Item 12: Integration of the human rights of women and the gender perspective
(a) Violence against women

Madam Chairperson,

My name is Mme. Hae Young LEE, speaking on behalf of A Woman's Voice International. The comparatively larger number of North Korean escapees recently granted asylum in the Republic of Korea has greatly increased the information now available on the human rights situation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Today I bring to the attention of the UN Commission on Human Rights repressive practices in North Korean political detention facilities: severe violations, simultaneously, of the rights of women and the rights of the child. These practices include the detention of women and children imprisoned through guilt-by-association in the kwanliso political prison-labor colonies who are often imprisoned for life because of the presumed offenses of their husbands or fathers, who themselves have been denied any judicial process before being sent to political prison-labor colonies, where rates of deaths-in-detention are abnormally high. These practices include the brutal mistreatment of prisoners in the kyohwaso prison-labor facility for women at Kaechon in South Pyong-an Province.

Madam Chairperson,

And these repressive practices include, perhaps worst of all, forced abortions and ethnic infanticide against pregnant women repatriated from China to North Korea. In the last nine months, I have interviewed eight former North Korean detainees recently granted asylum in South Korea who personally witnessed forced abortions and infanticide in the Bowibu and Boanseong kuryujang police stations, jipkyulso detention centers, and rodong danryeondae labor training camps at Sinuiju, Chongjin, Onsung and Nampo. These inhumane practices are carried out because it is suspected that these Korean women were made pregnant by Han Chinese men while these women were in China desperately looking for food or work.

Madam Chairperson,

It is imperative - indeed, long overdue - that the UN Commission on Human Rights take note of the persistent patterns of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights in the D.P.R.K. And that the Commission initiate a constructive dialogue between North Korean authorities and High Commissioner for Human Rights and the thematic procedural mechanisms responsible to the Commission. We urge the Commission Members to support the resolution on North Korea.

I thank the Commission for its consideration and support.