North Korea Executes Fishing Fleet Captain for Listening to RFA
Dec. 17, 2020 - Authorities in North Korea executed the owner of a fishing fleet in front of 100 boat captains and fisheries executives for secretly listening to broadcasts by Radio Free Asia and other forbidden media outlets while at sea, sources in the country told RFA.
The fishing boat captain, who picked up the habit of tuning in to broadcasts from abroad while in the military, confessed to having listened to the U.S. government-funded media outlet for more than 15 years, after he was turned in by a resentful crewman at his base in the northeastern port city of Chongjin.
North Korea goes to extraordinary lengths to stop its population from accessing outside information, with strict punishment for violators, but the open sea allows fishermen and merchant mariners the chance to hear forbidden broadcasts.
The captain had been catching fish for the government of Kim Jong Un, which has ordered North Korean fishermen to increase catches amid food shortages and to raise cash in the face of international sanctions aimed at curbing resources for nuclear weapons.
“In mid-October, a captain of a fishing boat from Chongjin was executed by firing squad, on charges of listening to Radio Free Asia regularly over a long period of time,” a law enforcement official from North Hamgyong province told RFA’s Korean Service Wednesday.
“We know that the captain’s surname was Choi and he was in his 40s. He was working out of a fishery base affiliated with the Central Party’s Bureau 39,” the source said, referring to the secret organization tasked with acquiring hard currency and maintaining a slush fund for Kim Jong Un.
“Choi was the owner of a fleet of over 50 ships. During an investigation by the provincial security department, Captain Choi confessed to listening to RFA broadcasts since the age of 24, when he was serving in the military as a radio operator,” the source said.
RFA reported that authorities in June sent a signal corpsman to one of the country’s notorious political prison camps for tuning in to RFA at work, while in November 2018, a signaler in the country’s elite Supreme Guard Command was purged for listening to banned broadcasts, and his whole command was punished.
The North Hamgyong official said that Choi and his subordinates in the military routinely set the dial to RFA when he was in his 30s.
“After he finished military service, he continued to listen to RFA. They say that listening to RFA brought back fond memories of his days in the military. It also seems he was under the illusion that because he was part of Bureau 39’s fishing base, he would be immune to criminal charges, and that seems to have brought on tough consequences for him,” the source said.
“We know that the provincial security department defined his crime as an attempt of subversion against the party. They publicly shot him at the base in front of 100 other captains and managers of the facility’s fish processing plants. They also dismissed or discharged party officials, the base’s administration and the security officers who allowed Choi to work at sea,” said the source.
Another source, a resident of the province, confirmed to RFA that news of Choi’s execution had spread among the public.
“During the investigation, they found out that when he was out fishing on distant seas, he fixed the frequency and listened continuously to foreign broadcasts,” the second source said.
The source said that with Choi’s growing power and wealth as a fleet owner, he became high-handed toward his crew.
“One of the fishermen sought vengeance for Choi’s arrogant and disrespectful behavior so he reported him to the security department,” the second source said.
The second source said that Choi confessed during his investigation to continuously listening to news of the outside world and music programming from RFA.
“The security authorities decided then that the time to reeducate him had long past, so they executed him by firing squad,” the second source said.
“It is really common for people who work on ships to enjoy broadcasts in the Korean language, such as RFA, through their radio communicators when they go out to the sea. Therefore, it seems that the authorities made an example out of Choi to imprint on the residents that listening to outside radio stations means death,” the second source said.
Two refugees who escaped from North Korea and resettled in the South told RFA Thursday that the Washington-based outlet’s programming is widely consumed by ordinary North Korean residents.
“People are curious about RFA content because the authorities tell us through resident education sessions, which are more like propaganda, to never listen to RFA broadcasting from the U.S., as it is all about anti-DPRK measures,” said one.
The second told RFA that news from abroad is even more popular than TV shows and movies.
“We can get a variety of content from CDs and memory sticks, but what North Koreans most want to know is news from the outside. Residents can get many outside broadcasts, but they prefer RFA because it can be heard clearly in the Korean language,” the second refugee said.
“Military radio operators and fishermen are known to listen to RFA a lot because they are more able to listen to outside broadcasts.”
The State-run Korean Central News Agency recently reported that the Supreme People’s Assembly on Dec. 4 adopted the ‘Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Law,’ indicating that the government may now be placing more scrutiny on citizens caught watching foreign media.
RFA broadcasts six hours of Korean-language programming daily into North Korea over short wave radio from transmitters located about 1,900 miles away in the Northern Mariana Islands, and medium wave transmitters in South Korea.
