Amnesty International Report 1995 - North Korea

KOREA

(DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF)

New information emerged about dozens of political prisoners, including possible prisoners of conscience, but it remained unconfirmed. However, the authorities provided information on several political prisoners, including a prisoner of conscience. The death penalty remained in force for many offences.

The death of President Kim Il Sung in July led to widespread public manifestations of mourning across the country, and to the cancellation of a summit meeting with the President of the Republic of Korea (South Korea). The principle of that meeting had been agreed in June during negotiations between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the USA to resolve differences over the nuclear program of the DPRK. An agreement on that issue, involving modifications in the DPRK's nuclear program and the provision of international financing for some of its energy needs, was signed in October.

The positions held by President Kim Il Sung until his death, including those of President of the DPRK and General Secretary of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), were still vacant at the end of the year. However, his son Kim Jong Il, Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army and a member of the WPK Presidium, was frequently referred to in the official press as the main leader following the death of his father.

An unknown number, believed to be many hundreds, of political prisoners were held in unacknowledged detention. Information about their cases was extremely difficult to obtain and verify. New information emerged about some political prisoners and possible prisoners of conscience, but could not be confirmed. Kim Duk Hwan, an engineer, was detained in late 1961 or early 1962 in Sinyang District, about 100 kilometres north of Pyongyang, apparently because he had studied in the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1957, and had married a Soviet citizen. His detention was apparently related to the deterioration of Soviet-Korean relations in the early 1960s. His family in the Soviet Union had last heard from him in 1966. Amnesty International believed that, if still detained, Kim Duk Hwan was a prisoner of conscience.

New information also emerged about dozens of political prisoners reported to have been detained without trial, sometimes for decades, and to have been held in 1990 in Sungho village, east of Pyongyang. They included Li Ra Yong, an historian who had not been heard of since the 1960s, and over 20 Koreans who had formerly lived in Japan. There were unconfirmed reports that the detention centre in Sungho had been closed following the transfer of the prisoners.

In June the government acknowledged that Shibata Kozo, a Japanese national who had resettled in the DPRK in 1960, had been sentenced, under the Korean name of Kim Ho Nam, to 20 years' imprisonment in 1964 on espionage charges. Amnesty International believed him to be a prisoner of conscience (see Amnesty International Report 1994). The authorities stated that he was tried and given an additional six-year prison sentence for "instigating other prisoners to commit an anti-state plot" and that he died with his whole family in a train accident in March 1990, three months after his release. This official account was not consistent with Amnesty International's information. According to unofficial sources, Shibata Kozo was unaware of the reason for his supplementary six-year sentence and did not receive a formal trial.

The authorities also provided further information on other reported political prisoners. They stated that Shin Sook Ja and her daughters, who were reported to have been detained in 1987 after Shin Sook Ja's husband sought political asylum abroad, were not detained and were living in the capital, Pyongyang. Amnesty International was unable to confirm this during the year.

The death penalty remained mandatory under the Criminal Law for a number of political offences, and an optional punishment for certain violent crimes. No executions were officially reported, although unofficial reports received in earlier years suggested that several executions take place every year, some of them in public. An official source indicated to Amnesty International in August that in recent years two people had been sentenced to death and executed, including a man accused of murder in 1992 (see Amnesty International Report 1994). There was no information about the other reported case. Unofficial sources alleged that people accused of economic offences such as smuggling had been summarily executed during 1994 in areas close to the border with China, but there was no confirmation of these allegations.

In June Amnesty International published a report, North Korea: New Information about Political Prisoners, in which it detailed the cases of two reported political prisoners, and listed the names of 49 others. In another report in September, the organization detailed its continuing concerns about the case of Shibata Kozo. In meetings with representatives of the DPRK in August, and in letters to the authorities throughout the year, Amnesty International sought further information about these cases, including that of Kim Duk Hwan, but received no response. It did, however, receive some information from the DPRK authorities about reported prisoners it had named in a report in October 1993 (see Amnesty International Report 1994 and above).