Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2014

[Sungju Lee]

For me, it actually doesn't matter. I can live in a Korean community; I can live in a Canadian community. It doesn't matter. It's been three months that I've been here. One thing is that I feel really safe. I don't know why. Compared to South Korea I feel really safe.

Also, Mr. Devolin mentioned that there is an English program. I went to school for only a month. The first day we had to share our name and the hometown we left in North Korea. That's really risky information, but they are all North Korean friends. I thought, “This is not a good idea”, so that's why I quit the school.

Also, the school program didn't go well, actually.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Do I still have one minute?

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Please be very brief.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

When the Vietnamese boat people came a number of years ago to Canada, we employed a young Vietnamese lad. This is a follow-up to my previous question. He was sponsored by a church group in our area, and he was a tremendous young fellow. However, all of a sudden, he left and went to Toronto to be in the Vietnamese community. I had hoped he would become part of the fabric of our community.

That's what I hope, when people want to come to Canada they want to come to Canada to be Canadians, to enjoy our quality of life, and not to try to import what they left into Canada. It's just a statement.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

I think that was meant more as a statement than a question.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Yes. It's more of a statement than a question.

Welcome. I hope you stay here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

All right.

I have a question before we go to our last member of Parliament, Mr. Benskin. I found the three-generations policy confusing. I haven't done a very exhaustive search in my device, was trying to find a Wikipedia article on it. This appears to be the one subject in the entire universe on which there is not a Wikipedia article, at least not one that I could find.

Just so we understand it clearly, because this is clearly the human rights issue, the punishment of innocent family members back in North Korea and the pursuit of evidence that can lead to this.... I thought it was your generation, as in brothers and sisters, your parents' generation, your children's generation—one, two, three—but I gather that I am misunderstanding it.

What exactly is it? Is it effectively a lottery where they pick among those cohorts and punish some and not others, or do they pick up everybody they can find? What are the parameters of this policy?

[Sungju Lee]

I'm in the centre, and then it goes up two or three generations and down three generations. So it could be my father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather, and then my son, my grandson, and his son. That's three whole generations, so in total it's six generations actually. So they clean their family.

Then they have every record. If I want to be a military officer or public officer or public servant, they check my record. If there is any problem in my record in up to the six or seven generations, if my great-grandparents or parents have made a mistake for the country, then I cannot be a public servant or military officer. Even if I did a really great job for me and for my life and I didn't make any mistakes for the country or any political errors for the country, I cannot be a public servant. That's a huge thing. So they cannot do a job. That's a huge thing.

I'm really happy here because I can choose my dream; I can choose my job; I can choose the place where I want to go. That's freedom, I think.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you.

[Randall Baran-Chong]

The one thing I'll add is that actually there's a magnitude element as well, depending on how high-ranking you are. For example, following the defection by Mr. Hwang, who I mentioned who was very high up in the North Korean regime, allegedly 800 people were executed as a result. So it was not only family members but also people who were within his inner circle and those who, it was believed, should have known about or suspected or might have been informed about his decision to defect. So it's really about eliminating what the regime would view as almost a tainted circle around someone. It really depends on who the person is as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you.

Mr. Benskin, I apologize for taking a bit of your time, but you'll have it now.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you. You also took part of my question too, but that's okay.

I understood your explanation and what you were saying, but just as you were clarifying it my palms started to sweat. This three-generation punishment is probably one of the most insidious weapons I have ever heard of. The fact that we couldn't even find something, or our chair couldn't even find anything in Wikipedia, which has information on almost everything, shows how insidious this is. Really so little is known about the goings-on in North Korea.

I first want to congratulate you and applaud you for your courage at such a young age in finding your way out and in coming here to share your testimony.

I put this out to both of you. You're looking at this in a Canadian context, and I understand that. As far as the international community is concerned, what are other countries doing? Are other countries, such as the U.K. or Australia, moving forward in any way? Are they being approached in any way to help with the situation in resettling North Korean escapees?

[Randall Baran-Chong]

As I mentioned, 90% of the North Korean defectors who go to South Korea—that is, the vast majority of North Koreans who end up defecting—end up in Thailand. The only two countries that have policies related to resettling North Korean refugees from Thailand are the United States and South Korea. The other countries may deal with them on an inland claim basis, but they don't have any explicit policy for resettlement in Thailand.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Okay.

