Defector visits Boise. His message: North Korea’s leader ‘is very evil.’

Kang Myung-do fled North Korea in 1994 and defected to South Korea.

While in South Korea, Kang, the former son-in-law of a previous North Korean premier and a distant relative of current leader Kim Jong Un, became a political science professor at Kyonggi University.

Now Kang says he fears for his safety in South Korea. He has become so concerned, he sent his son to live in Idaho for protection, and he himself is considering leaving South Korea.

He told the Idaho Statesman that he fears for his life because, for the past four years, he has been helping North Koreans flee due to starvation, religious persecution, political oppression and other hardships.

He left his university post last year to focus full time on what he says is his calling — helping the 23 million North Korean people “crying out for help.”

Kang helps relocate the North Korean refugees to other countries, including Thailand, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the U.S.

He traveled to the U.S. from South Korea last week to meet with church leaders in Idaho and other parts of the country to seek help for North Korean refugees.

The visit to Idaho, his first, provided the Idaho Statesman a rare opportunity to sit down with a North Korean defector and discuss the current political climate on the Korean Peninsula.

“When I come to the state of Idaho, I feel like it is so peaceful and so beautiful. I can feel the heart of people in Idaho,” Kang told the Statesman via an interpreter, Okhee Chang, a pastor with Living Word Church in Meridian.

Kim Jong Un worse than father

When he fled North Korea 25 years ago at age 35, Kang said, he thought things were bad. Now he thinks “North Korea is the biblical end of the world.”

He attributes this direness to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who assumed power after his father, Kim Jong Il, died in 2011. Kim has stepped up efforts to prevent people from fleeing North Korea, Kang explained.

“When the father died, the border river (between North Korea and China) was not barricaded, but now Kim Jong Un barricaded it with very high-voltage electricity. So people who try to cross will get electrocuted,” Kang said.

North Korea does not have enough electricity to keep the fence electrified all the time, so it has started putting poison on the fence, Kang said. People who come in contact with the poison suffer severe injuries, he explained, showing the Statesman a photo of a man’s leg, which was gashed and severely inflamed after coming in contact with the poisoned fence, according to Kang.

“They are killing a lot of people crossing the border to China,” he said. “The security army has machine guns to kill them, to prevent the crossings.”

“Just recently, a mother and daughter were crossing and they shot at them with a machine gun. The mother got hit, so the daughter tried to rescue the mom and they shot daughter and mother together,” said Kang, who showed the Statesman a video of the shooting. “This did not happen with his father. Kim Jong Un is worse than his father.”

A landmark 400-page United Nations Commission of Inquiry study released in 2014 documented “unspeakable atrocities” committed in North Korea based on firsthand testimony from victims and witnesses.

“The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world,” the Commission says in its report.

Human Rights Watch has identified North Korea as “one of the world’s most repressive states.”

Ongoing and escalating torture, starvation and other abuses of North Korean citizens by their government has led Kang to step up his effort to help North Koreans escape, he said.

Due to security concerns, Kang said he cannot say how many people he has helped flee because “the North Korean government is extremely sensitive,” but it is “a lot of people.”

As a political scientist, Kang has been critical of Kim in international media interviews, including one last year with CNN.

Five years ago, Reuters reported some North Korean defectors, including Kang, were coming under scrutiny for getting paid to appear on South Korean television news shows to discuss North Korea. The Statesman does not pay for any interviews, including Kang’s.

Another lethal threat

North Koreans are now facing another lethal threat: tuberculosis.

“A lot of kids are dying with TB, they are dying right and left,” Kang said, explaining that there has been much reporting on people dying from malnutrition, but not as much on tuberculosis deaths, which has been a recent development.

“When I left in 1994, I did not hear about that many people with TB,” he said. But after Kim came into power, he began focusing on developing nuclear weapons.

“He is spending all the money there, so the young and elderly people have incredible lack of nutrition and they do not have an immune system, so all these people are dying from TB,” Kang said.

The World Health Organization 2018 Global Tuberculosis report identified North Korea as one of 30 “high TB burden countries.”

Nuclear threat is real

Do not doubt North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, Kang warns.

“They have at least 60 nuclear bombs and they have already tested more than six times. America knows this,” Kang said.

A March 2018 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency briefing identifies North Korea as a “critical threat” to the U.S.

Also, a Congressional report from January 2019 reported: “There is no public U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) consensus of North Korea’s fissile material stockpiles. News reports in August 2017 said that one component of the IC, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), had estimated a stockpile of up to 60 nuclear warheads. ... Some experts believe that North Korea could have potentially produced enough material for 13-21 nuclear weapons, and that North Korea could now potentially produce enough nuclear material for an additional 7 warheads per year.”

When asked if he believes North Korea will honor denuclearization promises, Kang responds: “This is a very important question. … Kim Jong Un will not give up nuclear power.”

The only way Kim can stay in power is with nuclear weapons, Kang explained.

“Without 60 nuclear weapons, President Trump will not acknowledge him at all,” he said.

During a meeting in February in Hanoi, Vietnam, between Trump and Kim, Trump walked away. Kang thinks Trump did so because, “They can sense and see they were being deceived by Kim Jong Un and his assistants” about giving up nuclear weapons. “(Kim) did not really mean it,” Kang said.

The DIA 2019 World Threat Assessment confirms the U.S. government’s skepticism about denuclearization: “We continue to assess that North Korea is unlikely to give up all of its nuclear weapons and production capabilities, even as it seeks to negotiate partial denuclearization steps to obtain key US and international concessions. “

Changing South Korea

Not only did the United States get a new president in 2017, but so did South Korea.

The new president, Moon Jae-in, and the subsequent change in political climate are why Kang now fears for his life in South Korea.

Under South Korea’s previous presidents, the relationship with America “was one accord, so they had the same voice and the same opinion,” he said.

“There is a great big split going on in South Korea right now. It started after Moon started. Moon has been critical of Trump and the UN.”

The DIA Global Threat Assessment report issued in January reported “(Kim Jong Un) met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in three times in 2018, leading to agreements to reconnect roads and rail lines, establish new military parameters, promote reforestation, and facilitate cultural exchanges.”

Because Moon is more aligned with Kim than the previous president was, Kang said his work helping North Korean refugees has put his and his family’s lives in jeopardy.

‘He is very evil’

Kang is hoping America can still help.

“I want to ask and plead, please do not be deceived by Kim Jong Un. He will not give up nuclear weapons. He is very evil.”

Unfortunately, Kang said, he does not see any way out other than war with North Korea with Kim in charge.

“It is already too late for him to change, because he has killed too many people in North Korea,” Kang said. “... And tens of thousands of citizens who are against him, he killed them, people who believe in almighty God or because they tried to cross the river because they are hungry.

“He has killed too many people that citizens will not support him. While international political powers will forgive him, North Korean civilians will not forgive him.”

This story was originally published May 6, 2019 at 5:23 PM.