Below is a preview of AIMS major projects for the next year. We hope this will give a good idea of the initiative our organization is taking on key issues.
1. Job Training Program in South Korea, AIMS headquarters
Funded by granters
A. Purpose: Capacity building of North Korean Defectors for their resettlement.
B. Train and educate selected North Korean refugees to be lecturers, managers and reporters in the human rights field.
2. Democracy Program in the region
Funded by granters and donations
A. Purpose: To propagate democracy and build networks in the region
B. Create materials that contain information about democracy
C. Interview targets such as people in the region, refugees and asylums.
D. Conduct regular evaluations and surveys in order to measure the program’s impact
3. Human Rights Program
Funded by granters
A. Purpose (1): Raise awareness of North Korea’s human rights situation and share the knowledge for democracy.
Purpose (2): Organize a NKD Coalition Group and integrate these separated groups into one in order to implement the project efficiently
B. Train high-profile North Korean refugees
i. Give lectures and testimonies on North Korea and its human rights situations at universities organizations and governments by trained North Korean Defectors.
ii. Become specialized journalists(reporters) and report on human rights issues in North Korea
C. Create materials and articles based on the lectures, interviews, and testimonies and upload them, along with the articles written by the journalists, on social networking websites.
4. Education/Scholarship Program for the selected North Korean Defectors
Funded by donations
A. Purpose: Find and train potential leaders who will play an important role in the two Koreas and proper regions.
B. Select ambitious and qualified North Korean Defectors and support their study at universities in the United States
C. The trained and educated North Korean Defectors will train and help next new North Korean Defectors.
*AIMS is registered as a NPO(non-profit organization) by both South Korea and the U.S government , 2009
Inside North Korea: the Story of Mr. Noh (Part 1)
The airport security guards told me that they were going to search my body, which would have been alright with me, but if they short-circuited the bomb that I was wearing, then all would be over. I didn’t speak Chinese, so in Korean, I said, “Do not come near me,” while gesturing the same message. As I spoke and gestured, they noticed the switch that was in my hand and immediately seemed to realize that there was something attached to my body, so I showed them the bomb. Some of the guards began to move, telling me to come with them. My original intention had been to board the plane to South Korea and then use the threat of the dynamite as leverage, but I was now in a situation where I couldn’t even board the plane. I had control over nothing but my own body, and I knew that the people around me would be hurt if I set off the bomb. I also knew that if I tried to fight the security guards, I would be in serious trouble, so I gave up. I abandoned my plans to reach South Korea in this way.
That was in 2000. When I first crossed the Tumen River into China on March 31, 1998, I did so for the sake of my mother and older sister. I only left North Korea to escort them to my aunt’s house in China.
I was going to go back—that was the plan—but at my aunt’s church, I met two of my old classmates from North Korea, and they both recognized me. I didn’t remember them, and I told them that I didn’t. There are parts of my life in North Korea that I don’t remember, and even if I had remembered, I couldn’t have admitted it then. After all, I was there because I had run away and crossed the border. But, they kept on insisting—dropping my older sister’s name and so on. At first, I deceived them with denial, but they said to stop denying, since we had all attended the same school, and they were my seniors.
They said that they, like me, had run away, and that, since we were in the same situation, I did not need to hide anything from them. Then, I started to talk. I told them everything, of course—that my mother and older sister had not had any food or provisions in North Korea, and that they had been about to die, so I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing.
My former classmates told me not to go back. I asked them why, and they told me that either I would be shot or the government would throw me into a political prison camp. Back then, I was only twenty years old, and they were telling me that, if I returned, I was going to die at the age of twenty. That was a scary thought, and that was why I decided to give up my thoughts of going back. I chose to remain in China.
-----
My parents divorced the year that I turned ten. At first, my sister and I both lived with my mother because my father had two other daughters from his first marriage, and the younger one had chosen to stay with my father to live with him. But, after the younger daughter got married, my father was living alone. Because he was very old, he could not take care of himself or cook for himself, especially since he was a man, so at the age of fourteen or fifteen, I decided to go to live with my father.
My father harvested honey, so he was considered to be well off in North Korea. During food shortages, we were unaffected by the famine. We helped those in need in our region in small ways. We couldn’t help the adults very much, but there were a lot of little children who didn’t have enough to eat.
The adults would go off and frantically pick edible mountain greens, boil them in water, and scrape them off of the earthenware pots for food. Because they couldn’t eat proper food or rice, people exhibited many side effects, like bloating. The adults were generally alright, but the children—six- or seven-year-old-children—would suddenly bloat up and then suddenly wither away.
I didn’t know what was happening, but my father practiced oriental medicine, and he told me that, after the summer solstice passed, the previously harmless poison in the wild edibles became poisonous to the body and caused it to bloat. He also told me that medical treatment for the condition had its limits and that the situation of these children was that their bodies had withered away because of the long-term effects of the poison and lack of food. For example, members of our family once family sought help from my father and me, and we offered them little bits of rice. When I gave some rice to the child, he improved a little, but within three days, he bloated from the famine. In the end, he died. They had already lost two children.
In my village, quite a few people died, like these children. My father and I had enough to eat, but we couldn’t tell other people about this because North Korea is a communist country, so people must all eat and live together equally. If people had known that I was better off than the others, then the government would have interrogated me and seized my property. Even though I wanted to help, the social and political circumstances made it impossible.
That is why I couldn’t help others very much, but it was also why I was able to live a better life than many others. However, my mother suffered immensely. She literally lived on plants alone, and consequently, her strength left her to the point where she couldn’t even get up. During that time, I was making some money as a deliveryman, and all of the money that I made I sent to my mother so that she and my older sister could go to the markets, buy cheap rice cakes, and sell them for a profit at a different market. This way, my mother and sister could use the money that was leftover to buy some rice.
