Our names are Youmin Cho and Daniel Hwang. We are currently entering our second year of law school at Handong International Law School (HILS). This past winter, we were awarded the 2015 Center for Global Justice, Human Rights, and Rule of Law (CGJ) internship grant; a wonderful opportunity given to students at HILS in partnership from Regent University.
With this grant we set out on a rather unconventional route from the past grant receivers. We have chosen to conduct a research on North Korean human rights issues through the support of Citizens Alliance for North Korea (NKHR), a Seoul-based NGO, and Handong Institute for Peace and Reunification (HIPR), an institute created and directed by a HILS Professor Won-Jae Chun.
Looking for a current and timely issue about North Korean human rights problems, we came across the topic of North Korean Overseas Labor (here after Overseas Labor). Recently, Overseas Labor has been gaining more attention in the international community as an issue to further dive deeper due to the recent provocations conducted by the North Korean state. North Korea’s main reason to establish overseas labor is largely due to their policy on earning more foreign currency. However, Overseas Labor violates many international conventions that protect migrant workers such as the standard of labor at the international level, and it violates domestic labor laws in the hosting country.
We set out to contribute as much as we could to bring awareness on this issue of Overseas Labor. By meeting with NGO’s in Seoul that have graciously accepted to sit down with us to speak about their own reports and further discuss possible solutions for the future, we took this information and began to brainstorm possible countries to do a case study on. Our main motivation was to find something to contribute to the international community, which is not an easy task to do by going into foreign countries, knocking on doors, and bringing up sensitive topics such as human rights abuses in the form of Overseas Labor in their country.
However, we have managed to narrow it down to Mongolia. The reason being, we knew the diplomatic history the two countries have had with each other and the factor that Mongolia actively engages with North Korea (i.e. economy and aid). Not having a lot of connections, we had to drastically email as many organizations as we could. We were very skeptical in the sense that we are going to go to Mongolia and will find no one to speak or gather any information. But with prayers from our friends and families, God has provided it to us.
Mongolia was a wonderful experience for both us. Having a plan in mind to meet as many people as we could, we hit the ground running. We were able to meet with a representative of the International Labor Organization office in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolian Human Rights Commission, a member of the Parliament, and a Mongolian Ministry of Labor official. During these meetings, we have learned a great deal of information, old and new. However, the biggest surprise to us was the willingness to give the information to us. I mean, we are only law students.
The next step for us is to continue to work on creating an academic report on this issue of Overseas Labor. We are going to compile the information we have collected, we will keep working to bring awareness on this issue and contribute to furthering human rights in North Korea, and fulfill God’s requirement; Do Justice, Love Mercy, and Walk Humbly with your God – Micah 6:8