Description of Suzanne Scholte’s efforts for the people of North Korea as President, Defense Forum Foundation and Chairman, North Korea Freedom Coalition and Vice Chairman, Committee for Human Rights in North Korea
Suzanne K. Scholte
President, Defense Forum Foundation
Chairman and Founding Member, North Korea Freedom Coalition
Vice Chairman and Founding Board Member,
U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea
Honorary Chairman, Free North Korea Radio
Chairman, North Korea Freedom Day (2004, 2006);
Chairman, North Korea Freedom Week (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008)
U.S. Partner, Citizens Alliance for North Korea Human Rights, Seoul
U.S. Partner, Society to Help Returnees to North Korea, Tokyo
Suzanne Scholte is President of the Defense Forum Foundation, a non-profit educational foundation that sponsors programs on Capitol Hill on defense, foreign affairs, and human rights issues. On North Korea, many credit her with being the driving force in the United States for the North Korea human rights movement through a program she launched in 1996 to bring defectors from North Korea to the United States to raise awareness of the human rights conditions in North Korea. Since that time has sponsored over 57 North Korean defectors, many for multiple visits, to raise awareness of the human rights situation in North Korea and testify in the U.S. Congress. She hosted the first appearances in the United States, as well as on Capitol Hill, of North Korean defectors, Colonel Joo-Hwal Choi and Young-Hwan Ko, in 1997 and the first appearance of survivors of their brutal political prisoner camps, Chul-Hwan Kang, Myong-Chul Ahn, and Soon-Ok Lee in 1998 and in 1999, Sung-Soo Yoon and Hae-Nam Ji in 2002, and Huh Kwang-il, Kim Seung-Min, and North Korea's highest ranking defector, Hwang Jang-yop in 2003. She hosted the largest delegation of defectors ever to visit the United States during North Korea Freedom Week in April 2008, an annual event she began in 2004 and for which she served as chairman. Scholte has arranged for defectors to personally meet with members of both the legislative and executive branches of the US government including President George Bush who met with members of the visiting North Korea Freedom Week delegation in 2006. In 2003, the New York Sun in a front page article described Scholte as the “unsung angel behind [the] North Korea Human Rights Push.”
As the Honorary Chairman of Free North Korea Radio (FNKR), Scholte has helped the defectors broadcast their own radio program into North Korea. She helped raise the funds for its initial broadcast, helped FNKR win support from the National Endowment for Democracy, and most recently, enabled the defectors based broadcast to increase its broadcasting time from one hour daily to five hours daily through a grant she secured for the program from the U.S. Department of State.
She has participated and helped organize numerous conferences and meetings on North Korea including with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the National Endowment for Democracy, the American Enterprise Institute, and Freedom House.
To help galvanize support for the North Korea Human Rights Act of 2004, Scholte chaired and organized the first North Korea Freedom Day on April 28, 2004 in Washington D.C. The day long program, which included a Capitol Hill rally attended by over 1000 people, Congressional hearing, demonstration at the Holocaust Museum, and prayer vigil, was credited by Members of Congress for building the momentum that led to the unanimous passage of the North Korea Human Rights Act. Scholte worked closely with key Congressional staff on the drafting and the passage of the legislation.
Following a year long campaign begun in 1998 and organized by Scholte, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs held the first hearing on the North Korean political prisoner camps in April of 1999. She testified at the hearing and
introduced the three witnesses, all defectors from North Korea. Scholte has also testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the House International Relations Committee, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China on North Korea’s human rights situation, political prisoner camps and the plight of the North Korea refugees in China. She has helped organize numerous Congressional hearings and briefings on North Korea. For example, during North Korea Freedom Week 2006 and 2007, Members of Congress hosted hearings to expose North Korea’s illicit activities, the regimes involvement with abducting citizens of Japan, South Korea, other countries, its continual holding of POWs from the Korean War, and the atrocities China is committing against the North Korean refugees.
Scholte has led rallies in Washington, D.C. (2002, 2003, 2004,2005, 2006, 2007, 2008), Prague (2003), Warsaw (2004), and Seoul (2005) on behalf of the North Korean refugees in China and has helped gain release for numerous refugees and humanitarian workers held by China for helping North Korean refugees. Through DFF, she helped to establish a fund, under the leadership of Sin U Nam, in which 100% of the donations have been used to help defectors escape to freedom. Among those who have been rescued through the fund are the Han Mee family, who met with President Bush in 2006. The fund is also used to support NGOs in South Korea and China that are providing direct relief to North Korean defectors hiding in China.
Because of her long-time commitment for bringing human rights to North Korea, DFF was asked in June, 1998, to become the U.S. partner of the Seoul-based Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human Rights and the Tokyo-based Society to Help Returnees to North Korea. Since that time DFF has been a sponsoring non-governmental organization for the annual International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees and Scholte helped author and present The Seoul Statement on North Korean Human Rights in 1999.
Scholte has given many speeches on North Korea in South Korea, Japan and the United States and appeared on numerous television and radio programs including NBC Nightly News, Fox News, CNN’s Diplomatic License, CBN, On the Record with Greta van Susteren and on WRKO-Radio Boston to address North Korean issues. Her articles on North Korea have appeared in The Washington Post, Washington Times, and South Korea's largest paper, The Chosun Ilbo.
Scholte is also a member of the Board of Directors of Christian Solidarity Worldwide-USA and a kindergarten Sunday School teacher at The Falls Church. She is married and has three boys, ages 20, 17, and 7, who have all participated in rallies and protests in support of the North Korean people.