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Jay Lefkowitz, Special Envoy on Human Rights in North Korea, discusses the current human rights situation in North Korea with regard to human trafficking, systematic starvation, concentration camps, and refugees. He also tackles the relationship between North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and human rights, and how the United States works with other countries on these difficult issues.
TRANSCRIPT:
NARRATOR: Welcome to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Your host is Jerry Fowler, Director of the Museum’s Committee on Conscience.
JERRY FOWLER: Our guest today is Jay Lefkowitz, Special Envoy on Human Rights in North Korea. He was appointed to that position by President Bush in August of 2005. Previously he served as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and General Counsel in the Office of Management and Budget. Jay, welcome to the program.
JAY LEFKOWITZ: Thank you very much.
JERRY FOWLER: Jay, let me ask you first, this has been an Administration that has been reluctant to appoint special envoys. Why is there a special envoy for human rights in North Korea?
JAY LEFKOWITZ: First of all, I think we have had several special envoys in this Administration. We had a special envoy for Northern Envoy; we had a special envoy to the Middle East quartet process; we have, I think, have had actually several special envoys—John Danforth served as special envoy to Sudan. I think we have had a fair number. I have never bothered to compare how our number of special envoys fits with other Administrations’. I think the current special envoy position that I am filling came about because both the Congress—really unanimously—and the President felt that the situation in North Korea and the North Korean regimes’ atrocious human rights record really cried out for more spotlight, more focus in the international community, and Congress passed—almost two years ago now—the North Korean Human Rights Act, and then the President asked me to fill the role of Special Envoy.
JERRY FOWLER: In a minute, I would like to go into some of the things that you are doing to help raise the profile of the problem of human rights, but can you give us a thumbnail sketch—my impression is that North Korea is probably one of the most abusive governments on the face of the earth, but what are the details?
JAY LEFKOWITZ: Freedom House reports that North Korea is probably the least free nation in the world, and that is really a tremendous badge of dishonor. It is a regime that engages in human trafficking, systematic starvation of its own population, incarceration of tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people in concentration camps for all sorts of things that they allege are political crimes—basically any type of free thinking, free exercise of religion can end up causing someone to be sent to a concentration camp where prisoners are tortured and sometimes executed. It is really a tremendously dark regime.
JERRY FOWLER: Let’s unpack some of those things that you just referenced. Human trafficking, when you say that the regime engages in human trafficking, what do you mean?
JAY LEFKOWITZ: I mean they have abducted people from countries all over the world—I think close to twenty countries have reported citizens that have literally been abducted by the North Koreans. Probably the most celebrated cases are a group of Japanese families who have literally lost loved ones, young children who over the years, have been walking home from school who have been abducted by North Korean agents, and we know this in part because the North Korean government, a few years ago, actually acknowledged having engaged in this really heinous activity. They are also, obviously, involved right now, and it has been widely reported in the press over the last several months that the North Korean regime has actually been involved in counterfeiting United States currency which is something that has not occurred on the international scene since Nazi Germany. It is really a regime that just does not abide by any international standards, international norms, and I think it is no accident that a country that treats its own citizens so terribly is also posing a threat right now to the rest of the world.
JERRY FOWLER: Before we get to some of that other threat, you mentioned systematic starvation, and I know that actually one of your former colleagues in the government, Andrew Natsios wrote a book about the Great North Korean Famine a few years ago, but could you amplify a little bit on the use of starvation?
JAY LEFKOWITZ: Autocratic regimes often find that keeping their population with a substandard diet helps just in terms of overall denigration of the population, a little bit of thought control, more passive behavior, and North Korea has been plagued by legitimate, serious famines time and time again in its history, and most recently there was a significant famine in the mid to late nineties, but the North Korean government, through its own food distribution policies, basically used food as a weapon internally and frankly, even when the international community stepped up to the plate to provide significant humanitarian assistance in terms of food aid, and the United States has been an enormous provider over the last ten or fifteen years of food aid to North Korean, they often have diverted that food aid so that does not actually reach the people who are starving, but rather is diverted for military purposes or sold on the black market for hard currency, again for military uses.
JERRY FOWLER: When they do that, are the people who suffer from that, targets in and of themselves, or is it that they just do not care about the people who suffer and they want to use the resources as you say for other purposes, particularly the military.
JAY LEFKOWITZ: It is hard to really know for sure, although there certainly does not appear to be any great consideration given to the North Korean people by the North Korean regime.
JERRY FOWLER: The other thing that you mentioned was concentration camps, and I think many people may have read of the fact that there are large camps in North Korea, but what is the scale we are talking about? What number of North Koreans would be in camps at any given time?
