US Missionary: NKorean Captors Sexually Abused Me

(Oct. 28) -- An evangelical activist imprisoned in North Korea for six weeks after illegally entering the country late last year says he was subjected to sexual abuse and other extreme torture at the hands of his captors.

Robert Park, an American of Korean descent from Tucson, Ariz., crossed the border from China to North Korea on Christmas Day in the hope that "through my sacrifice ... people will come together and they will liberate North Korea," he told South Korean TV. However, almost as soon as he'd walked across the frozen Tumen River into the dictatorship -- shouting "God loves you and God bless you," and clutching a Bible and a letter urging dictator Kim Jong Il to relinquish power -- he was arrested by border guards, beaten up and moved to the capital Pyongyang.

Over the next month, the 28-year-old said, he was repeatedly assaulted and subjected to shocking sexual torture by security forces. "The scars and wounds of the things that happened to me in North Korea are too intense," he said, adding that the extremity of the acts prevented him from discussing exactly what took place. "As a result of what happened to me in North Korea, I've thrown away any kind of personal desire. I will never, you know, be able to have a marriage or any kind of relationship."

Such sexual attacks are now "the preferred interrogation tool" of North Korean security agents, wrote Kang Chol-hwan -- who defected from the North in 1992 after serving 10 years in the regime's Yodok concentration camp -- in South Korean daily The Chosun Ilbo.

Park's willpower was eventually shattered by the constant torture, and in February he read out a confession on North Korean TV stating he had crossed the border because "Western propaganda" had given him a false view of the country, and that he now knew freedom of religion was guaranteed in the North. (It's not. Christians are routinely executed or imprisoned for exercising their faith, which Pyongyang believes is a tool of its enemies in the West.)

Soon after that broadcast, he was freed by North Korea and arrived at Los Angeles airport on Feb. 6 looking pale and thin. Park said he has found it hard to readjust to normal life and admitted to receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. "I struggled with suicide a great deal since I left North Korea," the missionary told The Associated Press during a visit to Seoul this week. "I almost committed suicide. Thankfully my family and friends helped me in America, and they placed me in a hospital."

North Korea's unremittingly brutal treatment of Park stands out from the lesser punishments meted out to other recent American captives. Aijalon Gomes, a fellow evangelical campaigner who followed Park's example and crossed into North Korea in late January, was treated "superbly," according to doctors who examined him in Boston after his release in August. And journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee -- who say they were on the Chinese side of the border when they were seized -- were jailed in dingy, cramped cells and forced to sign confessions, but have not alleged any sexual abuse.

South Korean analysts suspect that Park may have been treated more harshly because his letter, which called on despot Kim to quit, would have been regarded as a personal insult to the so-called Dear Leader, The New York Times noted.

But Park still insists that he was right to enter the country and try to shine a light on the crimes of a regime that, the South Korean government says, is holding 154,000 political prisoners in Stalinist concentration camps. "How can I spend Christmas season living in luxury, exchanging gifts and doing whatever we wanted in a democratic society while in North Korea they are still in a hell?" Park told AP.

And there's only one thing he wishes he could change. "My only regret is ... the false confession," Park told the news agency. "People start to know how evil North Korea was and they know the confession was a lie. They knew the confession was false."