Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (Human Rights)

I agree with the Minister on that point. I do not doubt the motives and ability of our staff on the ground, but my question was more one of practicality. There are practical difficulties if one is effectively locked into a compound for almost the entirety of each week, which was the situation as I understood it until recently and is probably still the case. Especially if one also has great difficulty in gaining access to Western media sources, it is difficult to be fully apprised of what is happening on the ground. That was my point. I was not doubting the professionalism of the staff on the ground. We have seen from the Foreign Office’s own human rights report, as will be familiar to others in the debate, that the situation in the DPRK is unique. Pretty much everything and anything horrible that has ever happened to human beings—almost in the history of humanity—seems currently to be going on in the DPRK. We have stories of abductions and disappearances, arbitrary detention and imprisonment, political executions, routine use of torture, forced abortions and infanticide, political prison camps, extreme religious persecution, chemical experimentation, sanatoriums for non-conformists and so on. I mentioned that getting information from the DPRK, especially from within, is incredibly difficult. All reports, including reports coming from aid agencies and human rights agencies, have to be welcomed, but we must bear it in mind that nobody can really be more than 50 per cent. certain of what is happening on the ground in that country. Any information that comes out of the country, as the Minister said, is routinely questioned by the DPRK authorities. For example, witness statements of escapees and underground samizdat-style documents have their authenticity questioned by the DPRK. The regime is particularly afraid of photographs and video from within the country. A couple of years back a Japanese TV crew had a video—I cannot remember how they obtained it—of a public execution in North Korea. The video, which was unsurprisingly not of a particularly high quality, was routinely denigrated by the North Korean authorities as a forgery. That was despite the evidence being at least strongly—it is impossible to say ““overwhelmingly”” in any of these cases—in favour of it being genuine. I know that many photographs, at least, are genuine, because I was the photographer for some of them. I was in the DPRK for 10 days in September 2003. I am sure that others here have been to the country as well. It is a shame that we are not allowed any visual aids in these debates, because some of the things even that I photographed were quite harrowing and frightening. That was on an orchestrated visit, when for every moment of the day, from the moment that one wakes up to the moment that one is returned to the hotel room, one is constantly accompanied by policemen of the state. I have photos of undernourished children who appear to be doing forced manual labour, emaciated farm animals and thousands of people queuing all night—one cannot actually see that on the photo, of course—for trains that seem never to arrive. I wanted to give a flavour of the DPRK based on my visit as a private tourist. It is very difficult to go to the DPRK as a private tourist. First, it is necessary to go through an agency in Germany—at least, that was the case three years ago. One has to sign all sorts of papers and is subject to all sorts of investigations to check whether one is a journalist: they are very paranoid about journalists, and many categories of people are not allowed in. People are given a choice: they can either go for five, seven or 10 days. I strongly urge anyone thinking of going not to go for the seven or 10-day option. If people really must go, they should go solely under the five-day option. It is necessary to pay quite a lot of money to the regime for the rather dubious privilege of visiting the DPRK. When I visited in September 2003, the country had been entirely out of bounds to western visitors for six months, due to what one might call the severe acute respiratory syndrome crisis, or scare, depending on one’s point of view. I was one of the first western visitors there for some time, other than diplomats and those from very specific aid agencies. I shall return to the question of human rights in a moment, but it is important to realise that although visitors to the country only get a limited view of it, their view might ironically be better than that gained by our ambassador or other diplomats during the 10 days they are afforded. Again, I am not denigrating the Government’s efforts. Visitors are accompanied at all times by people loosely called interpreters or guides. It is reasonable to assume, judging from their behaviour, that they are actually intelligence officers, or closely linked to and monitored by them. Visitors have no say over their itinerary, what they are allowed to photograph, their contact with local people or even their contact with the very few other travellers or westerners who may be there. On my trip, I was one of three visitors, and we were accompanied by two interpreters and a driver. The interpreters spoke reasonably good English and, strangely, had been to quite an interesting collection of countries: Germany, Finland, Russia, China, Bulgaria, Turkey and the Seychelles. It is reasonable to assume that such travel possibilities are beyond the means, both financial and political, of normal DPRK citizens. I see the Minister nodding. Given the defections over the years from the DPRK, it can be assumed that these people are absolute, utter loyalists. They go to extreme lengths to prevent travellers from seeing or recording anything that might give a negative impression of the DPRK. For example, it is necessary to get permission for each photograph taken. If visitors want to photograph anything relating to the general living standard or lifestyle in the country, they have to develop the most elaborate ruse for taking it. With good photography equipment, it is possible to tell the guide that one is taking a photograph of something, while taking one of something entirely different. The guides would organise a shot by going up to the individuals whom one wanted in an otherwise benign photograph—the Juche monument in Pyongyang, for example—and removing them from the background. It was always the individuals who were shabbily dressed—I mean them no disrespect—or appeared in any way not to be in line with DPRK ideology who were removed. Virtually everything told us by these interpreters or guides during our trip was a demonstrable lie, but appeared to be less of a lie than the propaganda fed to the ordinary citizens. When we went to what might be called a tourist site, a local guide would take us around and the interpreter would translate. The information that the locals were given was truly mind-boggling and even the stuff the interpreters told us seemed reasonable by comparison. It was possible to get into serious trouble. A friend of mine with whom I was travelling made what he thought was a joking comment about a roadside statue of Kim Il Sung in a raincoat and hat, which was pretty much his standard garb. It happened to be raining, and my friend said, ““It is lucky that he is in his raincoat when it is raining,”” but that showed grave respect to Kim Il Sung, and my friend was admonished by one of our guides. It is possible to escape from the guides and have a look around, but I would not recommend doing that, as one tends not to make oneself too popular if one does. In terms of the economy and general standard of living, North Korea is a peculiar combination of the modern and the mediaeval. Hon. Members should bear it in mind that this information is three years out of date, but I have no reason to believe that the situation has improved a great deal since then. The countryside abounds with oxen and carts only a short distance from seemingly prestigious projects such as hydroelectric dams. Next door to a hydroelectric dam, one could see a group of people seemingly building a small dam out of mud with their bare hands, and around the next corner one could see a modern 10-lane highway entirely empty of motor vehicles. It is a country of bizarre contrasts.