Scene from video of forced labor brigade smuggled out of North Korea./Yonhap
Rumors are going around that a video tape of a public execution carried out earlier this year in the Sino-Korean border town of Hoeryong was smuggled out of the country, according to Yonhap.
Apparently, among the “brokers” who deal in this sort of stuff, there is fierce competition to get their hands on an execution video. Along with video footage of nuclear facilities, missile bases and political prisons, execution footage is considered a “jackpot” that could earn a king’s ransom for anyone lucky enough to get a hold of it. Videos from North Korea are usually sold to Japanese broadcast companies.
Local groups with an interest in the North Korean human rights issue are also putting out feelers for the tape, believing that if such a tape were made public, it would deal a fatal blow to North Korea, which is coming under world pressure for its human rights abuses.
While he was in Korea in December, the Hudson Institute’s Michael Horowitz said a project had begun to obtain film footage of the terrible conditions inside North Korean political prison camps, and that the moment one such tape was made public, the regime of Kim Jong-il would collapse (Marmot’s note: I’m not a huge Horowitz fan — see here and here).
The rumors of the public execution video, however, pertain to recent crackdowns along the Sino-Korean border region (see English-language piece here, via Da’ Chosun) during which North Korean security forces and police rounded up enemies of the people, particularly in the town of Hoeryong. During the course of the crackdown, public trials followed by equally public executions by firing squad are said to have taken place.
Among defectors and human rights groups, there was talk as well of mass executions at around the same time of North Koreans who were repatriated after failed defection attempts in China.
Internet radio station Free NK Radio reported on March 3 that on Feb. 28, two individuals were publicly executed in a farmer’s market in Hoeryong after they were found guilty of human trafficking. They were accused of having sold North Korean women to China.
The existence of the execution video has yet to be confirmed, however. One official from a local North Korean human rights group said he’d heard talk that someone had acquired the video, but his inquiries into the rumors failed to confirm its existence. An official from a defectors’ group said he understood that a tape showing not an execution, but criminals sentenced to prison and death being transported to Pyongyang after a public trial would soon be broadcast on Japanese TV.
12 Comments
I watched Horowitz speak on C-Span when he returned from Seoul. The title was something about no Christmas for Kim Jong-il or something that didn’t really pertain to anything but the season and the country he was talking about. In fact he even had to explain why that was his title at one point because no one got it. I e-mailed the Hudson to see if I could get a copy of the transcripts because he took the Korean consulate representative to task and it made me laugh. However his conclusions and assertions just made me shake my head in disbelief. Sometimes the “experts” know so very little. I think me and the high school kids down the street that play Mercenaries might do better work for the Hudson than some of their experts.
Now the question that these human rights and defector groups need to do some soul-searching on is what is the lesser of two evils: death penalty or human trafficking?
I say this with the tired contempt of age: “The World” ain’t gonna squat even if there are videos of the executions released. The same “World” didn’t care when Mugabe took over, or Saddam gassed the Kurds. I really wish there would be a ground swell of support for the poor souls in the North….but it just won’t happen.
Mark - Just to clarify: Trafficking folks out of NK is OK. Trafficking folks out of Mexico (and into the USA) is not OK. We all agree, the NK runners are dealing in a dark business, but everyone needs to eat (which the runners are most aware of).
You can easily find graphic photos of executions being carried out in China, and this has done nothing to hurt them internationally. Why should one video from the DPRK be so dangerous?
Gotta agree with Scott in Japan. Despite the “never again” rhetoric I heard a lot back in high school whenever the Holocaust came up, the world has shown its willingness to sit back and watch whenever atrocities are commited on an epic scale.
Even America, so the so-called leader of the free world, is willing to sit down with the nork monsters and work out a deal… sickening.
Agree with others here. Such videos will mean nothing to the International community. NK can easily explain away the videos, saying the victims were common criminals. Despite what Europe would have you believe, most of the world does allow executions.
I do find it interesting, however, that there are rankings of what types of videos from NK are considered “gold mine” and the like. Seems to show an active community of people trying to get info out.
tangent - What I find interesting is the *extensive* ‘network’ of folks in place to smuggle all of this stuff. When the badness ends, I want to hear the stories of the black market folks who smuggled/survived in NK.
i think its more an issue of what the internation community chooses to make of it. I don’t think the videos will make any difference if the int’l community doesn’t want to do anything, but if they are already in the sights of the US or maybe the EU, then it could be all the justification thats needed for further action.
agree with mark, the more pictures i see of human traffickers (women across borders) being executed will be more evidence of what good in the world there is.
Kim Jong-il getting the Samuel K Doe (Liberia) treatment — now THAT’S a snuff film I’d pay to see!
Solved or not this issue will never go away and will always be news worthy.
Even if things did work out fot the best on the Korean penninsula and thew norks and the sorks became one again, it would be just as bad.
Thousands of Sorks exploiting their fellow brothers to get rich quick.
I hope that the video will be smuggled eventually. Nevertheless I would not overestimate its impact on the public opinion. The current indifference of South Koreans is not based solely on some ideological manipulations or lack of proper information about the North (both are present, of course). Far more important are their own vested interests. South Koreans have good reasons to worry about the impact the NK transformation will have on their life standard and income. And, you know, humans are always good at looking other way if admitting something contradicts their financial interests or makes them choice between material benefits and sense of moral righteousness.