[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 92 (Monday, July 11, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H5608-H5610]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONDEMNING DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF KOREA FOR ABDUCTION AND
CONTINUED CAPTIVITY OF CITIZENS OF THE REPUBLIC OF KOREA AND JAPAN
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and
agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 168) condemning the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea for the abductions and continued
captivity of citizens of the Republic of Korea and Japan as acts of
terrorism and gross violations of human rights, as amended.
The Clerk read as follows:
H. Con. Res. 168
Whereas since the end of the Korean War, the Government of
the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has kidnapped
thousands of South Korean citizens and as many as a hundred
Japanese citizens, including Rumiko Masumoto, Megumi Yokota,
and Reverend Kim Dong-shik;
Whereas the forced detention and frequent murder of those
individuals abducted by North Korea have caused untold grief
and suffering to their families;
Whereas on September 17, 2002, after considerable pressure
from the Government of Japan, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il
admitted that agents of his government had abducted thirteen
Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s and assured Japanese
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that this would never happen
again;
Whereas despite assurances to the contrary, North Korea
continues to order and carry out abductions, and, as recently
as August 8, 2004, North Korean agents operating along the
Chinese border kidnapped Ms. Jin Kyung-sook, a former North
Korean refugee and South Korean passport-holder;
Whereas the abduction policy of North Korea has been
integral to its espionage and terrorist activities, and
abductees have been kidnapped to work as spies, to train
North Korean agents in language, accents, and culture, and to
steal identities, as in the case of Mr. Tadaaki Hara;
Whereas the Pyongyang regime used abductee Ms. Yaeko
Taguchi as the Japanese language instructor for North Korean
terrorist Kim Hyon-hee, who was caught carrying a Japanese
passport after planting a bomb on Korean Air Lines flight 858
that killed 115 people in 1987;
Whereas many victims of North Korean abduction have been
seized during terrorist attacks, as in the hijacking of South
Korean planes in 1958 and 1969, and, decades later, Pyongyang
continues to hold twelve passengers of a hijacked Korean Air
flight, including passenger Mr. Chang Ji-young and flight
attendant Ms. Song Kyong-hi, who has since been allowed a
brief visit by her South Korean family;
Whereas North Korean agents have hijacked numerous South
Korean ships and kidnapped the seamen and fishermen aboard
the vessels, such as Choi Jong-suk, Kim Soon-keun, and ten
other crewmen of the Dongjin 27, a ship that was seized in
1987, and Seoul estimates that hundreds of these abductees
are still alive in North Korea;
Whereas boat hijackings and the kidnapping of fishermen
have devastated South Korean fishing communities, such as
Nongso village on the southern island of Geoje, a community
of 210 people that lost 14 sons, husbands, and fathers when
North Korea seized three ships in 1971 and 1972;
Whereas the North Korean authorities conspired with members
of the Japanese Red
[[Page H5609]]
Army, a group designated as a terrorist organization by the
United States Department of State, to kidnap Keiko Arimoto, a
young Japanese woman studying abroad;
Whereas the Unification Ministry of the Republic of Korea
has confirmed that 486 abduction cases involving South Korean
citizens remain unresolved, and that these cases include
fishermen, seamen, airline passengers, teachers, students,
and pastors, many of whom are still alive and being held in
North Korea;
Whereas North Korean agents have abducted children, causing
unimaginable anguish to parents who live decades with the
uncertainty of what has happened to their child, as in the
cases of Takeshi Terakoshi, a thirteen-year-old boy kidnapped
from a fishing boat with his two uncles, and Lee Min-gyo and
Choi Seung-min, two seventeen-year-old friends abducted off a
beach in South Korea;
Whereas North Korean agents kidnapped thirteen-year-old
Megumi Yokota, as she was walking home from school, and
subsequently reported that she married and had a daughter in
North Korea before committing suicide in 1993, and that
Megumi's daughter remains there separated from her family in
Japan;
Whereas on April 5, 1971, North Korean agents abducted Yu
Song-gun, a South Korean diplomat stationed at the Embassy of
the Republic of Korea in West Germany, his wife, and two
young daughters, ages 7 and 1, while the family was believed
to be in Berlin;
Whereas the Pyongyang regime has abducted a number of South
Korean ministers who were bravely working to rescue North
Koreans escaping on the underground railroad through China,
including Reverend Ahn Seung-woon and Reverend Kim Dong-shik,
the latter of whose welfare is of particular importance to
representatives of the State of Illinois;
Whereas on April 21, 2005, the Seoul Central District Court
convicted Chinese citizen Ryu Young-hwa of assisting North
Korean agents in the abduction of Reverend Kim and, further,
that a Chinese court convicted a North Korean citizen of
masterminding the abduction of Reverend Ahn, and deported the
agent to North Korea in July 1997 following a two-year prison
term;
Whereas some of the abductees have risked their lives in
trying to escape North Korea, as in the case of South Korean
fisherman Im Kuk-jae, who has twice attempted to escape since
his kidnapping in 1987, and is now believed to be imprisoned
in one of North Korea's notorious labor camps;
Whereas the North Korean regime continues to deceive the
international community regarding its ongoing abductions and
has furnished false information concerning eight Japanese
abductees, including suspicious accounts of their supposed
premature deaths;
Whereas the Government of North Korea has never
convincingly accounted for Ms. Rumiko Masumoto and Mr.
