North Korea’s Human Rights Threat
by Lillie Binder
There are many reasons for the United States to be concerned about North Korea. The most obvious is the threat of a future nuclear attack from their massive army, but perhaps even more troubling is the way in which the North Korean people are oppressed by the government each day. Up to a million North Koreans have died from starvation due in large part to stubborn economic mismanagement. The people of North Korea are also politically, religiously, and physically repressed to prevent any hint of dissent from below. Dissenters are threatened with imprisonment or execution for their beliefs. For all of these problems, there is only one solution: to overthrow the corrupt communist dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-Il.
Although North Korea is officially called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), it is by no means a democracy. It does hold elections, but only one party, the Worker’s Party of Korea, is legally allowed to nominate candidates. The party’s current leader, Kim Jong-Il was never even elected. Kim Jong-Il got his start as a government official in the early ‘90s when he was named Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army despite having no prior military experience. Later, he was appointed as the Chairman of the National Defense Commission. After his father Kim Il-Sung, the former president and founder of the DPRK, died in 1994, Kim Jong-Il was promoted to the highest position of the state by the Supreme People’s Assembly. The Assembly simultaneously declared his father the “eternal president,” letting the new dictator rule under the illusion of democracy.
The dictator Kim Jong-Il has created a cult of personality around himself through his control of the media, calling himself the country’s “Dear Father.” He keeps a tight rein on the flow of information into and out of the country. It is very difficult for international organizations to obtain any kind of statistics on North Korea. North Korea is a member of the United Nations and has signed several other international treaties that ensure human rights, but it is in severe violation of most of the provisions. North Korea’s wrongdoings are particularly numerous when held up against the UN’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” which is based on statements from refugees and international organizations.
Article 1 Declaration states that, “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and Article 2 states that, “everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, property [etc.].” In North Korea, these rules do not apply. For instance, according to testimonies collected by Amnesty International, the poorer, lower-class citizens do not have the right to education past high school. Women are also disadvantaged. They are discriminated against in finding jobs and filling government positions. According to data from the US State Department, women hold only four percent of the seats in the Korean Worker’s Party’s Central Committee. In North Korean society, the women are mainly expected to raise families.
Article 3 states that, “everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the security of person.” The North Korean government threatens all of these rights through its powerful police and failure to provide sufficient food and medicine for its citizens. The North Korean government has failed at providing for the basic needs of its people mainly because of its basic ideology, which is summarized by its motto, "juche," or self-reliance. This self-reliance has transformed into harmful isolation. Out of pride and paranoia, Kim Jong-Il canceled the delivery of food aid from the United Nations' World Food Program (WFP) last year. After having received about 8 million pounds of food since 1995, he stopped the shipments in order to avoid UN monitoring of where the food went, according to the American Security Council Foundation (ASCF). The WFP reported that between 1995 and 2002, while shipments were still being accepted, malnutrition and stunted growth in children dropped from 62 percent to 42 percent.
Granted that North Korea has poor land conditions and climate for farming, and that it suffered some serious flooding and a tsunami in the late ‘90s, there are steps that could be taken to improve its agriculture system and produce more food for itself. It lacks the fertilizer, fuel, and electricity needed to farm that it used to receive from China and other countries through trade. Kim Jong-Il destroyed these relations due to his insistence on maintaining mysterious nuclear power plants. If Kim Jong-Il would agree to accept monitoring of his nuclear plants to make sure he is not producing weapons, he could restore trade between the countries, even if it goes against his impractical ideal of “self-reliance.”
In addition, according to the US State Department, North Korea has the fourth-largest army in the world, with military spending approximated at about a quarter of the country’s GDP. Perhaps some of this money could be spent on more raw materials for agricultural production and research for new, higher efficiency techniques.
North Korea has tried many other methods for getting food to its people, including a “Public Distribution System” with a “gram-per-day basis” coming from the publicly-owned farms, but this failed in 1997 when only six percent of the population was receiving its rations. The government suggested a “two meals a day” program and “alternative foods diet” that consisted of foods like corn stalks and grass with no nutritional value. UNICEF and the WFP later intervened to end the programs.
North Korea still receives some food and funds from South Korea and China, but it’s likely that these resources are not being properly distributed as experts from the ASCF estimate that 37 percent of North Korean children are still malnourished and increasingly becoming orphans, left to take care of themselves or be trapped in abusive detention centers. Without the aid of a watchful international organization, these children will never be properly fed.