As far as settling North Koreans here in Canada goes—and I guess this echoes one of the questions my colleagues asked—Mr. Lee, you were talking about the situation or relationship between South Koreans and North Koreans. The more I hear the more I begin to understand the dynamics of that. What makes the Canadian Korean community different, for lack of a better way of putting it, from the South Korean community, in terms of their openness and willingness to sponsor North Koreans into Canada?

[Sungju Lee]

For South Koreans, North Korea is next door. Now, unfortunately, the generation in their twenties in South Korea thinks of North Korean people as people from other countries, as members of a foreign country, but the older generations have the feeling that they are our family, our brothers and sisters.

For me, after I came to Canada, I met so many Korean Canadians and their parents. Their parents said that both South Koreans and North Koreans are their brothers. They don't have this feeling that South Koreans have towards North Korea.

Also, I met Korean Canadians who were born here. There were educated by their family. They think that South Koreans and North Koreans are the same, are friends, but this story is going to be different in South Korea. South Koreans think like this: “Sometimes the North Koreans attack us, they shoot missiles, and they test nuclear weapons, so why do we have to help them? Why do we have to help prepare unification?” That's their regular thinking, actually.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

You mentioned this before. This is following up the question of my colleague Professor Cotler on the ways in which we in Canada or outside of South Korea can help undermine, for lack of a better way of putting it, the propaganda of North Korea.

You were mentioning the fact that DVDs are smuggled in or that information is brought in on thumb drives and so forth. I come from the world of the arts, so for me it's great to hear that the arts are helping to change people's minds in a place like North Korea. How is this getting in? This is a fairly new thing. How is that access to information happening and how can that be supported and increased?

[Randall Baran-Chong]

The way that it typically enters the country is either through a kind of illegal cross-border trade or through organizations that have relationships with suppliers in China who have access to North Korea. They're infiltrated with shipments that come from China, and through that they're distributed through their own networks across North Korea.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

To follow up on that, is there any resistance from the Chinese government in terms of letting that information cross their borders into North Korea?

[Sungju Lee]

There is smuggling in North Korea between North Korea and South Korea and between North Korea and China. That's a huge market. When I was in North Korea and of course here now.... China's government cannot control the smuggling. Also, both Korean governments cannot control it. That's really underground.

Also, North Koreans are demanding information from the world outside North Korea. People require the information, especially merchants, who want to know the trends. They want to know about the outside world. They try to make money with that information, so they are growing right now. My answer is that the Chinese government and the North Korean government cannot control this smuggling.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

I would assume that there are penalties. For example, there was story you gave about the woman who saw the video of a soap opera, I think it was, and wanted a dress made. When that kind of thing happens and somebody gets caught, are there penalties for that?

[Sungju Lee]

That's really dangerous. Usually, North Koreans are of two minds. Officially they pretend to respect the government. They pretend to be good. But they try to make their interests.... The policemen and the police state of course try to keep finding those people who are watching soap operas, but ironically, the policemen are watching the soap operas, because it's really fun. It's really interesting. It's really nice. They love to watch.

Usually North Korean defectors who live in South Korea try to send money to North Korea to support their families. They sometimes make phone calls to their families. Their families are using Chinese cellphones near the border. They can make phone calls and ask what's going on these days. The families say, “We are watching South Korean movies.” That's really quite shocking, actually. North Korea's really changing right now. It's really changing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you very much, Mr. Benskin. I let you go over the time by a considerable amount.

I have one last thing to say before we excuse our witnesses. In discussions with Mr. Devolin before this meeting, he mentioned something to me that would not have occurred to me. I had assumed incorrectly, based on a lack of knowledge, that Korea was a very culturally homogenous place, where everybody is, to some degree, interchangeable. He pointed out that there exist, among other things, regional accents, meaning that people from the north who go to the south can be immediately distinguished just by the way they talk. Is that a correct assumption?

[Sungju Lee]

Usually North Korean refugees in South Korea are found out by their accent and appearance.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Does that have any impact on their acceptance, their ability to fit into South Korean society?

[Sungju Lee]

Of course. As soon as South Koreans know that this guy is a North Korean refugee, they think he's not smart, that he's passive, that he's not responsible. I mentioned the prejudice. These things affect their ability to get a job.

Actually, I have experience of this. When I got to South Korea, I wanted to work at a gas station. Of course, at that time I had a North Korean accent. I had an interview, and he asked me my name. I gave him my name and then he didn't ask me any questions, because he knew that I was a North Korean refugee because of my strong North Korean accent.