North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Hanna Song: How to ensure North Korean voices are not forgotten

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

This week, Hanna Song of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB) returns to the podcast to discuss the NGO’s latest white paper documenting a huge surge in regime crackdowns on outside information, as well as how NKDB’s researchers gather credible data. She shares her perspective on the controversy over the all-male speaker […]

Explore the unofficial world of DPRK-inspired apparel at NK News Shop. Dive into a captivating collection of North Korea-themed t-shirts, hoodies and more at the NK News Shop. From the popular Daedonggang beer t-shirts to the adventurous air choreo designs, each for Support independent journalism with every purchase. Explore our range today at shop.nknews.org. That's shop.nknews.org. Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. My name is Jaco Zwetsug. I'm your host and this episode was recorded on Friday, the 18th of October 2024 here in the NK News studio. Today's guest is a returnee. It's Hannah Song, the executive director of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights or NKDB.

You can find her and her organization's work online at nkdb.org. Hannah, welcome back on the show. Good morning. You were last on the show in November 2021, almost exactly three years ago during the height of COVID. I'm sure we did it via distance then. We did. And that was episode 209.

And people can go back and listen to that one. We've stopped numbering our episodes now. So I've no idea what number we're up to. What do you think we're on? I think it's gonna be close to 400. Wow. Yeah. Anyway, thank you for coming back.

Now on January the 22nd this year, you were appointed to your new newish position as the executive director of the database center for North Korean human rights. Now you and I first met when you were still a student in 2015 in the Netherlands, so that means you're still relatively young compared to an old gonde like me. So how are you finding the new position? finding the new position? It still feels new-ish. So I've been at NKDB for nine years now. So when we met in 2015,

I think I was just finishing up my studies in the Netherlands. We met when I was doing, I was sitting on a program, a course at Leiden University where you were. That's when I was starting to really get into North Korea. And then as soon as I graduated, I came to Seoul and started at NKDB October 2015. So I've been there. I've been at NKDB. I've done all of the positions. I've done volunteer, intern,

researcher, team lead, director of international cooperation, just became executive director. And I thought I knew the organization inside and out, but there's a lot I'm learning. But we have a really great team and the organization. How large is the team? So we have 17. So we're one of the largest North Korean human rights organizations that are based in South Korea. Okay. And what are some of the challenges that you based in South Korea. Yeah, okay.

And what are some of the challenges that you face in that new position? The organization has been around for 21 years now and... It's almost as old as you are. Almost, almost. And, you know, we're at a time, I think, when the interest in North Korean human rights is plateauing internationally, even though the South Korean government is, you know, really pushing North Korean human rights forward

as an agenda. Right. So how, you know, the founders of our organization have done really excellent work in creating the strategies for how we've done our work for the past 20 years, but it's the same approach that we've taken the same way we should be going for the next 20 years, but it's the same approach that we've taken the same way we should be going for the next 20 years. We don't want to be doing this for another 20 years.

I think you asked me this question. I don't know if you remember, I remember in our last podcast interview of what does NKDB want to do in the next 20 years? And I said, not this. We don't want to be doing this anymore. Ideally, you'd all be out of a job and the organization wouldn't need to exist anymore. Right, or we'd be inside North Korea. For example, okay, yeah.

And so how paying tribute to the great work that has been done by our predecessors, how do we continue with the same principles of this human rights-based approach, victim-centered approach, keep making sure that the North Koreans are at the center of everything that we do, but what are the different strategies that we take? And our staff are young. I think a lot of people think that North Korean human rights, especially in South Korea, is really centered around a lot of older conservative male voices. Have you read my next question already? That is exactly what I was going to ask you about. And that's one of my biggest challenges, I think.

I'm still the minority when I go to meetings where I haven't grown up overseas, being a woman, being young. Yes. Young, I am young. So yeah, it's, I think also trying to, the approach that we take of Having a purely human rights approach of it. Not just being we're not a unification organization For example, and often when you talk about North Korean human rights, it comes hand-in-hand with unification

It often does and that's not necessarily our approach to the work Organization is not for example interrupt, ideologically opposed to a separate North and South Korea existing side by side as long as human rights improved in North Korea. Exactly. I mean, we're also not opposed to unification either. You don't have a stance either way?

No. Okay. The, you know, the vision is society within North Korean people are able to practice their rights and their freedoms, whether that's in a separate North Korea, whether that's a separate Korea, which is the DPRK or a different form of North Korea, or a unified Korea. That's not something I think we decide as an organization. We're just here to make sure that the information and the evidence and the data to make sure that the North Korean people are able to exercise their rights is there.

Now, a lot of the, you've just said before that a lot of the interest in North Korean human rights is plateauing even here in South Korea. And so it feels a little bit like a juggling act in that when I go to some public facing events run by South Korean events about North Korea, as you say, it is often run by old people, older people, often men in their retirement, let's be honest. And there's a very formulaic way of running these public facing events. It's like, let's start with a national anthem, and then we have somebody give a congratulatory speech and then, you know, it's a there's a very clear way that these these are done and it's very hierarchical and a lot of old men up the front.

But you know I kind of I see the limitations of that and getting young people interested but also at the same time I recognize that a lot of the donors a lot of the volunteers they are drawing from the class of older people and they're the ones who often remain interested in North Korea because they remember a time when there was a unified Korea. So is there a juggling act and is the fact that you're now an executive director of sign of change? I think it's a great question but I wonder though and I haven't looked into this properly but maybe it's worth looking into how much of the support and I mean financial support actually come from these people.

I don't think many of them are actually donors in the space. A lot of the North Korean human rights organizations are actually funded from foundations or organizations overseas. There's not a lot of the interest in North Korean human rights doesn't necessarily translate to financially supporting many organizations in South Korea. And I think that's also a big limitation that we see where still the understanding of what the role of civil society, NGOs are in South Korea is still quite weak. And so a lot of people don't see that it's a problem that the Ministry of Unification are almost, you know, trying to monopolize everything that's been done on North

Korean human rights in recent, the recent months since, you know, Yun Sang-kyun has been putting that forward on his agenda. So I think we can slowly, you know, break out of that the structure that exists. One thing that we've been doing at NKDB, a big goal that we have is to establish a permanent museum on North Korean human rights. And one of the ways that we are preparing to reach that goal is by doing different pop-up exhibitions. And you've been to our exhibition that we have just down the road, but we also did one in Samcheongdong, which is the art district gallery in Seoul where we collaborated with some really young South Korean media artists. And that was really great for us because usually artists are a little bit more progressive or on the left-leaning side of the political spectrum

and the audience that we find quite difficult to reach out to, but we want to reach out. We want to depoliticize the issue. And so, you know, taking North Korean human rights out of the Korea Press Center conference facility and taking a lot of the data and the information and the testimonies that we have to these young artists created a space that we were even, you know, surprised by.

And that was also really motivating for our own staff who have been working on the issue. And so we'll continue to do our research and our data collection. And you know, we just had a big conference at the Career Press Center just a few weeks ago. And that's not something we'll completely step away from, but we also understand that there needs to be other ways of sharing the information that we have to make sure that the North Korean voices aren't forgotten,

especially living, I think, in a day and age where, you know, what's happening in Ukraine and in Gaza, you see so many photos and videos and people need that visual stimulation and so creating I think art and memorialization through art is something that we're focusing on at the moment. Very interesting. That's just a glimpse of what's coming up in this episode. Don't miss the full conversation. Become an NK News member for the entire podcast episode, as well as daily news insights, stories

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