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Suzanne Scholte |
By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
Suzanne Scholte, a renowned American human rights activist, has been selected as the winner of this year's Seoul Peace Prize, the Seoul Peace Prize Cultural Foundation announced Wednesday.
Scholte, 49, who serves as president of Washington-based Defense Forum Foundation (DFF), has spearheaded efforts to improve human rights conditions in North Korea.
DFF is a non-profit foundation that sponsors educational programs on foreign affairs, defense, national security and human rights issues. The foundation is best known for its Congressional Defense and Foreign Policy Forum, which holds monthly national security briefings on Capitol Hill for members of Congress and their senior staff.
``I wish to accept this great honor on behalf of the people for which I have devoted much of my life: the North Korean defectors who are valiantly working for freedom, democracy and human rights for their homeland, and the Sahrawi refugees of Western Sahara, who are seeking self-determination and the right to live as a free people through peaceful and democratic means,'' she said in a statement.
``By recognizing my work through this award, you also honor them, for they have inspired me in all my efforts and given me the strength and endurance to continue this work despite many trials, setbacks and difficulties,'' she said. ``Those, however, are nothing compared to the enormous challenges and suffering the people of North Korea and Western Sahara face in their daily lives.''
The prize was established in 1990 as a biennial recognition with monetary award to commemorate the success of the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. It was established to reflect the wishes of the Korean people and crystallize their desire for everlasting peace on earth.
Scholte also serves as the U.S. partner of the Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human Rights and the chairperson of the U.S.-Western Sahara Foundation. She is a founding board member of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.
She called on the previous liberal South Korean governments to address the human rights situation in the communist North, while making efforts to unveil the realities facing North Korean refugees around the globe and work out measures to improve such realities, the foundation said in a news release.
In April 1999, Scholte's efforts led to the first hearing on the North Korean political prison camps at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, it said.
She testified at the hearing and later hosted the first appearance in the United States of survivors of North Korea's brutal political prisoner camps ― Kang Chul-hwan, Ahn Myong-chul and Lee Soon-ok.
During the 2008 Summer Olympics Games in Beijing, she conducted a campaign to wear rubber bracelets with a slogan of ``Freedom to North Koreans'' in an effort to raise the international awareness of North Korean human rights issues.
Scholte will receive a diploma, a plaque and an honorarium of $200,000 at an awarding ceremony to be held Oct. 7 in Seoul. From this year, a certificate of honorary Seoul citizenship will also be awarded to the laureate, the organizers said.
Previous winners of the Seoul Peace Prize include former International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonion Samaranch, former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Doctors Without Borders, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.
gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr
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yistory@koreatimes.co.kr
