I am past 50 now. I've never heard about human rights in North Korea at all. No one in North Korea knows what human rights are.
Once we arrived in South Korea, I went through their education process and integrated with the Korean society. Of course I tried to hide the fact that I was in a political prisoners camp.
Recently there was an attack by North Korea on a South Korean warship and on a South Korean island, and we now see that there is a need for South Koreans to know better what is actually happening in North Korea. I think the countries of the world also need to know just what atrocities are happening in North Korea as it tries to successfully bring about the third generation of its regime.
As I mentioned, I still have some siblings in the prison camps there, and I cannot expose my actual identity publicly, but I hope that as I tell people about the situation in North Korea, how the North Korean government is treating its own people as enemies and punishing them in such horrific ways.... I think it is my duty to tell more people about what North Korea is actually doing to its people.
I come before the Parliament of Canada and the Government of Canada because what I really would like to do is say that all the rice and all the support you send to North Korea never goes to the people anyway. All the feed material you send for the animals--well, that goes to the people. Feed for animals and cows goes to the North Korean people.
When working in a South Korean restaurant, I saw all the food scraps that were coming out of the restaurant, and I thought if these food scraps were sent to North Korea then those would get to the North Korean people. In the wintertime it's terribly cold in North Korea, and there is absolutely nothing to eat. I am sure there are even more bodies all across the country in North Korea than I saw when I was there.
I just hope that through my testimony here I can help out the people in North Korea in any small way that I can.
Once again, I tell you that feed you send for cattle and for horses and chickens is what gets to the North Korean people when you provide that support to North Korea. You need something in your belly to survive, so I think food support is probably the most important, but we need to remember what kind of food actually reaches the North Koreans.