Harry Wu

By Kang Hyun-kyung

A Chinese dissident said Sunday he believed Kim Young-hwan’s testimony that he was tortured while held at a detention center in the northeastern city of Dandong near the border with North Korea.

“If a South Korean was at a Chinese detention center, he or she would have been tortured. I am not surprised (to hear Kim was tortured by Chinese authorities),” Harry Wu, executive director of Washington-based non-profit group Laogai Research Foundation, said in a phone interview with The Korea Times.

He said China has adopted a country-specific treatment of human rights activists.

“If the detainees were Americans or Japanese, China’s treatment would have been different. They would not have right away tortured Americans or the Japanese,” Wu said. “South Korea is a small country. (China would have calculated that) the South would not seriously protest (even though China abused the Korean activist’s human rights). China would not torture American, British, German, or French human rights activists as they are from powerful nations.”

There are reportedly many Western human rights activists who help North Korean refugees in the northeastern region of China, a popular destination after escaping from their reclusive nation. Local human rights activists say some of them are ethnic Koreans and church people who try to lend a helping hand.

Wu said he had not heard about torture allegations made by Western human rights activists.

The 75-year-old, now an American citizen, made the remarks amid China’s denial of Kim’s torture allegation.

In a meeting with South Korean Ambassador to China Lee Kyu-hyung Friday, Zhang Ming, assistant minister of foreign affairs, denied the torture claim, saying Kim was treated in “a civilized and humanitarian manner.”

In a press release, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Lee urged China to reinvestigate the case, punish those responsible and offer an apology, if the allegation is found to be true.

Wu said China’s double standards on foreign detainees are largely driven by its strategic approach to North Korea.

According to him, China is “using North Korea” as a diplomatic instrument to counter South Korea and Japan and that this explains why the country keeps supporting its poor cousin.

“If South Korea is not involved in the North Korea issue, China is not going to care much about the South. If South Koreans’ human rights activities are related to North Korea, this will create a problem for China,” the activist said.

Wu is a survivor of 19 years in different Chinese “laogai,” forced labor camps, before moving to the United States in 1985.

Kim Young-hwan, a freed human rights activist after 114 days of detention in China, raised the suspicion that the China-North Korea link was the cause of his suffering.

The 49-year-old was arrested by the Chinese state security ministry in late March for helping North Korean refugees and testified that he had a strong feeling that the Chinese authorities were working closely with North Korean security people based in Dandong.

In a recent interview, Kim said while at the detention center, he was threatened to be sent to North Korea by Chinese interrogators on numerous occasions.

Kim is on the North’s most wanted list due to a dramatic turn in his career. In the 1980s, he advocated a communist ideology and strove to build a socialist society in the South.
But he changed his mind after meeting with late North Korean leader Kim Il-sung in the early 1990s after secretly visiting the reclusive nation via submarine with the help of a North Korean spy based in Seoul.

From his visit to the North, Kim later said that he realized the regime was repressive and the people suffered because of a mismanagement of the economy. Since then, Kim has worked for North Korean human rights.