Thread by @BonicMichael

“With the flow of information from North Korea fiercely controlled, outsiders have long relied on defector testimonies to gain an understanding of what goes on inside the secretive state. But relying on the anecdotes of individuals – all with different
theguardian.com/world/2015/oct…

2/"views and experiences – can also be risky.

In a report released last year, the UN accused the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, of crimes against humanity, and called for the case to be referred to the international criminal court. UN investigators had been denied access to

3/"the country, so the organization had instead carried out 240 confidential interviews with North Korean refugees living in South Korea, Japan, the UK and the US, including Shin Dong-hyuk, whose story was told in the bestselling Escape from Camp 14.

In January, the DPRK

4/"government released a video claiming to show Shin’s father denouncing his son’s stories as fake. When questioned, Shin confessed that parts of his account were also inaccurate, including sections on his time in Camp 14, the infamous labour camp for political prisoners, and the

5/"the age at which he was tortured.

Shin is not alone. Another North Korean, Lee Soon-ok, offered testimony to the US House of Representatives in 2004, describing torture and the killing of Christians in hot iron liquid in a North Korean political prison.

But Lee’s testimony

6/"was challenged by Chang In-suk, then head of the North Korean Defectors’ Association in Seoul, who claimed to know first hand that Lee had never been a political prisoner. Many former DPRK citizens on the website NKnet agreed Lee’s accounts were unlikely to be true.

7/"on the website NKnet agreed Lee’s accounts were unlikely to be true.

Similarly, Kwon Hyuk told the US Congress that he was an intelligence officer at the DPRK embassy in Beijing and had witnessed human experiments in political prisons – a critical factor in the US decision to

8/"pass the North Korea Human Rights Act in 2004.

Kwon’s account, retold in a BBC documentary back in 2004, was later questioned by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, which argued that he never had access to such information. Many years later, Kwon has since disappeared from the

9/"from the public eye."

So the guy whose testimony before the US Congress was "a critical factor in the US decision to pass the North Korea Human Rights Act in 2004" "disappeared from the public eye" when Yonhap news agency argued "he never had access to such information"?

10/Hmmm...🤔 I wonder how that could have happened??
via
@YouTube

11/"While there is no doubt the North Korean regime has committed serious human rights abuses, there are questions to be asked about how heavily outsiders should rely on defectors’ testimonies as credible evidence.

I have been interviewing North Koreans as a DPRK watcher and

12/"human rights researcher since 1999. What I’ve found suggests there are serious ethical dilemmas in the way we gather information.

Cash payments in return for interviews with North Korean refugees have been standard practice in the field for years.

13/"...However, the fees had risen to $200 per hour by the time I attempted to interview people from North Korea in May 2014.

A government official from the South Korean ministry of unification told me the range of fees could vary wildly, from $50-500 per hour, depending on the

14/"quality of information.

But this practice raises a difficulty: how does the payment change the relation between a researcher and an interviewee, and what effect will it have on the story itself?
makeagif.com/gif/money-rain…

15/"This practice also drives the demand for “saleable stories”: the more exclusive, shocking or emotional, the higher the fee...

North Korean refugees have become well aware of what the interviewer wants to hear. Whether speaking to the UN, US Congress or western media, the

16/"questions are the same every time: why did you leave North Korea, and how terrible is it?...

But many refugees say they feel pressured for defector stories. Ahn Myung-chol, a former prison guard at Camp 22, said people liked shocking stories and these so-called

17/"“defector-activists” were merely responding to this desire. Chong Kwang-il, a former prisoner at Camp 15, said the fame brought by media exposure trapped them, forcing them to reproduce a certain narrative.

Choi Sung-chol,...said the line between small and large

18/"inconsistencies was often hard to draw: “Most North Koreans do not worry about small factual mistakes as long as the big picture that North Korea violates human rights is right...We, North Koreans, know what is true and what is fake, but at the same time we do not want to

19/"ruin the bigger political moves like the UN committee of investigation or the US Human Rights Act.”

20/So if Lee Soon-ok's testimony to the US House of Representatives in 2004 describing "torture and the killing of Christians in hot iron liquid in a North Korean political prison" is total fabrication b/c he was NEVER A POLITICAL PRISONER, and Kwon Hyuk suddenly "disappeared"

21/as soon as doubt was raised about his testimony - which was "a CRITICAL FACTOR in the US decision to pass the North Korea Human Rights Act in 2004", what’s REALLY going??
tenor.com/view/nothing-t…

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