There have been cases of violence from North Korean sources reported in South Korea; however, that is not the source of the problem. The source of the problem is that if families can be linked to people who are friendly to the Republic of Korea, it is definitely not a good development from the point of view of the family left in North Korea. Keep in mind that the border is a completely artificial line placed arbitrarily along the parallel in the Korean peninsula, and families have been separated and have been unable to make contact with each other.
We were under instructions from the United Nations to first do no harm; therefore, we interviewed about 300 witnesses before we had to cut off the number of witnesses. We reached a conclusion that of the 300, about 80 could safely be interviewed in public. Even some who wanted to be interviewed in public we did not interview in public, because we wanted to protect the families. Nonetheless, some had already been open about their engagement with the human rights movement, and some we judged not to have a family that would be at any risk in the north. That was the caution we observed. We were very strict on this, and that was our mandate. It was what was required anyway in fair dealing with the people who came before us.
But we had no difficulty getting witnesses. It's very important to say that there was no problem getting evidence. You may have seen in the media one witness, Mr. Shin Dong-hyuk, who retracted part of his testimony. North Korea made a great fuss about this. As a judge of 34 years, I know that sometimes people overstate their case and overstate their testimony. The fact is that much of Mr. Shin's testimony is strongly corroborated by other witnesses. The part that he gave relating to his escape from a particular camp—Camp 14, a higher-security camp—has to be excised from our reasoning. But even when that is done, there is so much overwhelming and acceptable evidence from other witnesses, and still believable and acceptable evidence from Mr. Shin himself, that adds to the full picture of oppression, hostility, and cruelty of the totalitarian regime that has been established for 70 years in North Korea.