JAY LEFKOWITZ: Again, it is hard to really know for sure because we have so little information, hard information, about what is going on in North Korea. Obviously, they do not allow international organizations like the Red Cross or UNICEF to go and do these types of inspections. Based on information we get from defectors who have been able to escape and get out, there could be hundreds of thousands of people in these concentration camps, but we do not really know. There have been some memoirs written, a prominent one which has received quite a bit of attention is a book called “The Aquariums of Pyongyang,” which tells the story of an individual and his family who were sent to one of these concentration camps and really suffered tremendously.
JERRY FOWLER: To the extent that we know—and as you say one challenge you have is that you have a society that is almost completely cut off—do people go to concentration camps, are they sent to concentration camps for set terms and then released? Or, basically, once you are sent there, you are there until you die?
JAY LEFKOWITZ: No, it is not so much that you are generally sent for a set term. You are sent and then sometimes you are just released. Every year, on Kim Jong Il’s birthday, they sometimes release some prisoners, but there seems to be no rhyme or rhythm to it, to when people will be released or not, and obviously there are different types of prison camps in this network. Some of them are more severe than others, but all of them really imbibe a complete lack of freedom, freedom of movement, freedom of worship, and the ability to have any interaction whatsoever with the outside world.
JERRY FOWLER: You referred earlier to the threat that North Korea poses to the rest of the world, and we are recording this on June 20th when what is in the news is perhaps the looming test of long-range missile that could even reach the coast of the United States, and of course the North Korean nuclear program has been a major issue. How do human rights fit into the overall approach to North Korea by the United States and by other countries? Is there a danger that it gets—as dire as these human rights issues are—get pushed to the side, and more of the focus is on these basic security concerns?
JAY LEFKOWITZ: I think at least under the guidance of President Bush and Secretary Rice, human rights issues have very much been at the forefront and are really an integral part of any security dialogue. There is no question that there are some people who would argue that we should really not focus on human rights of another country simple because we have no business worrying about what takes place in another country. There are other people who suggest that we should engage in human rights but only when there is no cost in terms of distracting a dialogue on other issues like nuclear weapons, but this Administration, I think quite properly, recognizes that a nation that does not respect the rights of its own people will not respect its neighbors and that there is a direct link between security and human rights. We certainly saw during the Cold War that there was not only a direct relationship between human rights and security concerns, but that when the international community, through the Helsinki process, began to focus at the highest levels of international dialogue on human rights violations in the Soviet Union that there was a direct relationship in the security dialogue as well. I think that there is an important relationship between the two, and I think we want to make progress, obviously, on the security front, but we also want to make progress on the human rights front, and the two can really go hand in hand.
JERRY FOWLER: Let me push on that because it seems difficult to deal with North Korea under any circumstances, but if North Korea started to show signs of making concessions or changing its behavior with regard to the production of nuclear weapons and the production of missiles that could deliver them, but held its ground on improving the human rights situation, the United States government would be hard pressed not to move forward on the security issues.
JAY LEFKOWITZ: Likewise, if North Korea were to significantly improve its human rights record, we would be hard pressed not to move forward in human rights areas, but that does not mean that we would not be satisfied. In other words, we are demanding and expecting movement in both areas, and they are really both tied together because ultimately a promise by North Korea to take some action vis-à-vis a security issue is not really worth the paper it is written on unless the regime’s behavior changes, and one of the best ways to measure whether a regime is accountable, whether any nation is accountable, is by looking at its human rights record. I think that they are really integrally related. You cannot really disaggregate the two.
JERRY FOWLER: You are talking about the United States approach and the Bush Administration approach. Of course in dealing with North Korea, as I understand it, one of the fundamental tenants of United States policy has been to engage in multiparty talks, and not engage the North Koreans one on one, and the other countries engaged in these talks include China, Japan, South Korea—help me out here.
JAY LEFKOWITZ: Russia.
JERRY FOWLER: Russia. Particularly China and Russia are not countries that are known for pushing human rights as an issue. How do you relate to these other members of the six party talks?
