Norbert Vollertsen
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Norbert Vollertsen (born 10 February 1958 in Dusseldorf) is a German doctor and human rights activist. He practiced medicine in North Korea from 1999 to 2001 and received a medal from the North Korean government for his humanitarian assistance. He was given a pass that allowed him to travel the country freely, which was very unusual for a foreigner.
As he traveled in his capacity as an emergency physician with a German NGO, tending to the illnesses and injuries of common North Koreans in the countryside, he struggled with a nearly non-existent healthcare system, abject poverty and growing proof of a network of prison camps and penitentiaries that enforced the flow of wealth from the citizenry to the Pyongyang-based military and labor party headed by Kim Jong Il. Using smuggled cameras, he obtained photos and films of flagrant, large-scale human-rights abuses, which touched his conscience as a German whose own people committed similar atrocities in the decades before his birth. In particular, mass starvation was used as a tool of political control. He became convinced that the North Korean government was evil and began campaigning against it, resulting in his being forced to leave the country. He later became one of the most prominent activists protesting human rights abuses in North Korea, as well as what he considers the apathy of outside, particularly South Korean people, towards North Korean suffering.
The North Korean government has portrayed him as a dishonest media manipulator suffering from mental instability. His wife, reacting to his decision to stay in South Korea as an anti-Kim activist, divorced him and is raising their children with a partner. "My wife blamed me for not taking care of my family. She said my vision, my goals, my projects, were worth much more to me. And afterwards, I realised she was right. I do not want to sacrifice my family. But I know my wife and her partner are taking care of my children, and that they are safe and healthy. But the North Korean children are not", said Vollertsen in 2003 [1].
On March 20, 2005, Vollertsen claimed to have been beaten by US security personnel during a press conference held in South Korea attended by Condoleezza Rice.[2] In September 2006, Vollertsen claims to have been attacked by a gang and to have been run over by a taxi while in Seoul prior to giving a speech on North Korea.[3]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Norbert Vollertsen on the Institute for Corean-American Studies website.
- Interview with the blog One Free Korea, October 28, 2005.
- Lecture transcript, October 14, 2003.
- "Eyewitness to the Axis of Evil", Good News Magazine, May/June 2002 issue.
- "Diary of a Mad Place", Time Asia, January 22, 2001.
- "For the Masses, 'Nothing Has Changed,' Expelled Doctor Asserts", The International Herald Tribune, January 9, 2001.
