NORTH KOREA (March 16):

Video shows executions in North


Video footage of the brutal execution of 3 North Koreans was scheduled to be shown on Japanese TV yesterday, according to a human rights group that released captured images of the footage.

The footage, recently obtained by Japan's N-TV, shows the brief trials of 11 North Koreans. Three were given death sentences, and the other 8 were ordered to serve 15 years hard labor.

After a judge handed down the death sentences, a voice in the video is heard saying,"Carry out immediately." The accused are then tied to stakes.

6 soldiers stand in a line, and 3 shots are fired at each of the detainees, felling them.

The executions allegedly took place on March 1 and 2 in Hoeryeong, North Hangyong province, a town near the Chinese border.

One of the accused was charged with fleeing the country and human trafficking, according to a voice heard on the video.

Defectors have detailed open executions in North Korea in the past, prompting concerns in the international community. The video is believed to be the 1st one broadcasted showing such violence in the isolated country.

A Seoul-based Internet site specializing in North Korean affairs, also reported yesterday about public executions, quoting a North Korean defector now living in China. The defector was reportedly at the scene when the executions took place.

According to the Web site, the North Korean police chief informed the residents of Hoeryeong about the open trials on the morning of March 1. During the brief trial, another man received a lifetime prison term on charges of smuggling the remains and military dog tag of a U.S. soldier who died during the Korean War.

"North Korea has been denying that it staged open executions," said Han Ki-hong, president of a Seoul-based rights group, the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights. "Now that the video record is released, the North will face fierce criticism from the international community."

(source: Joongang Daily News)

NORTH KOREA:

N. Korea executions captured on video----Crackdown against defections suspected


In a brutal new crackdown on defections and smuggling to China, the North Korean regime has conducted public executions of at least 3 people and possibly dozens more, according to human-rights advocates here who have examined a recently obtained videotape.

The grainy footage is believed to show firing squads executing alleged human traffickers in front of large crowds in Hoeryong, a North Korean border town that has been a major transit point for tens of thousands of people escaping their impoverished homeland. Many brokers work in Hoeryong helping defectors cross the Tumen River into China and arranging illegal marriages for North Korean women with Chinese men.

Broadcast earlier this week by the Japanese television network NTV, the footage marks the first time that purported evidence of public executions has been smuggled out of North Korea. The video apparently was shot with a hidden camera and brought out by defectors. Human-rights investigators in Seoul said they believed the footage is genuine.

Public executions would mark a change in approach by North Korean authorities, who in recent years have tried to avoid giving fresh ammunition to human-rights advocates.

"For the last two or three years, the North Korean regime has been very conscious about criticism they've received from the international community, and any executions they conducted were done quietly indoors," said Han Ki Hong, president of the Seoul-based Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights. "I would guess by holding a public execution like this close to the border, they wanted to get some publicity to send a message to residents throughout the region."

Han's group believes there may have been as many as 70 people executed around the border area in recent months, but there is no documentary evidence to back up sketchy reports.

In the video aired this week, one scene shows hundreds of people, many on bicycles, gathered on a grassy riverbank near Hoeryong's main market. From a sound truck, officials order the crowd to stand back.

Men in the crowd can be heard complaining in North Korean accents that somebody is blocking their view. In the distance, there are blurry figures that seem to be two men being tied to wooden posts.

Then, the sound of 3 bursts of gunfire.

Children then rush forward, apparently to see the bodies being loaded into the back of a military truck. 9 prisoners, who received lesser sentences, can be seen being herded away with their hands tied behind their backs.

Another execution was apparently held the next day in the outskirts of Hoeryong in front of a train station decorated with a large portrait of North Korea's founder Kim Il Sung. Before the gunshots are heard on the videotape, a judge reads the charges against the defendant, who was accused of helping defectors escape.

"These criminal acts ... are most unpardonable anti-revolutionary acts of betrayal," the judge says, according to a partial transcript released by human-rights advocates. "Today's political situation demands that we be on the alert ... to prevent imperialist ideological and cultural infiltration."

Many North Koreans have told of public executions in the mid-1990s in which the condemned were similarly tied to posts and shot with 3 bursts of gunfire.

"It is exactly the way I remember the executions in the past," said Han Young Jin, a 35-year-old North Korean defector who works with human-rights groups in Seoul.

"They had stopped doing these public executions. I'm sad and angry to see them coming back," he said.

(source: Los Angeles Times)