Interview with Douglas Shin
By Chosun Journal
May 5, 2001
Please briefly introduce yourself.
I am a Korean-American pastor living in Los Angeles. Over the past two years, I have been part of building underground railroads for NK refugees in China that will help them get to Mongolia and SE Asian countries in order for them to go to South Korea through these countries. We have been able to help about 100 people find freedom and resettle in South Korea through our network of people in China, Mongolia, and Korea since April of 2000.
How did you become involved with human rights for North Korea?
About four years ago, God led me from my work in South Korea to a missionary organization that wanted me to go to NK to help out its famine situation. After I had been to NK twice for relief mission work, God moved my work northward to Northeastern China and I began to help the NK refugees there with different kinds of relief missions. Since about two years ago, He led me even further north to Mongolia to build the underground railroads for the refugees.
What are the biggest human rights issues in North Korea today?
Inside NK, the biggest human rights abuse is the large-scale famine that is heavily rooted in the domestic politics that have gone totally mad. Those millions of NK people that have starved to death over the last five years are the victims, not of bad weather or war, but of crazy ideology called Kim Il Sung-ism. Andrew S. Natsios, former VP of World Vision and current Administrator of USAID, wrote a great deal about it in his special report and upcoming book entitled “The Great North Korean Famine,” once dubbed as “The Politics of Famine.”
Outside NK, there is yet another battlefield where gross abuse of human rights is carried out against the mass that took flight from the hell called NK. These are the NK refugees in China and in Russia. There are about 300,000 of them scattered all over China and Russia.
How should the problems in NK be addressed?
The politics of famine in NK is not an easy one to resolve. We have a double-edged moral dilemma. What we are left with seems to be an impossible choice between two immoral options. The first one is to pay off the extortion scheme as is being done currently by the donor nations. This they do, not only out of purely humanitarian spirit, but also to avoid the possible future political instability in the region that can be caused by the collapse of NK, or even a war that may very well be the last option for the NK leadership pending imminent collapse. This is a quite realistic prognosis in the absence of foreign aid.
Once in a while, the NK leadership makes sure that the world gets the point by launching a crude form of an ICBM and saying it was a ’satellite,’ or by announcing their sovereign right to proliferate the third world with WMD in the name of ‘export.’ The upshot of this choice, however, is not limited to an outcry of immorality in buying out the blackmail, as we can see in the argument for the second option.
The second option is the converse of the first one - abandon the hungry mass in NK until free and unrestricted monitoring is allowed. The argument for this choice is that the foreign aid is being converted to more weapons of mass destruction in the long run by enabling the NK regime to utilize its limited resources for the pursuit of the so-called “military-first” policy, in lieu of feeding its people. Similarly, there is much suspicion that the foreign aid is being used to prop up the bad regime which uses it to reward those loyal to it and maintain the oversized military that they regard essential for the regime’s survival. The marginalized class that is most vulnerable to famine is kept out of the reach of foreign aid and aid workers due to the denial of random access and monitoring of the aid distribution. This has led to a massive exodus of hungry NK refugees into its neighboring countries - mainly into China and sometimes into Russia. Thus the proponents of this choice argue that it is not equal to throwing the baby out with the bath water - the baby dies with or without the bath water. And about the extortion scheme that is called brinkmanship, they don’t seem to give much thought to it.
Obviously, the root of this dilemma is not so much of an external, but an internal matter the solution of which lies in the hands of the NK leadership. It is simply a matter of setting priorities in their domestic policies. As the NK’s official press agrees (see “Why Kim Jong Il Chooses Guns Over Butter” under NK Living in Chosun Journal), NK’s “military-first” policy is deliberately set over the lives of the starving populace because its leadership is concerned about defending their regime more than anything else. Looking out from where they stand, they also seem to understand that their system is about to collapse once they give up their Draconian style of ruling. This means they too have a double-edged dilemma. As Colin Powell puts it, it is “a failed society that has to somehow begin opening if it is not to collapse. Once it’s opened, it may well collapse anyway.”