Shuichi Ichikawa, kidnapped by Pyongyang agents from a beach
in Japan on August 12, 1978, and claims that Mr. Ichikawa
drowned in the sea, despite his dislike of swimming, and that
the formerly healthy Ms. Masumoto died of a heart attack at
the age of 27;
Whereas North Korea claims abductees Mr. Toru Ishioka and
Ms. Keiko Arimoto, who were kidnapped separately in Europe
and later married, supposedly died together with their small
daughter of gas poisoning in 1988, two months after they were
successful in getting a letter out of North Korea to family
members in Japan;
Whereas although the Pyongyang regime claimed to return the
alleged cremated remains of Mr. Kaoru Matsuki and Ms. Megumi
Yokota to Japanese officials, both remains appear not to be
authentic, and, according to Pyongyang, the bodies of the six
remaining Japanese abductees have conveniently been washed
away during flooding and cannot be recovered to verify the
causes of their untimely deaths;
Whereas despite the efforts of the Japanese Government, the
Pyongyang regime continues to deny any knowledge of the
abductions of Mr. Yutaka Kume, Mr. Minoru Tanaka, and Ms.
Miyoshi Soga, the mother of another acknowledged abductee,
despite overwhelming evidence of North Korean collusion in
their disappearances;
Whereas North Korean abductions have not been limited to
northeast Asia and many documented abductees have been
kidnapped while abroad, such as Mr. Lee Chae-hwan, a young
MIT graduate student traveling in Austria, and Mr. Ko Sang-
moon, a South Korean teacher kidnapped in Norway, making the
issue of serious concern to the international community;
Whereas there have been credible reports that North Korea
may have abducted citizens from many other countries in
addition to South Korea and Japan, including persons from
China, Europe, and the Middle East;
Whereas North Korea routinely engaged in the kidnapping of
South Korean citizens during the Korean War from 1950 to
1953, and, according to a 1956 survey conducted by the Korean
National Red Cross, 7,034 South Korean civilians were
abducted during the conflict;
Whereas Pyongyang has refused to allow the release of a
single wartime abductee despite a provision allowing civilian
abductees to return home in Article III of the Korean War
Armistice Agreement, a document signed by representatives
from the United States, North Korea, and China;
Whereas for more than fifty years, North Korea has held
South Korean prisoners-of-war captured during the Korean War,
in clear violation of Article III of the Korean War Armistice
Agreement signed on July 27, 1953, and the South Korean
Ministry of National Defense estimates that 542 captives are
still alive in North Korea, according to testimony given
before the National Assembly in February 2005;
Whereas according to the testimony of prisoners-of-war who
have successfully escaped from North Korea, South Korean
prisoners-of-war have been forced to perform hard labor for
decades, often in mines, and are harshly treated by the
Pyongyang regime;
Whereas after being forcibly held in North Korea for fifty-
one years, South Korean prisoner-of-war Han Man-taek, age 72,
escaped to China, was detained by Chinese police and forcibly
repatriated to North Korea earlier this year, where he
inevitably faced punitive measures and possible execution;
and
Whereas these South Korean prisoners-of-war served under
the United Nations Command, fighting alongside their American
and Allied fellow soldiers, and therefore are the direct
concern of the Allied nations who contributed forces during
the Korean War: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate
concurring), That Congress--
(1) condemns the Government of the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea for the abduction and continued captivity
of citizens of the Republic of Korea and Japan as acts of
terrorism and gross violations of human rights;
(2) calls upon the North Korean Government to immediately
cease and desist from carrying out abductions, release all
victims of kidnapping and prisoners-of-war still alive in
North Korea, and provide a full and verifiable accounting of
all other cases;
(3) recognizes that resolution of the nuclear issue with
North Korea is of critical importance, however, this should
not preclude United States Government officials from raising
abduction cases and other critical human rights concerns in
any future negotiations with the North Korean regime;
(4) calls upon the United States Government not to remove
the Democratic People's Republic of Korea from the Department
of State's list of State Sponsors of Terrorism until such
time that North Korea renounces state-sponsored kidnapping
and provides a full accounting of all abduction cases; and
(5) admonishes the Government of the People's Republic of
China for the forced repatriation to North Korea of Han Man-
taek, a South Korean prisoner-of-war and comrade-in-arms of
the United States, and for its failure to exercise sovereign
control over teams of North Korean agents operating freely
within its borders.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from New
Jersey (Mr. Smith) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley) each
will control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I
may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution authored by
the gentleman from Illinois (Chairman Hyde) which brings the largely
untold story to the attention of the American people, as well as to the
international community, of the continued involvement of the North
Korean regime in the kidnapping of thousands of innocent people. These
abductions began more than half a century ago according to a survey of
the Korean National Red Cross, which documented the kidnappings of over
7,000 South Koreans during the Korean War.
