Ms. Yumiko Chiba moved to North Korea with her parents in the North Korean repatriation program when she was little. She lived there for 37 years and defected from the country. She returned to Japan in 2005 and has been earnestly wishing for the abolition of the prison camps and rescue of the surviving prisoners. She has testified that Japanese and North Koreans in Japan who had moved to North Korea in the repatriation program were confined in the prison camps.

Ms. Chiba traveled from Osaka to attend the No Fence opening ceremony on April 13 and joined us as a member on the same day.

---

Dear members of No Fence

My name is Yumiko Chiba, and I am a North Korean defector now livening in Osaka. I would appreciate it if you could read my mind from the message I have written here.

I truly celebrate that No Fence has been established in Japan, and I would like to express my sincere appreciation for all the efforts that have been made to this end. Some of the North Korean defectors living in South Korea also attended the opening ceremony and presented their testimony, so I assume that the reality of the prison camps in North Korea is somewhat better understood now.

While I was living in North Korea, I shed tears after tears, grieving and wondering why I had to go to North Korea and go through such suffering even though I was born in Japan. Are we going to be safe tonight? Will we make it through tomorrow? We never knew when we could be taken to the prison camps all of a sudden. I could never forget those days we spent in fear and trembling.

An organization called the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (abbreviated to Chongryon) deceived more than 93,000 people into moving to North Korea under the so-called “repatriation” program. Many of these repatriates were taken to political prison camps in North Korea, which began with “the 49th Hospital.”

There were people who travelled from Japan but refused to get off the so-called home-returning ferry, the Mangyongbong-92, and asked to be sent back to Japan. The North Korean authorities said that these people were mentally disturbed and had to be taken to hospital for treatment, and forced them to get off the ferry and took them to a mental hospital called the 49th Hospital. These people were confined in a room with an iron-barred window and physically disabled to speak and stand straight, so they had to crawl. So, the first prison camp for the repatriates to North Korea was this 49th Hospital, which was not a hospital, but may be called a “human zoo.”

As such people increased in number, however, the authorities began in 1969 to move and isolate the survivors from the 49th Hospital into the political prison camps that had been used only for prisoners from the inside of North Korea. They stopped impairing the ability of the prisoners and, instead, made them slaves to work in the prison camps. This was the beginning of a new community of Japanese and returning Koreas built within the prison camps, which was separated from the political prisoners from North Korea (contact between the repatriates and domestic prisoners was prohibited even in the prisons). When faced with labor shortages, the authorities took people who acted against the social norm to the repatriate community in the prison camps. These prisoners constituted about 45%* of the initial repatriates from Japan.

The reasons for their imprisonment were, for example, that they said they missed Japan, they had sung a Japanese song just once, they spoke Japanese, they wrote Japanese at home, etc. The authorities confiscated whatever possessions the repatriates had brought from Japan and jailed them in the prison camps. Not only the accused people themselves (most of them were killed in the National Security Agency prison), but their siblings and even relatives were also imprisoned.

Some of these prisoners were Japanese. Absolutely innocent people were forcibly taken to the camps, and countless prisoners lost their lives. The group called Chongryon in Japan told us that we were going to heaven on earth and sent us to a living hell. If such evil organization had not existed, or if they had not deceived people, those victims would not have had to go to such dreadful places as the North Korean prison camps and die there in sorrow. This Chongryon still exists in Japan now in the 21st century, which I could not comprehend why. Come what may, there will never be a time when I am able to forgive them. I believe that the people of Japan and the world need to know about this reality.

Now, we must expose the reality with specific details, eradicate the prison camps and rescue the surviving prisoners from there. Those victims will bear witness to the history, and we must do everything we can do to prevent the horror from recurring.

I should believe that No Fence that has just been established will surely rescue those Japanese and Koreans from Japan now imprisoned in North Korea. No, I absolutely believe that it will. If you should ever need me at No Fence meetings to give my testimony on the 37 years of my life in North Korea, please call me at any time. Tell me what I can do as a member of No Fence. I will do everything I can do, and, though not much, I will dedicate all my power and do the best I can do to help as many people as possible return alive to Japan. Please help me do this.

I look forward to the achievements of No Fence.

April15, 2008 Yumiko Chiba