JAY LEFKOWITZ: We have had an increasingly broad coalition on addressing the issue of human rights in North Korea. At the General Assembly at the United Nations last fall, there was a resolution that had very, very strong support led by both the Japanese and the European community which passed eighty-eight to twenty-one in favor of a strong condemnation of North Korea’s human rights record, and I would expect another strong resolution this fall. Both China and South Korea, I think, have strong desires to see peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. I am not sure that China, for example, shares the same interest in human rights issues as we do. Indeed, I think China has been a serious impediment to human rights progress in the region, in fact, in particular, with respect to North Korea; China has a really atrocious record of sending North Korean refugees who have really risked their lives escaping from North Korea and have made it into Northeastern China, China has actually sent many of these people back to North Korea where they have faced certain punishment and sometimes execution. We have been very clear, and President Bush has been very clear, in calling on the Chinese government and really raising this directly with the Chinese president that they have to abide by their own international commitments to which they have described. We do not always see eye to eye on human rights issues with all of the countries in the region, but I think on balance, we have got a pretty strong and growing international consensus here.
JERRY FOWLER: I wanted to explore the issue that you just raised about the presence of North Koreans in China and the fact that the Chinese have returned people, and when they return they are subject to persecution for having left the country “illegally,” so they are in international law, refugees because they are subject to persecution when they return. One issue, as you said, is that the Chinese are forcing them back in some cases, but another issue as I understand it, is that the South Koreans are not anxious to give refuge to these North Koreans. First, am I correct in that? Second, why would that be?
JAY LEFKOWITZ: No, I am not sure you are correct about that actually. The South Koreans have taken several thousand refugees from North Korea. They have also been very helpful to the United States as we have started taken North Korean refugees as well. Indeed, just a few days ago, I guess yesterday, Foreign Minister, Ban Ki-moon of South Korea said that the government of South Korea is very concerned about the human rights situation in North Korea and urged North Korea to enter into a dialogue with the international community about human rights, and he made these statements at the meeting of the Human Rights Council in Geneva. I certainly support and really applaud him for engaging in this way, and I think that although there have been certain issues on which all of the parties in the region have had their own respective views on, I think on balance South Korea has articulated an important objective here.
JERRY FOWLER: Let me ask, if South Korea is willing to take people who have fled North Korea, then why doesn’t China just allow these North Koreans who are in China to proceed to South Korea? Why do they insist on forcing them back into North Korea?
JAY LEFKOWITZ: I think in part, the Chinese government does not want to encourage a significant flow of refugees out of North Korea. I think they have concerns, obviously, about stability and instability of that regime, which do not necessarily mimic our objectives or interests or the South Koreans. When you are dealing with an international situation like this, every country has its own interests and objectives and sometimes they are overlapping and sometimes they are not. There are obviously some North Koreans who for various reasons might not feel comfortable settling in South Korea, but by in large, on balance, most of the North Koreans share a great deal with South Koreans, and that is the appropriate place, and indeed, South Korea treats and considers all North Koreans to be citizens of South Korea.
JERRY FOWLER: In going about your work, first have you had any opportunity to interact with North Korean officials?
JAY LEFKOWITZ: I have not had any direct interaction with North Korean officials at this point.
JERRY FOWLER: What kind of constitutes your strategy? Is it interacting with representatives of other governments to raise with them the concerns, the types of things we have been talking about?
JAY LEFKOWITZ: I spent a fair amount of time building support within the international community and obviously speaking with counterparts in a number of European and Asian nations. I have spent a great deal of time focusing on the issue of refugees. Over the last year, we have changed the policy in the United States so that we are now able to accept North Korean refugees into the United States.
JERRY FOWLER: Who come from China?
JAY LEFKOWITZ: They come from North Korea. They tend to escape through Northeastern China. That is really the pathway out of North Korea, and I am pleased to say that we have accepted quite recently some North Korean refugees into the United States. Another area where I am spending a great deal of energy is trying to figure out how to increase the amount of broadcasting that we do into North Korea because broadcasting has been an area that the United States has often used to help empower citizens of autocratic regimes. We heard a very, very moving story a few weeks ago when the President held a meeting in the Oval Office with some defectors from North Korea. One of the gentlemen in the room told us that he had been a member of the North Korean military, and it was because of this privileged position in North Korea that he had access to a radio, and one day he was listening on the radio and he heard South Korean radio stations. He listened and he said that it was only then that his eyes were opened to the fact that he really was not living in a Socialist paradise, that there was a whole world out there that was filled with freedom, and it was those radio broadcasts that actually inspired him to escape, defect from the North Korean army and from North Korea, and he is now living in South Korea where he is involved in developing programs to broadcast into North Korea. I think there is a tremendous amount that can be done in this area, and that is obviously something that I am spending a great deal of time on these days.
JERRY FOWLER: We have been speaking with Jay Lefkowitz who is Special Envoy on Human Rights in North Korea. Jay, thanks for taking the time to be with us.
JAY LEFKOWITZ: Sure, thank you very much.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about the Museum’s Committee on Conscience, visit our website at www.committeeonconscience.org.
