Dozens of North Kor | World news

The TJWG report details the enforced disappearances of North Koreans

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80% of the disappearances took place in North Korea, the rest in China or Russia

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The UN estimates that around 200,000 people are being held in MSS-run gulags

By Hyonhee Shin

SEOUL, – More than a hundred North Koreans are missing after being captured by secret police while trying to leave the isolated country or even call relatives in South Korea, a Seoul-based human rights group said Thursday.

The Transitional Justice Working Group released a report detailing patterns of enforced disappearances based on its research, based on interviews with 62 North Korean refugees in South Korea.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans have defected in the decades since the Korean War ended with a 1953 ceasefire, with many of those captured or repatriated sent to prison camps or other detention centers before being released.

The group identified 113 people in 66 disappearance cases, including those in an archive managed jointly with other international organizations, as well as maps of transmission routes.

Of the 113, 80%, or 90, were arrested in North Korea and the rest in China or Russia, with about 30% disappearing since leader Kim Jong Un came to power in late 2011.

Nearly 40% of them went missing after being caught trying to flee the country, while 26% took responsibility for another family member’s crime. Nearly 9% were accused of having contact with people in South Korea or other countries.

More than 81% disappeared after being transferred to and held by the Ministry of State Security, the North’s secret police known as “bowibu”, the report said.

An interviewee who defected south from the Chinese border town of Hyesan in 2018 said his friend was arrested by the MSS while trying to recover a Chinese mobile phone hidden in the mountains, and that there were now rumors that he had died.

“Once any call records with South Korea are found, they will be considered serious violations,” the interviewee said in the report.

Kang Jeong-hyun, director of the project, said the report aimed to highlight the enforced disappearances committed by the Kim regime as transnational crimes also involving China and Russia.

The report was published just days before the UN Human Rights Council was due to release its five-yearly Universal Periodic Review on North Korea.

The United Nations estimates that some 200,000 people are being held in a vast network of gulags run by the MSS, many for political reasons. A 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry report said prisoners suffered torture, rape, forced labor, starvation and other inhumane treatment.

Pyongyang has long labeled defectors “human scum,” and Kim has further tightened border controls in recent years.

North Korea’s Association for Human Rights Studies this month rejected a UN report on human rights abuses including enforced disappearances, calling it “fabrications” and a conspiracy by the West to escalate the confrontation and damage the country’s image.

Beijing has denied there are North Korean defectors in China, instead describing them as illegal economic migrants.

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