Juliette De Rivero at Tedxruamontealegre

We've been talking a lot about multipolarity, interdependence and connectivity, and I'm gonna challenge that a little bit, and talk about isolation, and I'm gonna give you a glimpse of life inside the most isolated country in the world: North Korea. If you were a north korean, you would be born into one of three social classes. This would not depend on what you thought or what you did or what you achieved, it would depend on what your ancestors did, on what your grandparents did. If your grandparents were heroes of the revolution and fought on the right side of the war, then you would be in the loyal class. You would have access to the capital, Pyongyang, you would have access to higher studies, you would have access to the best jobs in North Korea. If you were more or less from an ordinary background, your grandparents didn't do much either way, you would be considered part of a wavering class, a class that isn't so trustworthy. If you were born in a family that took the wrong side of the war, or that at some point had contact with the capitalist world, or that had some link to Japan, or that in the past had expressed some doubt about the revolution, then you would be considered part of the hostile class, even if you loved the government, even if you loved the dear leader. Think about it: what did your grandparents do in your country? Where would that place you in the social class? If you were north korean, you would be taught not to think for yourself and not to think freely. You would be taught to memorize the teachings of the revolution by the dear leader and to repeat them. If you were north korean, you would probably be quite hungry now. In fact, after the end of the Cold War, the whole state system of food distribution collapsed, and North Korea experienced famine that it had never known before. It is estimated that between 240 thousand and 3 million people died to starvation. So if you were a north korean, probably several of your family members would have died in the famine, and your main concern today would probably be to find food for you and your family. Now I know what you're thinking! You're thinking "if I was a north korean, I would organize, I would denounce my government, I would prevent them from violating human rights, because that's the person that I am, and we must fight for our rights. But if you were north korean, if you expressed even doubt about your government system or the way it was performing, if you criticized it, or even just complained a little bit, you would be taken straight to detention, and you would probably end up in a forced labour camp or in a political prison camp. If you were looking at your dying child, dying of hunger, and you were to say out loud "my God, why did the government abandon us? They used to bring us food, and now my child is dying!", you would be considered a traitor, you would be disloyal to the government that you should be thankful for, even if your daughter is dying. But it wouldn't just be you. Your parents and your children would be sent to detention as well, because what you say will put them in prison too, and this is what in North Korea they call guilt by association. Kim I Sook was 30 years old and living with her aunt when security forces arrived at her house and took her away to camp 18. When she arrived in camp 18, she saw a woman. This woman was standing in front of her, she was dressed in rags, her feet didn't have shoes, there were rags tied around her feet to protect her from the cold, she was like a skeleton, and she smelt bad. Kim I Sook didn't recognize this woman, but this woman was her mother who had been arrested before her, and who she thought had disappeared. When Kim I Sook arrived in this camp, at dawn she was taken to indoctrination classes, and by midday she was forced to work in coal mines, where she used her bare hands to mine the coal. In forced labor camps in North Korea the prisoners suffer from deliberate, induced starvation. They are used for hard labour as long as they survive there. Kim I Sook would soon look like her mother. In fact, she spent 28 years in camp 18. But she survived camp 18 and she survived North Korea and she managed to escape the country, and she managed to flee through China and seek safety. And she managed to tell the tale, and that's how we know it. Seven of her family members died to famine and forced labour in that camp, and her siblings are still there today. She survived to tell the tale and to draw this map of camp 18. The political prison maps in North Korea are not just buildings that house several hundreds of prisoners, or a thousand prisoners. They are entire villages, enormous places that house tens of thousands of political prisoners, or so-called political prisoners. Most of them don't know what they did. It is estimated that today 130 thousand people live in these political prison camps. Right next door to camp 18 there is camp 14 which is a total control zone camp. This is a camp where people are sent to and they're not, they will never come out of this camp. Shin Don Hook was born in camp 14. He was born to parents that were, that had good behavior in the camp, and because they had good behavior, they were allowed to have intercourse. Because in these camps family life isn't normal and people aren't allow to marry. The guards decide who can mate with who and they choose the partners, if you behave well. Shin Don Hook and his brother were born out of this arrangement, but they didn't live as a family: his father was sent to the male quarters of hard labour