But oftentimes in North Korea, safety patrols—South Koreans would call them “the police”—would make rounds and send away individuals who were trying to sell their own products. They would say that, in a communist country, an individual cannot engage in private trade, so they would confiscate everything. My mother and sister would carry their rice cakes in a big bowl, and the safety patrols would take them away, leaving my mother and sister without anything, so they would starve again. I did some business in Chung-Jin, and sometimes, I would make a day trip to Chung-Jin and come back to my mother’s house. Sometimes, I could not go and come back within the same day, but when I did come back, I saw that they were starving. There were limits to how much I could help them.
There were times when the safety patrols confiscated my products as I tried to sell them, and I had to have the means to start another business if this happened. If I spent all of my money buying products, and they were confiscated, I would be left without anything, so I always spent half of whatever I had on buying products, and I would carry around the other half in cash. I did that, and the safety patrols sometimes took my products away. I could not bear to live in that society anymore.
That was in 2000. When I first crossed the Tumen River into China on March 31, 1998, I did so for the sake of my mother and older sister. I only left North Korea to escort them to my aunt’s house in China.
I was going to go back—that was the plan—but at my aunt’s church, I met two of my old classmates from North Korea, and they both recognized me. I didn’t remember them, and I told them that I didn’t. There are parts of my life in North Korea that I don’t remember, and even if I had remembered, I couldn’t have admitted it then. After all, I was there because I had run away and crossed the border. But, they kept on insisting—dropping my older sister’s name and so on. At first, I deceived them with denial, but they said to stop denying, since we had all attended the same school, and they were my seniors.
They said that they, like me, had run away, and that, since we were in the same situation, I did not need to hide anything from them. Then, I started to talk. I told them everything, of course—that my mother and older sister had not had any food or provisions in North Korea, and that they had been about to die, so I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing.
My former classmates told me not to go back. I asked them why, and they told me that either I would be shot or the government would throw me into a political prison camp. Back then, I was only twenty years old, and they were telling me that, if I returned, I was going to die at the age of twenty. That was a scary thought, and that was why I decided to give up my thoughts of going back. I chose to remain in China.
-----
My parents divorced the year that I turned ten. At first, my sister and I both lived with my mother because my father had two other daughters from his first marriage, and the younger one had chosen to stay with my father to live with him. But, after the younger daughter got married, my father was living alone. Because he was very old, he could not take care of himself or cook for himself, especially since he was a man, so at the age of fourteen or fifteen, I decided to go to live with my father.
My father harvested honey, so he was considered to be well off in North Korea. During food shortages, we were unaffected by the famine. We helped those in need in our region in small ways. We couldn’t help the adults very much, but there were a lot of little children who didn’t have enough to eat.
The adults would go off and frantically pick edible mountain greens, boil them in water, and scrape them off of the earthenware pots for food. Because they couldn’t eat proper food or rice, people exhibited many side effects, like bloating. The adults were generally alright, but the children—six- or seven-year-old-children—would suddenly bloat up and then suddenly wither away.
I didn’t know what was happening, but my father practiced oriental medicine, and he told me that, after the summer solstice passed, the previously harmless poison in the wild edibles became poisonous to the body and caused it to bloat. He also told me that medical treatment for the condition had its limits and that the situation of these children was that their bodies had withered away because of the long-term effects of the poison and lack of food. For example, members of our family once family sought help from my father and me, and we offered them little bits of rice. When I gave some rice to the child, he improved a little, but within three days, he bloated from the famine. In the end, he died. They had already lost two children.
In my village, quite a few people died, like these children. My father and I had enough to eat, but we couldn’t tell other people about this because North Korea is a communist country, so people must all eat and live together equally. If people had known that I was better off than the others, then the government would have interrogated me and seized my property. Even though I wanted to help, the social and political circumstances made it impossible.
That is why I couldn’t help others very much, but it was also why I was able to live a better life than many others. However, my mother suffered immensely. She literally lived on plants alone, and consequently, her strength left her to the point where she couldn’t even get up. During that time, I was making some money as a deliveryman, and all of the money that I made I sent to my mother so that she and my older sister could go to the markets, buy cheap rice cakes, and sell them for a profit at a different market. This way, my mother and sister could use the money that was leftover to buy some rice.
But oftentimes in North Korea, safety patrols—South Koreans would call them “the police”—would make rounds and send away individuals who were trying to sell their own products. They would say that, in a communist country, an individual cannot engage in private trade, so they would confiscate everything. My mother and sister would carry their rice cakes in a big bowl, and the safety patrols would take them away, leaving my mother and sister without anything, so they would starve again. I did some business in Chung-Jin, and sometimes, I would make a day trip to Chung-Jin and come back to my mother’s house. Sometimes, I could not go and come back within the same day, but when I did come back, I saw that they were starving. There were limits to how much I could help them.
There were times when the safety patrols confiscated my products as I tried to sell them, and I had to have the means to start another business if this happened. If I spent all of my money buying products, and they were confiscated, I would be left without anything, so I always spent half of whatever I had on buying products, and I would carry around the other half in cash. I did that, and the safety patrols sometimes took my products away. I could not bear to live in that society anymore.
Interview with Kim, Young Soon (Final)
Closing
I believe it is God’s blessing that I survived the political prisoner camp, came to this land of freedom, and now live as a human being. Those 32 years exist as dark chapters of my life. As a person who was reborn with freedom, I must work as a human rights advocate. We must dismantle those political prison camps. We must do it for the innocent people who are dying for crimes they have not committed. I always think about those people in my heart.
Kim, Young Soon
Interviewed by AIMS Korea
June 2009