It is a symmetrical lose-lose situation for both the donor and the donee - a unique variation of a zero sum game. What is different from a typical zero-sum game is that with the current regime in NK, there is to be no real winner instantly no matter which option is chosen. The winner can be produced only when the nature of its current regime is changed, either gradually or abruptly, into a more benevolent, “people-first” regime. Abrupt change is not something that can be realistically achieved by our intervention. The gradual change can be brought about only by a tug of war between its leadership and the outside world, not by shining warm rays onto the stony heart of Kim Jong Il. (I personally think the Sunshine Policy is just what it is taken from - a fable.)
So the situation is not entirely hopeless. What little I know about the NK leadership and the habit of their brinkmanship, I agree with Dr. Norbert Vollertsen’s idea, the German doctor that has appeared frequently on the media these days as the champion of NK human rights. He says that the NK leadership can be tough with soft-hearted philanthropists, but not so with hard-handed mavericks. He suggests that we should be ready to really negotiate a business-like deal with them and wrestle wide-ranging monitoring rights from them. For this, we need to say, “No monitoring, no aid. Period.” The Western world has pumped in enough aid into NK over the past five years to make its leadership quite dependent on foreign aid for its survival. I think it is about time we can say “NO!” with enough leverage. It will work if a majority of donor nations have a common concern for NK human rights. The best way to build up consensus in the Western world is through a media campaign. We have to work hard to have the Western media genuinely and continuously interested in the plight of NK people inside NK and those NK refugees.
If it works out, there will be less conversion of foreign aid to make weaponry or support their military, and the aid will be used not to prop up the bad regime but to change it to a benign, people-oriented regime. And of course, the humanitarian aid will be used to feed the hungriest people as it is intended to, and there will be less chance for political instability in the region.
We can add some horsepower to this ‘people-saving machine’ by introducing and integrating the NK refugee factor. I think NK refugees in China could become a good catalyst to improve the human rights situation inside NK. With some foreign aid directed to help NK refugees while they are in China or Russia and while they are on the move to a third country in search of permanent resettlement, we can catch many birds:
· Rescue these victims of NK’s human rights abuse from the current atrocities they are exposed to in China and Russia as their human rights are abused once again;
· Significantly contribute toward the improvement of the human rights situation in NK by shaking up the current regime and influencing it to change its nature to a benign, “people-first” regime;
· Provide incentive for more people to escape from NK thereby reducing the number of people suffering inside NK and that of the mouths to feed with its limited resources; and
· Escalate the refugee crisis so that China and Russia would compel the NK regime to feed its people in order to stem the massive influx of refugees intruding into their countries (see Chosun Journal’s Discussion Forum, Should foreign aid continue to be given to NK? Targeted, strategic donations by R. Singh).
Ideally these plans should be implemented incrementally and interactively so that there will not be any premature implosion of NK society and sudden deterioration of regional stability.
Please share any progress that has been made with the human rights situation in NK.
We have made substantial inroads into several countries surrounding China through the underground railroads carrying the NK refugees. When the traffic increases on these railroads and the Exodus 21 accumulates to a critical mass, we will start a media blitz to produce worldwide recognition of the horrible human rights situation, especially among the donor nations. Hopefully, this recognition will apply enough pressure to and trigger policy changes in, China, Russia, and NK, as well as to the donor nations, toward improvement of the situation.
Please share some of your memorable experiences during your work for NK human rights.
· About four years ago, I was in China for the first time in my life. There I met my first North Koreans even before I set my foot into NK sometime later, a young couple who had just crossed the Tumen river a few hours before. They were so different from us, so naive and pure. They had never seen or heard of a “pastor,” which they called me after several hours of talking. As I saw them refusing to accept my donation of fifty dollars which they needed badly, I heard God’s calling to devote my life for these people. I have never met another NK refugee who was reluctant to receive my money since then.
· I met this young man from NK who carried a load of books on his back when he sneaked into China. He spoke several different languages. His motive for defection? To study freely!
