US, NK spar over defector’s confessions
North Korea and the United States are at odds over testimony provided by a defector-turned-activist who recently admitted that there are inaccuracies in a best-selling book about his life in the regime’s gulags.
Pyongyang cast doubt on the credibility of “Escape from Camp 14” which was written by American journalist Blaine Harden and published in 2012. It was based on the accounts of Shin Dong-hyuk. He is believed to be the only person born and raised in a North Korean prison camp complex before escaping to freedom.
The reclusive state also demanded that the United Nations annul its 2014 resolution against the North Korean regime for state-perpetrated violations of human rights. It said that the U.N. took Shin’s “false account” into consideration when passing what it claimed was a “U.S-imposed resolution.”
The U.S. stood by Shin, saying that “more than ample evidence” exists about Pyongyang’s crimes against humanity.
On Tuesday, Pyongyang’s Association for Human Rights Studies (AHRS) said the U.N. should annul last year’s resolution that asked the U.N. Security Council to refer North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to the International Criminal Court.
The U.N General Assembly’s Human Rights Committee adopted the resolution in November. The General Assembly then approved it in December.
The resolution was based on the U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI)’s report on Pyongyang’s dire human rights record. The report accused the repressive regime of running political prison camps where up to 120,000 people are thought to be detained.
“The U.N. resolution should be voided immediately, and the U.S. as well as other members of the inter- national community should correct it,” the AHRS said in a statement carried by Pyongyang’s state-controlled Korean Central News Agency. “We also ask Shin to fully confess what was behind his lies. Otherwise we’ll unveil every detail about his crimes.”
On Jan 16, Shin confessed to Harden, the author of “Escape from Camp 14,” that he altered some details about his life story.
According to Shin, he spent part of his youth at Camp 18 instead of Camp 14. He initially testified he was born at Camp 14 in 1982 and spent his entire North Korean life before fleeing for freedom in 2005.
Since then, he moved around a few countries, including the U.S. He now lives in Seoul.
Shin also admitted he was tortured at age 20, not 13, as punishment for a failed attempt to escape the gulag in 2002.
“I didn’t want to tell exactly what happened in order not to relive these painful moments all over again,” he told Harden.
Shin also said on a Facebook page that he did not realize that the extent to which these details mattered, and asked forgiveness.
“This report should not distract from the issue at hand, which is the DPRK’s deplorable human rights situation, for which more than ample evidence exists,” a U.S. Department of State official told the Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity in an e-mail interview, Tuesday. The official referred to North Korea by the acronym of its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
“The U.N. COI report clearly found that there are ongoing, ‘systematic, widespread, and gross’ human rights violations in the DPRK, citing hundreds of interviews with victims and other witnesses.”
“Escape from Camp 14,” was a New York Times and international bestseller. It has been translated into 27 languages.
The book won the 2012 Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique, a French literary award.
It was also featured on “60 Minutes,” an investigative news magazine program produced by CBS, a U.S. television network.