Those abducted represent a wide cross-section of society from both
South Korea and Japan: film producers and fishermen, housewives and
ministers, airline attendants and university students, mothers and even
children. North Korean agents did not discriminate in their cold and
calculated selection of potential victims. Cases through the years
include the 1977 abduction of a 13-year-old Japanese girl by North
Korean frogmen who came ashore in her country.
As recently as August of 2004, a former North Korean, now a South
Korean, passport holder, was reported by her husband as having been
kidnapped in China by agents of North Korea.
Officially sanctioned kidnapping represents horrific behavior, and it
raises the question as to whether abduction should be cited as
terrorist activity. Should Pyongyang remain on the State Department's
list of state sponsors of terrorism because of regime collusion in such
reprehensible activity? The kidnapping and subsequent murder in
Pakistan of American journalist Daniel Pearl in the months following
the attacks of September 11 seems to have answered that question once
and for all.
Organized kidnapping does constitute an act of terrorism. The fact
that
[[Page H5610]]
Pyongyang has conspired with the Japanese Red Army, a designated
terrorist organization, is a clear indication of its own connection to
terrorist activities.
The United States and other allies who fought together in the Korean
War under the banner of the United Nations have a direct interest in
the forced detention of certain individuals by the North Korean regime.
Those detained include, according to a South Korean Ministry of
National Defense estimate, over 500 South Korean prisoners of war held
over half a century, against their will and in violation of the 1953
Korean War Armistice agreement. The fact that they had been held for
more than 50 years in horrific conditions that include forced labor is
of deep concern to both Congress and the people of the United States.
Those kidnapped also include a South Korean citizen who was then a
student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as a
South Korean missionary who is a spouse of a resident of the State of
Illinois. Those cases are of direct concern to Members of Congress.
Mr. Speaker, we all recognize that resolution of the nuclear issue on
the Korean peninsula is of critical importance. We welcome Pyongyang's
decision announced over the weekend to return to the Six-Party Talks
later this month as a first step back from the brink. Let us hope this
leads to concrete progress.
North Korea has asked for signs of respect from the United States in
connection with its decision to return to the negotiating table in
Beijing. However, the North Korean regime must recognize that in order
to win the respect that it craves from the United States and the
international community, it must begin to behave in acceptable ways.
Continued gross human rights violations, including the abductions of
persons from South Korea, Japan and other countries, are absolutely
deplorable and will only bring additional dishonor to the North Korean
regime, and certainly they are not means for winning the respect and
acceptance by the international community.
Pyongyang should immediately cease and desist from carrying out
abductions, release all victims of kidnappings and prisoners of war
still alive in North Korea, and provide a full and verifiable
accounting of all other cases. Only then can a reformed North Korea
take its place as a full member in the community of nations.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. CROWLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution, and I thank
the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) for overseeing this important
resolution that was offered by the gentleman from Illinois (Chairman
Hyde).
Mr. Speaker, over the past 50 years, the North Korea Government has
systematically kidnapped hundreds of innocent citizens of foreign
countries. Young men and women from Japan and South Korea have been
kidnapped by North Korean agents from beaches in Japan, fishing boats
off the South Korean coast, and the border region of China near North
Korea. Left behind have been hundreds of families desperately seeking
the return of their loved ones.
While a few Japanese citizens were finally allowed to return to their
families in Japan in 2002, many more remain behind, along with hundreds
of kidnapped citizens from South Korea.
Mr. Speaker, the United States has many issues which must be
negotiated with the North Koreans, from their nuclear program to human
rights. We are therefore encouraged by the announcement over the
weekend that the Six-Party Talks will resume at the end of July in
Beijing. This resolution makes it clear that the issue of North Korean
abductees must be part of any dialogue with the North Korean leadership
and that our countries will never have fully normal relations until all
questions surrounding the abductees have been answered.
{time} 1415
Mr. Speaker, as we meet today, there are hundreds of Japanese and
South Korean families desperately seeking knowledge about long lost
relatives kidnapped by North Korea. It is our duty to make every effort
to reunite these families with their loved ones and to get them the
information they have been seeking for decades.
I strongly support this resolution, and I urge my colleagues to do so
as well.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my
time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pearce). The question is on the motion
offered by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) that the House
suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution, H. Con. Res.
168, as amended.
The question was taken.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds of
those present have voted in the affirmative.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and
nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX and the
Chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be
postponed.
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