· I had been arrested with twelve NK refugees at a border town in Mongolia. When I walked into the prison, I was amazed to find ‘Jesus’ and the fish sign carved on the white-washed walls of this prison inside a Mongolian border guard garrison. The next five days I spent in that prison was the very best time of my entire life.
Why should Americans, particularly Korean-Americans, be involved with human rights for North Korea?
Korean-Americans are like Paul the apostle whose Roman citizenship was utilized as a valuable tool for his worldwide ministry. We are called upon by God to help and deliver our NK brethren from their agony using our American citizenship, both abroad on the mission field and domestically on the home front. When the few, chosen Korean-Americans wake up America by blowing Gideon’s trumpet and breaking the earthen jars at the same time, we can create enough havoc in the enemy camp to produce an enormous victory.
Americans should be involved with human rights for North Korea for the following reasons:
· They fought for the freedom and democracy of the Korean peninsula but left it short of complete victory while they could have achieved it had they committed themselves all the way. They had, in a way, sown the seed for the current dilemma fifty years ago.
· Now the seed they had sowed has grown into a rogue state that threatens American soil with its WMD. The rogue state not only threatens American soil, it also has become the biggest proliferator of WMD on the world scene. Changing the nature of its militant regime into a more people-friendly and less belligerent one through the improvement of its human rights will be more than beneficial to the American interest.
· America must regain the same moral fortitude, vision, and compassion as it had under the Kennedy administration that helicoptered aid into the heart of Berlin to counter the efforts of the USSR which was trying to starve the people into submission. How America handles the NK human rights situation will be a key factor on how history will look upon America’s moral strength as the world’s sole superpower (see Chosun Journal’s Discussion Forum, Should foreign aid continue to be given to NK? Kennedy and the Berlin Airlift by Joseph Neilan). If America could brave the threat of nuclear war against the USSR during the Berlin crisis, it can surely pull this one off against NK.
· On the other hand, if America does not act full-heartedly on this relatively small crisis now, no one knows what kind of monster the rogue state might grow to become in another fifty years.
What is your vision for NK?
Beijing will soon go through a political turmoil that accompanies the periodic change of ownership of its powerhouse. Traditionally when China goes through this period, the concentration of power at its center has almost always loosened up , albeit temporarily. And when there was a fundamental shift in its power structure such as the change of dynasty, the center’s power was so weakened that many unexpected things happened in the periphery of the empire that could never have happened otherwise.
I sometimes have this vision of an abrupt reunification of the Korean peninsula. When the nation of the same people goes through a long period of division and the divided people strongly yearn for reunification, the force of momentum that is produced at the reunification will be so tremendous that the nation must expand its boundary at least spiritually. (So they often say that a unified Korea will be sending out many missionaries from Pyongyang to all over the world as it once did in the 1920s when it used to be called the Jerusalem of the East.) When the international politics surrounding the nation at the time of its reunification allows it, even a physical expansion may occur. This has happened with Germany during the past century. We may say similar things happened with the US after the Civil War. Perhaps the unified Korea will explode into a large territory covering all of the old Koguryo and, possibly, Eastern Mongolia. If this ever happens, the two million Korean-Chinese and the NK refugees in the northeastern provinces of China will play an important role in the making of this history.
On the other hand, I am afraid the leadership of NK will become so unpredictable that they might be instrumental in starting Armageddon, unless we bring the situation into a manageable arena rather quickly. Tragic as it may sound, this may well be the case in view of the amazing fact that 666 is Kim Jong Il’s number, according to a report dated July 6, 1999, by NK’s official news agency, the Korean Central News Agency, on its website.
What is your advice for anyone interested in helping?
We, if we love Him, all have an individual calling from God according to His purpose, and all things must work together to accomplish His good plan in these very last days. So I have no specific advice for those interested in helping but to say:
Keep awake and be bold in doing whatever God tells you to do. Do not flinch at the blow from Satan. Do not be afraid of persecution, for yourself or for your loved ones. God knows!”
