Witness to Evil: German Doctor Endorses Bush Depiction of North Korea, Opposes Engagement’ with Its Brutal Regime

(Washington, D.C.): The father-son Kim dynasty that has subjected North Korea for over five decades to a form of totalitarian repression that even Joseph Stalin could not have imagined made a serious mistake a few years ago. Believing it had found a German doctor who would willingly serve its propaganda ends, the Communist regime in Pyongyang parted the veil behind which it has long obscured the so-called “Hermit Kingdom.”

After Dr. Norbert Vollertsen allowed himself to have portions of his own skin removed to enable a badly burned North Korean factory worker to receive a life-saving graft — an extraordinary personal sacrifice subsequently repeated so that it could be recorded for the government’s indoctrination purposes, the North’s dictator, Kim Jong-Il, allowed Dr. Vollertsen a privilege few Westerners (if indeed any other) has been accorded: an internal passport and driver’s license that allowed him to travel freely throughout much of the country (excluding only areas where the existence of concentration camps and other secret military facilities put them off-limits to virtually everyone).

As a result of this latitude, Dr. Vollertsen had an unequaled opportunity to witness first-hand the true magnitude of the evil that is the North Korean regime — and the staggering toll it is taking on those who are its most immediate and constant victims: the millions of ordinary citizens being starved, terrorized, brainwashed and forced to endure untold hardships in the name of glorifying and serving the “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong-Il.

Dr. Vollertsen’s testimony, which has appeared most recently in the form of an op.ed. in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, is a welcome validation of President Bush’s depiction of the actual character of the Kim regime in North Korea. It is also a much-needed antidote to those who believe that any good can come from treating with, appeasing or otherwise providing political legitimacy and/or economic life-support to this quintessentially evil government.

As a German physician, I was greatly moved by an inscription quoting former President Jimmy Carter at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. — “[W]e must forge an unshakeable oath with all civilized people that never again will the world stand silent, never again will the world . . . fail to act in time to prevent this terrible crime of genocide . . . We must harness the outrage of our own memories to stamp out oppression wherever it exists.”

It is hard to believe that these words came from the same man who recently lambasted President Bush’s “axis of evil” speech, calling it “overly simplistic and counterproductive.” Nowhere in Mr. Carter’s words did I see the caveat “stamp out oppression wherever it exists (excepting North Korea and/or any other dictatorial regime that rapes, murders and systematically starves its own people).” President Carter wrote those words in September 1979 for his President’s Commission on the Holocaust. Twenty-three years later, he seems to have forgotten their meaning.

President Bush has not. He has chosen to speak out; to borrow Mr. Carter’s phrase, he will not “stand silent.” He has bravely called North Korea “evil” — and he is right. I know, because I have seen the evil with my own eyes. From July 1999 to December 2000, I traveled with the German medical group, Cap Anamur, and gained access to some of the Stalinist country’s most remote and secretive regions.

What I witnessed could best be described as unbelievable deprivation. As I wrote for this newspaper last April, “In the hospitals one sees kids too small for their age, with hollow eyes and skin stretched tight across their faces. They wear blue-and-white striped pajamas, like the children in Hitler’s Auschwitz.”

It became clear to me that Kim Jong Il and his Stalinist regime had made little effort to distribute medical supplies and food to the people who needed it most. I soon realized that North Korea’s starvation is not the result of natural disasters or even lack of natural resources. Like the Holocaust in Europe, the horror in North Korea is man-made. Twenty-two million people suffer under a dictatorial regime that uses torture, surveillance and starvation as tools to control its own people. Only the regime’s overthrow will end it.
I was eventually expelled from North Korea because of my open criticism of the government. Since then, I have been on a global campaign to raise interest in what I can only describe as crimes against humanity and genocide in North Korea. This is a country where food is used as a weapon against any opposition, Christians are persecuted, women sexually abused and young children forced into labor. Still, the world either doesn’t know, doesn’t care or doesn’t want to believe.

Last month I had the opportunity to interview around 250 North Korean defectors near the China-North Korea border and was truly horrified by their stories. Most had escaped from hidden concentration camps where they suffered and witnessed routine torture, mass-execution, baby-killing, rape, human biological experiments (including the effects of anthrax) and, of course, starvation. These people were talking about hell, not paradise. Like Mr. Bush, they call it evil too.

As a German born after the Holocaust, I feel it is my duty to speak out. But strangely, few are willing to listen. In my native Germany and the rest of Europe they speak of “engagement.” In South Korea they speak of a “sunshine policy” to help Kim Jong Il modernize and liberalize. What they don’t understand is that he is not interested in helping his people; rather he is interested only — like Hitler and Stalin — in clinging to power. In my opinion, “engagement” and “sunshine” are not only synonyms for appeasement, they are synonyms for cowardice.

Now, the very same people who wish to engage a state that starves its own people are calling President Bush a “war monger” for using the word “evil.” Ironically, but not surprisingly, it is the “refined” European diplomats, “liberal” American newspapers, and “politically correct” human-rights activists who are most outraged at Mr. Bush’s choice of words. They should be ashamed of themselves.

President Bush has rightly identified North Korea as a prison state that uses terrorism against its own people. Moreover, his “axis of evil” speech has sent a strong message to the North Korean people that they are not forgotten — and they are listening. Every North Korean defector I spoke to over several weeks was delighted by President Bush’s words. For the first time in their lives they feel as if the outside world understands the hell they have endured. Moreover, they are full of hope that, like President Reagan’s “evil empire” speech, President Bush’s “axis of evil” speech will eventually lead to the collapse of Kim Jong Il’s brutal regime.

Perhaps those who are outraged with President Bush’s choice of words should ask survivors of the Holocaust, survivors of the Soviet gulag and survivors of North Korea’s concentration camps what they think of Mr. Bush’s use of the word “evil.”

Perhaps Mr. Carter should return to the Holocaust Memorial Musuem that he helped build and take a look at another inscription there, this one from the book of Genesis: “What have you done? Hark, thy brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!”

Dr. Vollertsen, a physician from Germany, worked in hospitals in North Korea from July 1999 to December 2000.