Reported by Sewon Kim for RFA’s Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
View this story online at: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/execution-12172020205217.html
Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA ’s broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” RFA is funded by an annual grant from the U.S. Agency for Global Media ( [ https://www.usagm.gov/home/ | USAGM ] ) .
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE : Feb. 2, 2021
Contact : Rohit Mahajan | 202.530.4976 | mahajanr(a)rfa.org
[ https://www.rfa.org/about/releases/trapped-in-the-system-experiences-of-uyg… | Report Deepens Understanding of Uyghur Detainees’ Treatment in Xinjiang ]
WASHINGTON – A new research [ https://www.rfa.org/about/releases/trapped-in-the-system-experiences-of-uyg… | report ] from Radio Free Asia (RFA) details the experiences of Uyghur detention camp survivors and other detainees from China’s Far West. The qualitative study, Experiences of Uyghur Detention in Post-2015 Xinjiang , provides first-hand accounts focusing on the extrajudicial process Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are subjected to, including the tenuous grounds authorities cite for detention, quotas and financial incentives for arrests and confessions, the classification of individuals by perceived risk categories, and harsh treatment inside the facilities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
RFA’s report may be accessed as a downloadable PDF by clicking [ https://www.rfa.org/about/releases/trapped-in-the-system-experiences-of-uyg… | HERE ] .
“In conducting this research, we tried to understand how the harrowing details of detainee experiences fit into China’s larger system of political and cultural control in Xinjiang,” said Betsy Henderson, RFA’s Chief Strategy Officer and the head of the organization’s Research Department. “Throughout the process we prioritized the safety and mental and physical health of the interviewees, aiming always to ensure our report reflects their full humanity, not just the dehumanizing experiences that continue to haunt them. ”
“RFA’s groundbreaking journalism has shown time and again the extent to which Uyghurs are subjected en masse to China’s indiscriminate extralegal detention, with the clear aim of cultural destruction,” RFA President Bay Fang said. “ This report bears critical witness to the eye-opening details of this human rights crisis, as revealed through the personal accounts of individuals.”
The extensive interviews forming the substance of this report -- a project of RFA’s research division -- were conducted securely between November 2019 and May 2020 in Turkey and Europe with seven ethnic Uyghur ex-detainees and one ethnic Uzbek. The accounts offered by the study’s detention survivors supplement other firsthand accounts that have emerged, as well as the leaked documents and cables detailing the Chinese Communist Party’s far reaching high-tech surveillance and directives to crack down on the Uyghur population and other Muslim minorities in the XUAR. Key findings include:
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A blurring between pre-trial detention facilities and re-education camps , including repurposed or makeshift conversions of existing facilities into ones for detention.
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Accounts of flimsy to nonexistent grounds for arrests and detentions , including innocuous religious signifiers and contact or connection, close or passing, to individuals rated high-risk.
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Confessions forced under extreme duress , including violence or deprivation, and threats of violence to family members.
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Arrest quotas and financial incentives openly discussed by authorities, witnessed firsthand by two of the eight participants in this study.
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No opportunities to share information among detainees , with incriminating conversations likely to lead to maltreatment or torture.
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Medical neglect as well as enforced medical interventions , including lack of doctors on site, weekly blood samples in many camps, and mandatory unidentified injections and pills.
The report builds on past work from RFA’s research team, including a 2018 quantitative survey that focused on the experiences and media consumption habits of Uyghurs in Turkey who had left the Uyghur region. Journalists in RFA’s Uyghur Service were among the first to sound the alarm as China moved in recent years to detain more than 1 million members of Muslim minorities in the XUAR. First exposing the mass internment of Uyghurs in 2017, the service has meticulously documented related developments such as the transfer of prisoners to other regions of China, the construction of orphanages for the children of detained Uyghurs, and the destruction of cultural and sacred locations including, historic city centers, mosques and grave sites.
# # #
Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media. RFA’s broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” RFA is funded by an annual grant from the United States Agency for Global Media.
Rohit Mahajan
Vice President of Communications and External Relations
Radio Free Asia
Dear friends -- Tomorrow Radio Free Asia will be releasing a research report on Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities detained in Xinjiang. Details of the related virtual event, hosted by GW's Central Asia Program, including a link to RSVP, follow below. Hope you can join us!
