Page 42 - NKHR Hawaii Conference 2023

PANEL DISCUSSION

because they’re starved amid the f ood of propaganda that they get, they want actual true
information that makes them realize that North Korea is not a paradise. T eir existential
experience tells them that, but these outside sources give them a chance to be able to hear
something dif erent than the prevalent propaganda that pervades the society.

DR. STEPHEN NOERPER
Grant Newsham, a question for you. One of our guests here today asks,

“How can we change the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) repressive
policy on repatriation?”

Do you have some thoughts on that issue?

COL. GRANT NEWSHAM
I would say that you’ve got to make it personal for the top people in the CCP so that
they have more interest in protecting their interests rather than sending North Korean
escapees back to North Korea. By that I mean if you take say the top 500 people in the
CCP, then you find they have overseas assets, you find their relatives who have green
cards and residence permits, and then you publicize it to high heaven—maybe make it a
weekly show and broadcast it and get the information into China. So everyone tunes in
on T ursday afternoon to see who is the top guy who’s got his daughter living in America;
who has perhaps six companies; who has a bank account with this much in it; who has
these houses in Hancock Park, Los Angeles.

You have got to make it personal. And often it’s hard for us to do, and I don’t know
exactly why. But if it isn’t done in a way that the people at the top of that system feel that
they are going to lose an awful lot if they keep this going, then it’s probably not going to
be ef ective.

You know another thing—you might pull the People’s Bank of China’s license to operate
in America for six months or longer. And you don’t have to say why—they’ll f gure it out.

But if you don’t apply that kind of pressure, there’s no argument or any embarrassment
that is going to work. It has to be done so that the top guys are more worried about their
own well-being. In that system, there’s often good reason to be worried when that sort of
corruption is revealed. T at’s the way that I would go about it.