New song marks North Korea Freedom Week

A new song aimed at drawing attention to North Korea’s dire human rights crisis and inspired by the story of North Korean escapee Shin Dong-hyuk and the work of Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), has been released by UK-based band Ooberfuse to mark North Korea Freedom Week.

The song, Vanish the Night, begins with a message from Shin Dong-hyuk, who was born in a North Korean prison camp: “Don’t forget us”.

North Korea is the world’s most closed nation, ruled by one of the world’s most repressive regimes. Over 200,000 people remain in desperate conditions in the country’s prison camps, where they are subjected to extreme torture, slave labour, sexual abuse and starvation. Christians are among the most oppressed in a country where there is no freedom of religion or belief. The UN Human Rights Council recently established a Commission of Inquiryto investigate crimes against humanity in North Korea, following five years of campaigning by CSW and others. In 2011, CSW helped establish the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK), drawing together more than forty human rights organisations from around the world.

Ooberfuse has previously released songs in memory of Pakistan’s assassinated Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti, and jailed Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi, as well as the official English language song for the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day.

Cherrie Anderson from Ooberfuse said, “We have joined forces with Shin Dong-hyuk who was actually born inside one of these gulags but who managed, against all odds, to escape through a deadly high-voltage barbed wire fence patrolled by soldiers with instructions to kill on sight. His account of the routine violence and brutality inside Camp 14 ignited our desire to respond somehow. Vanish the Night calls for the lights to be turned on in what has been described as one of the darkest places on earth. Our song is a message of hope for the ordinary people of North Korea whose suffering often goes unnoticed and whose cries are largely unheard.”

CSW’s East Asia Team Leader Benedict Rogers said, “We hope that Vanish the Night will help to raise public awareness of the horrific human rights crisis in North Korea and encourage people to continue pray and protest until we see freedom come to its citizens.”

For further information or to arrange interviews please contact Kiri Kankhwende, Press Officer at Christian Solidarity Worldwide on +44 (0)20 8329 0045 / +44 (0) 78 2332 9663, email kiri@csw.org.uk or visit www.csw.org.uk.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) is a Christian organisation working for religious freedom through advocacy and human rights, in the pursuit of justice.

Notes to Editors:

1. Click hereto listen to the song.

2. For more information about Ooberfuse, see: www.ooberfuse.com

3. CSW has hosted Shin Dong-hyuk in London on several occasions, most recently in 2010 when he met the Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Dr Rowan Williams, and the then Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Jeremy Browne.

4. North Korea Freedom Week is held each year around the world, with events in Washington DC and Seoul.