The police and alleged labor camps also threaten the “life, liberty, and security of person” (Article 3) of the people arrested. They are also in clear violation of Article 4 which states that, “no one shall be held in slavery or servitude,” and Article 5 which states that, “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Victims’ accounts published through Amnesty International say that the police regularly conduct violent interrogations for those who they suspect have dissenting political views, those who are trying to leave their town or country, or those who have stolen some livestock or grains to sustain their families. These people are beaten, raped, and/or locked into labor camps (a form of slavery) in brick factories or farms, often never to return. According to research by Amnesty International, in 1997, Kim Jong-Il issued orders to all 211 counties in North Korea to set up 927 “camps” to detain those who had traveled outside of their borders.
The conditions in these camps are reportedly extremely degrading. For instance, the inmates must use their own feces as farm fertilizer, and they are never even provided with soap to wash themselves or their clothing. Women are not given any materials for their menstruation, and the pregnant ones are forced to abort their babies. Officers punish inmates by beating them, dumping ice-cold water on them, or forcing them to drink unhealthy amounts of water while tied up (“water torture”).
Article 9 states that, “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile” and Article 10, says that “everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal.” North Korea’s police-state legal system contradicts these. The arrests are based on hearsay and the confessions are forced and often untrue.
Kim Jong-Il also has his police strictly monitor the movement of his people inside and outside of his country’s borders. Article 13 states that, “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state; everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his own.” In North Korea, citizens need government permits to travel even from town to town. It usually takes two weeks to get approved, and even if the person is traveling out of the country for a funeral, he or she needs to present papers proving the death at the municipal office.
Thousands of people a year try to escape the country’s food shortage and persecution by seeking refuge – most often in China. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom estimates that between 30,000 and 300,000 North Koreans are in China now. However, the Chinese government is just as intolerant of the North Koreans as their government is at home. The Chinese government has called the refugees “economic migrants” who put a drain on their society, not seeing them as innocent victims. These “migrants” are therefore often abused and detained again in China.
In June 2002, the US Congress held hearings where North Korean refugees who lived in China testified that they were the victims of unbelievable human rights abuses similar to those they suffered in North Korean camps. Some refugees were sexually abused, and women were forced into the Chinese bride-trafficking business. Guards tormented inmates by forcing them to drink water with a hose then jumping on their abdomens, and by forcing inmates to kneel with a steel bar in between their calves and knees for hours at a time. At times, inmates worked in shackles for 17 hours a day. They had no bathing facilities, no medical care, very little food, and had to memorize speeches by Kim Jong-Il and recite their own self-criticism on a daily basis.
Besides the reported 20 to 25 percent of inmates who die in these camps per year, the remaining North Koreans are often eventually forced back into their homeland where they are again punished for having left. These stories eventually led to the formulation of H.R. 4011, “The North Korea Human Rights Act,” signed into law by President Bush, dictating that the various types of aid the US provides for North Korea would be conditional upon North Korea’s monitored progress in respecting human rights.
Finally, Article 25 most generally summarizes the most basic human rights and needs: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services.” The North Korean government is not fulfilling any of its people’s needs and is not properly upholding the law. It is doing more harm than good.
So what should be done? The North Korean government already knows what to do. It already has a nominal democracy in place and allegiances to human rights organizations. It has a Socialist-Democratic constitution that lays out the rights of the people including free speech, free press, free medical care, free education, freedom to travel, equal rights for all people, and many more services and rights they do not currently provide. The government just needs to follow through on its decent written plans for the country. This is why Kim Jong-Il needs to be replaced. Under his control, the goals of the government will always be to bolster his own pride through spending on massive military power and in creating an imaginary public support by whatever means necessary. Kim Jong-Il was never elected, and the North Korean people, with voting powers, in a democracy which is supposed to allow for the participation of all of the people, deserve to nominate and elect whomever they wish. Hopefully this person will have new goals of providing for the basic needs and rights of the people.
Is this possible? Considering the strength of the current regime and
the weakened state of the North Korean people, it is not likely. However,
with more aggressive participation from the international community
(although past efforts for nuclear disarmament have not been too successful),
it is possible. The US has so far taken positive steps towards liberating
the North Korean people through diplomacy (ie., imposing sanctions on
North Korea for poor human rights behavior). North Korea has always
been a member of Bush’s “axis of evil.” One can only hope that a full-blown
military “liberation” for democracy is not in our future, since no one
knows what North Korea is hiding in its arsenal, but if all else fails,
there may be no other choice to get rid of Kim Jong-Il.