Kind regards,
Rohit
Event
The Central Asia Program and Radio Free Asia invite you to a virtual discussion of RFA's upcoming report
Trapped in the System: Experiences of Uyghur Detention in Xinjiang
Tuesday, February 2 , 2021
10:00 - 11:00 AM (EST)
[ http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0014K3Z9QtkjCDCS_zB1s-E5M58L8nZyr3NM7Vx05rHVVO-… | Click here to join Webex event ]
Event Number (access code): [ callto:120 804 6737 | 120 804 6737 ]
Event password: CAP0202
[ http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0014K3Z9QtkjCDCS_zB1s-E5M58L8nZyr3NM7Vx05rHVVO-… | RSVP ]
More than a million -- some say 3 million -- Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been arbitrarily detained and imprisoned in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region since 2016. While outlets like Radio Free Asia (RFA) have played a pivotal role in exposing Beijing’s sweeping detentions in the Uyghur homeland, documenting the process by which Chinese authorities target, interrogate, and detain Uyghurs and other minorities has been murky. Recently, RFA’s research department carried out a series of in-depth interviews with survivors from these camps. These rich firsthand accounts from the inside provide not just a detailed scene of the brutal en masse interrogations, incarcerations, classifications, and means of torture, but heart-wrenching, vivid pictures of the human beings caught in its gears.
Please join the George Washington University's Central Asia Program on Tuesday, February 2 , 2021 at 10 am US ET as Dr. Sean Roberts, Associate Professor of International Affairs and Director of the International Development Studies Program at GW's Elliott School of International Affairs, hosts a discussion with Radio Free Asia about its forthcoming report. Speakers will include Betsy Henderson, Chief Strategy Officer and head of RFA’s audience research program; Alim Seytoff, Director of RFA's Uyghur Service; and Human Rights Watch’s Maya Wang, China Senior Researcher.
SPEAKERS
Sean Roberts is an anthropologist with regional expertise in Central Asia, where he also has also done extensive applied development work on issues related to civil society, governance, and human rights. Much of his academic work has focused on the Uyghur people in the People’s Republic of China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, as well as in Central Asia and Turkey. His first book, The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority (Princeton University Press, September 2020 ) draws on his field research and in-depth interviews with Uyghurs. Roberts also writes on issues related to politics and development in the broader Central Asian region. He frequently comments for media outlets on current events both in Central Asia and in the Uyghur region of China. Roberts earned his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. @RobertsReport
Betsy Henderson is Radio Free Asia’s Chief Strategy Officer. Henderson was RFA's founding Director of Audience Research, establishing RFA’s capacity to monitor its impact and gather audience feedback in Asia’s most repressive societies. In addition to conducting representative surveys and qualitative studies, Ms. Henderson developed unprecedented research programs for North Korea and China’s Tibetan and Uyghur regions. Since 2003, Henderson has overseen RFA’s journalism training and program evaluation, and now also is responsible for digital analytics, internal goal setting, impact reporting, and performance tracking. A former Associated Press reporter, Ms. Henderson lived and worked in southern China and in Taiwan and speaks Mandarin fluently. Her graduate studies at Columbia and University of Michigan focused on journalism, Chinese politics, and research methodology.
Alim Seytoff is the Director of Radio Free Asia's Uyghur Service. During his tenure, which began in early 2017, RFA Uyghur broke the story of the mass arbitrary detentions of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region -- and has remained on the forefront of covering this human rights crisis since. Prior to RFA, Alim served as the Executive Director for the Uyghur Human Rights Project and was President of the Uyghur American Association. He has appeared on BBC, CNN and has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, speaking about Uyghur related issues. He has testified before the U.S. Congress and has briefed U.S officials on the subject. Alim holds a BA in Chinese Studies from Xinjiang University and a BA in Broadcast Journalism from Southern Adventist University. He has a Master's Degree in Public Policy from the Robertson School of Government at Regent University. Alim received his Juris Doctor degree from Regent University School of Law in 2006.
Maya Wang is the senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch. Wang has researched and written extensively on the use of torture, arbitrary detention, human rights defenders, civil society, disability rights, and women’s rights in China. She is also an expert on human rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. In recent years, her original research on China’s use of technology for mass surveillance, including the use of biometrics, artificial intelligence and big data, has helped galvanize international attention on these developments in China and globally. Wang has published on major international media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, ChinaFile, the Diplomat, the Guardian , and has been frequently quoted by international media including the New York Times, Reuters, Bloomberg News, and the Associated Press. Cover illustration by Yette Su.
Tuesday, February 2 , 2021
10:00 - 11:00 AM (EST)
[ http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0014K3Z9QtkjCDCS_zB1s-E5M58L8nZyr3NM7Vx05rHVVO-… | Click here to join Webex event ]
Event Number (access code): [ callto:120 804 6737 | 120 804 6737 ]
Event password: CAP0202
[ http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0014K3Z9QtkjCDCS_zB1s-E5M58L8nZyr3NM7Vx05rHVVO-… | RSVP ]
This event is on the record, open to the public, and will be recorded.
The Central Asia Program
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Rohit Mahajan
Vice President of Communications and External Relations
Radio Free Asia
