same mistakes again?