where he shared space with other men in dire conditions; his brother was sent to a labour zone where he was with the youth and working there; and his mother also did hard labour, and she was never able to take care of him. So the only thing that he knew was the guards in the camp, and the camp rules. Rule number 1: if you try to escape from this camp, we will shoot you. Rule number 2: if you see someone trying to escape or you hear that they're planning to escape and you don't denounce them, we will shoot you. Rule number 3: if you steal food or hide food, we will shoot you. Rule number 4: if you don't obey the orders of the guards, we will also shoot you. And there are 10 rules like this. One day, Shin was walking back to the room that he shared with his mother and through the crack of the wood he saw that his brother had escaped from the labour zone where he worked. He was his brother whispering to his mother, and he knew what he had to do. He went running to his teacher and he told her "they are planning an escape!", and he did this because he thought he would get a good reward for this. He thought he would get the food that he so desperately needed. In these conditions, the prisoners hunt rats, they hunt insects, anything to be able to supplement their dietary life. But they didn't give him a reward. They took him away, and they took him to a place where they interrogated him, and they tortured him. They asked him to give them the information about the plan of escape, what did he know, he should denounce, he should say more, he knows more. They took his, they put a hook in his skin and they tied him up to the ceiling and they lit a fire with coals and they brought him down and burnt him on the coals. He was twelve years old. Then, after many days of torture like this, he was thrown into a cell, and there was an old man there and this old man nursed his wounds with the little brothel they received to eat. And he said that this was the first time that he had felt human affection. One day, when his wounds had healed, the guards came to look for him and they threw him in the back of a pick-up truck, and he saw his father there, who had also been taken away and interrogated. And they were taken to the area of the camp where executions take place, public executions, and there were hundreds and thousands of prisoners there, waiting. And they were taken to the from and he was convinced that he was going to be executed and he stood there and, to his relief, he saw his mother and his brother being pulled forward for execution. And he saw them executed. And he thought to himself "they deserve it! they were planning to escape!". He felt no remorse about it. That was the person he had become. A few years later, a new prisoner arrived at camp 14, a prisoner that had stories about the outside world. And he told him about food in the outside world, and he told him about chicken, and they started to fantasize about this, and this is what motivated them to plan an escape. And they went to the electric fence of the camp and his friend tried to crawl through the electric fence and got stuck and electrocuted and died. But the weight of his body on this fence created a gap that Shin was able to climb through. And that was the beginning of his escape from North Korea, through China, and into safety. And it's only after many months after he got into safety that he realized what he had done, and he realized what a normal bond between a mother and a child should be. So what is the world doing about North Korea? What has the world done about North Korea? About the human rights situation there? Well, not much, because the world is preoccupied with the nuclear situation in North Korea, and this seems to be the only thing that the United Nations is worried about. For a long time, we've been waiting for a strong response. But we had a breakthrough last year: finally the United Nations decided to set up a UN commission of inquiry to listen to the stories of the north korean survivors, and start to build a picture of life inside North Korea. They were tasked to determining whether these violations constitute crimes against humanity and who is responsible for them and how to hold them responsible for it. They will present their findings for the UN in March 2014, and when they do that, we need to world to have a strong response, and to send a clear message to North Korea that the violations must stop. You're not north korean. You can speak, you can influence your government. You can tell them what you've heard, you can tell them to speak out, because many human rights resolutions on North Korea have been adopted, but countries that have democracies, that have lived through their own struggles of human rights have stayed silent with North Korea. Countries like Nigeria, like Senegal, like South Africa, have abstained on votes on North Korea's human rights situation in the United Nations. South Africa, Indonesia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil voted once as an abstention then changed it's vote to "yes" but not an energetic "yes". We need these governments not just to vote "yes", but to denounce this, to tell North Korea that they have to close the camps, that it is unacceptable in this day and age. You have a voice. You're not north korean, you can speak to your government, you can speak to student associations, you can mobilize your NGOs, you can knock at the door of foreign ministries. You must do it. We must have a strong voice, this is our opportunity. You must tell your foreign ministry that we could all be north korean. Thank you.