Boycott North Korea's 'inhumane' mass gymnastic displays, says ex-diplomat

[riversedge]

Boycott North Korea's 'inhumane' mass gymnastic displays, says ex-diplomat

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/may/30/boycott-north-koreas-inhumane-mass-gymnastic-displays-says-ex-diplomat

Defector calls on European tourists and online viewers to shun cultural displays that take children out of school

Last modified on Thu 30 May 2019 12.50 EDT



The highest-ranking official to defect from North Korea has called for Europeans to stop being an audience for the “child exploitation” in the country’s famous mass games.

Thae Yong-ho, the former deputy ambassador to the UK, who defected in 2016, said travel companies and tourists should boycott the cultural displays, which attract large numbers of visitors and social media viewings. He said North Korean children already faced appalling rates of malnutrition, brainwashing and forced labour and the displays were yet another act of cruelty.




Thae had earlier told the Oslo Freedom Forum in Norway: “Every year North Korea gives this mass gymnastic display. You should know that it means the children, aged from six to nine, cannot go to school for six months – it’s a forced exercise. And who are the audience for this? Europeans, and there are many European tour companies who organise trips. We should argue this with the European companies – these are inhumane displays.”

.................

The torture camps and the “infrastructure of fear” effectively dampened any resistance, keeping the people “asleep”, said Thae, a process to which the brainwashing of nursery-age children – who are taught to bow to the portrait of Kim Jong-un – contributed.
Get Society Weekly: our newsletter for public service professionals


Talking of having to see his son forced to work 15-hour days in rice fields during school holidays alongside his classmates, he said children were regularly used as “slave labour” and predicted it would be at least another decade before North Koreans began any real show of dissent that might topple the dictator Kim.

.........................





?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=13aab5656bd1a4340fb570726b778c7d
North Korean children perform with balloons during the Arirang mass games in Pyongyang, North Korea, in September 2012. Photograph: Eric Lafforgue/Corbis/Getty Images