| Shin Suk-ja | |
|---|---|
| Hangul | 신숙자 |
| Hanja | 申淑子 |
| Revised Romanization | Shin Suk-ja |
| McCune–Reischauer | Shin Suk-ja |
Shin Suk-ja (also spelled Shin Sook-ja; born 1942) is a South Korean political prisoner held in a North Korean political prison camp. She is married to Oh Kil-nam and has two daughters Oh Hye-won (Hangul: 오 혜원; also spelled Oh Hae-Won) and Oh Kyu-won (Hangul: 오 규원; also spelled Oh Gyu-Won). In 1985 the whole family was lured to North Korea by North Korean agents' false promises of medical treatment and jobs. After Oh Kil-nam did not return from a trip to Europe, Shin Suk-ja and her daughters were taken to Yodok political prison camp in 1987 and imprisoned since then.
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Shin was born in Tongyeong, Gyeongsangnam-do, Korea in an area now part of South Korea. She attended elementary and middle school there. From 1958 she studied nursery at Masan Nursing School.[1] In 1970 she left South Korea for Germany, where she worked as a nurse in Tuebingen. There she met Oh Kil-nam, a South Korean economics student and they married in 1972.[2] Later they moved near Kiel (Germany), where she gave birth to her two daughters Oh Hae-won (on September 17, 1976) and Oh Kyu-won (on June 21, 1978). The family lived together and the children attended school and took violin classes in Kronshagen near Kiel until 1985.[3]
In 1985 Shin was ill from hepatitis and injured in a traffic accident. North Korean agents promised free first-class treatment for her and a good government job for her husband in Pyongyang, North Korea. She did not want to go, but her husband ignored her objections and the family moved to North Korea.[4]
Her fate is similar to that of tens of thousands of Koreans that lived in Japan and were lured to North Korea on false promises. The most prominent is the family of Kang Chol-hwan.
In North Korea all promises remained unfulfilled. Instead the family was sent to an indoctrination camp and had to study Juche ideology and the teachings of Kim Il-sung.[5] Then they were made to work in a radio station broadcasting North Korean propaganda to South Korea. Later agents dispatched Oh Kil-nam back to Germany to recruit other South Korean students for North Korea, telling him his family could not go along.[6] Oh remembers that his wife hit him in the face when he said he would come back with some South Koreans, and that she then told him, "we have to pay the price for our wrong decision, but you shouldn't follow an order that victimizes others and just run away. Our daughters shouldn't become the daughters of hateful accomplices. If you escape this country, please rescue us, but if you fail, believe that we're dead."[7]
In 1986 Oh Kil-nam requested political asylum in Denmark on his way to Germany. In 1987 Shin and her daughters (then 9 and 11 years old) were deported to Yodok camp, apparently because her husband did not return to North Korea.[8] Official North Korean intermediaries gave Oh letters from Shin and her daughters in 1988 and 1989, and an audio tape with their voices and six photos of the family from Yodok in 1991.[9] Some of the photos[10] were published. The North Korean defectors and former prisoners of Yodok camp An Hyuk and Kang Chol-hwan confirmed that Shin attempted suicide several times, but was still alive at the time of their release.[11]
There are rumors that Shin was temporary relocated to another prison camp in September 2011 and that despite her poor health she denied to write a pledge of allegiance to Kim Jong-il.[12]
In 1993 Amnesty International started a campaign to free Shin and her daughters from Yodok camp. On the basis of all the available information, Amnesty International believes that Shin Sook Ja and her two daughters were detained because of Oh's request for political asylum abroad. Amnesty International considers Shin and her daughters to be prisoners of conscience and called on the North Korean authorities to release them immediately and unconditionally.[13] But the North Korean authorities not even confirmed her whereabouts.
In April 2011 human rights activists in Shin's hometown started the "Daughter of Tongyeong Rescue Campaign",[14] which received some media attention in South Korea and worldwide[15] and collected already more than 70.000 signatures to free Shin and her daughters.[16]
In November 2011 Amnesty International included Shin and other political prisoners in Yodok camp into the “Write for Rights” letter-writing campaign.[17]
Yodok Kwan-li-so No. 15 is one of six large political prison camps in North Korea.[18] Men, women and children in the camp face forced hard labour, inadequate food, beatings, totally inadequate medical care and unhygienic living conditions. Many fall ill while in prison, and a large number die in custody or soon after release. Around 50,000 people are held in Yodok, and most are imprisoned without trial or following grossly unfair trials on the basis of "confessions" obtained through torture.[19]
Yodok camp is documented in detail with testimonies and annotated satellite images.[20]
