House Foreign Affairs Committee U.S. House of Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Ranking Republican
	Remarks of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) Ranking Member, Committee on Foreign Affairs H.R. 5834, The North Korean Human Rights Reauthorization Act
	April 30, 2008
	I am very pleased that we are taking up H.R.5834, the North Korean Human Rights Reauthorization Act that Chairman Berman and I introduced earlier this month. This bill reauthorizes and makes minor improvements to the 2004 Act introduced by our former colleague Jim Leach and our late Chairman, Tom Lantos. That law captured the strong, bipartisan consensus in favor of promoting human rights, transparent humanitarian assistance, and refugee protections for the people of North Korea. The people of North Korea continue to suffer some of the worst conditions imaginable. This totalitarian regime does not permit meaningful political freedom or religious liberty, and crushes dissent. The vast North Korean gulag holds an estimated two-hundred-thousand men, women, and children in brutal, sub-human conditions. The centrally-directed economy that exacerbated the North Korean famine of the 1990s, continues to endanger the basic welfare of the population. North Korean women and girls who have fled into China are vulnerable to repeated trafficking and, if they are pregnant when repatriated, are subjected to forced abortions by North Korean officials, often by vicious, physical beatings. China has raised the bounty it pays for North Korean border-crossers, and routinely repatriates refugees to North Korea where they face prison, torture, and an increased number of public executions, which are carried out in front of whole communities, including schoolchildren. This bill: •    Extends key authorities of the original Act for an additional four years; •    attempts to energize our anemic North Korean refugee admissions; and •    clarifies the role of the Special Envoy, which Congress intended to be a full-time position. The United States is home to the largest Korean community outside of the Korean peninsular region, and many of our two-million Korean-American constituents have family ties to North Korea. Our nation also has the largest refugee resettlement program in the world by far, and has resettled approximately one-hundred-fifty-thousand (150,000) refugees from around the world since late 2004, when the Act became law. Over the past four years, the United States has resettled fewer than 50 North Koreans, notwithstanding the clear mandate of section 303 of the Act. This is an embarrassment, and is not in keeping with the intent of Congress in passing the North Korean Human Rights Act. More North Koreans have approached the United States seeking resettlement, but many have been deterred or have abandoned their pursuit, because of extended delays that sometimes continue long after they have passed U.S. security screening. A group of increasingly desperate North Korean refugees, some of whom have been awaiting U.S. resettlement for nearly two years, recently carried out a hunger strike to draw attention to their extended limbo. This situation, which continues despite some good work from our regional refugee coordinators, requires persistent, high-level diplomacy by senior Executive Branch officials, to secure broader permission from foreign countries to allow us to process refugees promptly for resettlement. I want to thank Chairman Berman and our original cosponsors from both sides of the aisle for their commitment to this important issue. I also want to recognize the contribution of Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee, and thank her for working with us to include her language on North Korean refugees in China in section 3 of the bill. I look forward the prompt reporting, passage, and enactment of this bill.