Thank you Andy and it's just wonderful
to have you as the chair of NED before
congresswoman Murphy leaves I just want
to let her know that she was terrific
and your remarks were very moving thank
you very much and all the other members
I also want to even though Ed Royce has
left I wanted to be known that he
presented a democracy award 20 years ago
to the transition monitoring group in
Nigeria he has been a leader in the
struggle in the Congress to advance
human rights and he's going to be
retiring and he's somebody were really
gonna miss I also want to just take this
opportunity to thank all the donors who
made this event possible their names are
all listed in the program and I want to
thank them very deeply for their support
and I want to finally thank our staff
for all the hard work they did in
putting on this event and especially
Lynn Lee has already gotten a lot of
recognition but she oversees in addition
to doing work on this program she
oversees the development of our grants
program in North Korea and the four
organizations that have been honored
tonight represent four categories of
support for human rights in North Korea
there are about 17 different grants nine
defector organizations and that's one
of the categories the other being
transitional justice you have the the
Unification Media Group which is part of
the effort to break down the information
blockade in North Korea and then of
course you have the Citizens' Alliance
which really started all this and put
the issue on the international agenda
and I really would request our friends
from the Citizens' Alliance to give our
warmest and deepest personal greetings
to Reverend Benjamin Yun who is really
the father of the movement for human
rights in North Korea I know he's not
well but he's somebody we love very very
deeply and I want you to know that and
let him know that this awards ceremony
tonight is the culmination of 20 years
steady and steadily expanding work that
the NED has done in support of human
rights in North Korea we've seen a lot a
great deal of change during this period
I think this is very very important to
emphasize the international community is
far more aware than ever before of the
horrendous human rights abuses that are
taking place in North Korea including
the gulag of prison camps where hundreds
of thousands of North Koreans have died
during the last seven decades and I want
to note when we had the first conference
that was mentioned in 1999 I gave a talk
there called ending the silence because
there was complete silence about North
Korea until the Citizens' Alliance
started with its work in 1999 the infra
mark the information blockade imposed by
the regime to keep down the North
Koreans to keep the North Korean people
totally isolated has gradually broken
down the state distribution system has
collapsed and independent markets have
emerged. What we are seeing now is the
steady erosion of the North Korean
totalitarian system there are now also
more than 30,000 North Korean defectors
who have been able to leave North Korea
the last since the famine in the late
1990s people like Ji Seong-ho and Sungju
Lee who are remarkable people they spoke
at our conference this morning they told
their personal stories extremely moving
and they're a link to the people inside
North Korea and a sign of the human
potential and I said this this morning a
sign of the human potential that will be
unleashed in my view when the closed
system of North Korea opens up as it
inevitably will. There is some concern
among the activists we support that the
focus on the nuclear issue today will
reduce pressure for human rights in
North Korea and maybe even reduce
support for the kind of work that is
being done by the organizations that we
have honored this evening. I want to
assure our friends that NED's support is
solid that it enjoys bi-partisan support
in the Congress as you saw tonight and
that we consider this work today
the day after the summit to be more
important than ever before. There is
simply no way that real peace on the
Korean Peninsula can be achieved until
North Korea becomes a more open society
respect for human rights is not a side
issue it is the key for any lasting
peace. So let us look to the future with
hope that the efforts of the dedicated
activists that we've honored tonight
will bear fruit and that the
long suffering people of North Korea
will experience a new dawn of freedom.
Thank you.
