Dear Committee members,
My name is Kim Sung-Eun, pastor at Caleb Mission in Cheonan, South Korea. I run a non-profit
Christian organization that manages a network of underground informants in North Korea, who send me
information from the country, as well as a group of smugglers who help me transport North Koreans
hiding in China to South Korea. I also help North Koreans in hiding in China, and those re-settling in
South Korea. I’m committed to letting the world know about the atrocious rights abuses North Koreans,
including children, experience on a daily basis.
I’m writing to you along with Jeon Hyo-Vin, a 16-year-old girl from North Korea, who I helped escaped
the country at the end of 2015. She would like to share her experiences, especially regarding labor forced
by her schools and her teachers, with the Committee in Geneva next month.
Our submission is a combination of pictures of forced child labor I was able to acquire through my
networks and Hyo-Vin’s testimony. The information in this submission relates to articles 19, 24, 28, 29,
and 32 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Please see below our submission.
Best regards,
Kim Sung-Eun
Pastor at Caleb Mission
www.calebmission.com
Telf. +82.10.7364.5515
January 27, 2017
Submission to the Pre-Sessional Working Group on North Korea
by Caleb Mission on behalf of Jeon Hyo-Vin, a former student in North Korea
Sixteen-year-old Jeon Hyo-Vin, from Kyungwon County, in North Hamgyong province, always
considered working without pay during four to six hours almost every day for her schools or her teachers
to show her loyalty to the Kim family and the nation was just normal. The type of labor varied depending
on seasons, demands by the party, the local government, the school or the teachers. Two months a year
were devoted to breaking rocks, two months in spring and autumn to farming, especially harvesting and
seeding, two months in winter to building construction work. Other periods were filled with smaller tasks
farming, helping fix the school, and gathering other requested materials. According to Hyo-Vin, the only
period the labor workload lowered was twice a year during the two weeks ahead of the exam periods,
although even then the teacher asked her and her classmates to work at least two hours on their personal
farms.
She started collecting pebbles, picking wild greens and weeds when she was 8 years old, when she started
primary school. As she got older, labor requests became more demanding. From third grade in primary
school until she left school in second year of secondary school at age 13, the schools forced Hyo-Vin and
her classmates to break and transport rocks, plant rice or help with construction of apartments. The
teachers forced students to go work breaking and transporting rocks every afternoon after lunch time,
missing school hours, for two months at a time every year. Sometimes, it was the whole day on Sundays.
Hyo-Vin recounted the first time she had to break rocks.
“(In summer 2010) When I was in third grade, the school wanted to build something with rocks to
praise leaders Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. The teacher told us to gather on Sunday at 8 am in
school. When I got there all the students of the whole school, almost 100 students from first year
to 6th grade of secondary school, the last grade, were there. We all walked for 4 hours, until we
arrived to an area with big rocks, we had to break rocks for two hours, fill our bags with rocks,
and walk back again to school. We arrived around 6 or 7 in the evening. My body hurt, I was
tired and we had not even able to eat anything all day.”
[Students forced to break rocks and work in the construction of a newly built railway line. Nearby
Kanggye city, Chagang Province. Spring 2015. Source: Caleb Mission]
[Students selecting, transporting and breaking rocks for nearby railway construction. Outskirts of
Kanggye city, Chagang province. Spring 2015. Source: Caleb Mission]
[Teachers oversees students transplanting rice seedlings. Outskirts of Namyang city, North Hamgyong
Province, North Korea. Spring 2015. Source: Caleb Mission]
Hyo-Vin was also forced to help at apartment building construction sites, by moving bricks, water or
metal sticks, for two months every winter since she was in third grade, and to work planting rice for a
month every June. She recalled:
“Students who are 14 years or older are sent to the farming areas twice a year for a month at a
time during harvesting and seeding season, but I had to work in the farming lands in the
afternoons for 4 or 5 hours every day for a month twice a year, since I was in third grade. I had to
wake up at 5.30 am, walk for two hours to get to school, get classes mostly until midday, and
work the whole afternoon until our tasks would be done. The time I had to work until the latest
was midnight. My grandfather was waiting for me, and then we had to walk back for two hours.”
She was constantly annoyed for having to work so much, and wondered when this would stop. But
because of her family’s economic situation, when she was 13 years old, she was forced to move to her
uncle’s home in Chongjin City, North Hamgyong province. There, schools not only requested labor, but
also cash. Then, she was forced to stop going to school. Payments to schools varied depending on the
personal circumstances of the family of the students, but Hyo-vin needed at least one million North
Korean won, which was worth 600 kg of corn, per year. At the time, it was in the form of support for the
construction of the Baekdu power plant and Oryongchon power plant. Hyo-vin’s secondary school class
had 13 students and 4 could not go because of the fee and labor burden.