Activist campaigns for bill for N. Koreans

Ihn Ji-yeon, center, the founder and president of Now! Act for North Koreans! (NANK), delivers a collection of photos on the group’s activities to National Assembly Speaker Chung Ui-hwa at Chung’s office in Seoul on Dec. 22, 2015. / Courtesy of Ihn Ji-yeon

By Yi Whan-woo

Now! Act for North Koreans! (NANK), a Seoul-based activist group set up in September 2013, has been campaigning for the parliament to pass approval for a long-stalled bill drawn up to research, record and attempt to counter Pyongyang’s human rights abuses.

With the National Assembly set to pass the bill by the end of this week, Ihn Ji-yeon, the founder and president of NANK, says her next goal is to help North Koreans who have left the isolated state socially integrate in the South.

“It will not be the end, but just the beginning for me and NANK if the bill on North Korean human rights is approved,” she told The Korea Times in a phone interview, Tuesday. “The passage of the bill is a small but critical step for social integration in a unified Korea and that’s why NANK has asked lawmakers to endorse it as quickly as possible while requesting people to join our campaign.”

The rival parties are expected to put the much-touted bill to a vote at a plenary session slated for Friday.

If endorsed, it will be the first South Korean legislation addressing the dire human rights situation in North Korea. Beginning in 2005, a string of precedent proposals against Pyongyang’s crimes against humanity was submitted to the National Assembly but they were all scrapped due to concerns that they may provoke the repressive regime.

Ihn said that there are still many improvements to be made at both parliamentary and civic levels to embrace North Koreans who come here while preparing to punish their leadership.

She cited the 2016 bill jointly proposed by Reps. Yoon Sang-hyun and Hwang Jin-ha of the ruling Saenuri Party. Its key points include setting up an archive under the Ministry of Unification and collecting evidence on Pyongyang’s dire human rights record while sharing the data with the Ministry of Justice every three months.

“It’s the justice ministry that will have the right to investigate and bring criminal charges against the North Korean leadership. And it should be operating the archive and use the related data in accusing the Pyongyang regime,” Ihn said. “I’ll wait for ratification of the bill then will ask the lawmakers to amend it accordingly.”

She claimed that South Koreans are less interested than foreigners regarding issues related to North Korean human rights, referring to NANK’s two campaigns.

Ihn organized campaigns in Gwanghwamun Square in 2013 and 2015 respectively. Each campaign ran for 100 straight days, during which NANK members heralded the deplorable living conditions of North Koreans, including political prisoners, and asked the passers-by to join them.

“Expats and international tourists gathered around us on the streets whenever they heard us shouting four words, ‘North Korean human rights,’ but most of the South Koreans just passed by,” she said. “It’ll be our job to raise awareness toward our brothers in the North.”

Ihn, 43, who was a freelance English to Korean translator, said she decided to become a full-time North Korean human rights activist after watching a musical, titled “Yodok Story” in 2006. It dealt with inhuman living condition of political prisoners at a North Korean concentration camp in Yodok, South Hamgyong Province.

Ihn studied at Handong University Law School and also worked as an intern at the U.N. Office off the High Commissioner For Human Rights before launching NANK.

NANK has a total of 205 members.