Young Oak Kim: “I thank Representative Moylan for yielding and for his leadership as well as my good friend Representative Manning for…”

“I thank Representative Moylan for yielding and for his leadership as well as my good friend Representative Manning for moving this bill forward. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of my bipartisan bill, H.R. 3012, the North Korean Human Rights Reauthorization Act. This bill updates the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 that was enacted to provide humanitarian aid to North Korean refugees, allow for information access for the North Korean people, and appoint a U.S. Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues. H.R. 3012 reauthorizes, streamlines, and strengthens oversight of these programs through 2028 and calls for Korean-American families to be reunited with their immediate relatives in North Korea. We need someone at the State Department dedicated entirely to North Korean human rights issues, especially as Kim Jong Un's brutality against his own people grows. Why? Because North Korean women and children face the most inhumane treatment in the world, child labor is institutionalized in North Korea, and women are forced into sex trafficking organized by government officials and human traffickers; because an estimated 100,000 North Koreans are subject to forced labor in factories with inhumane conditions in the People's Republic of China; and because torture, forced disappearances, imprisonment, forced sterilization, and religious persecution are tools regularly used to consolidate the North Korean regime's power.…”