hankyoreh

2008.

“North Korea’s human rights situation is wholly poor. Economic, social, and cultural rights are growing notably worse, while there have been institutional improvements in civic and political rights. Also, the human rights situation is different by social group and region, with continually deepening disparity.”

So goes the National Human Rights Commission’s description of the state of human rights in North Korea in its report, “Findings on the State of Human Rights of the Residents of North Korea,” released March 11.

The report is based on interviews with 122 North Korean defectors, 93 of which are women receiving orientation at a South Korean education facility for new defectors and 30 of which are defectors who came to the South in 2007 and 2008. The interviews were conducted between July 2008 and February of this year. It was drafted by a team of researchers at the University of North Korean Studies led by Professor Lee Woo-young.

People who leave North Korea and enter China but are then repatriated are more often than not being given relatively brief sentences of six months labor, while North Koreans who leave the North repeatedly, attempt to go to South Korea or have contact with Christians outside the country are being treated as political prisoners, the report says.

The document notes that there have been systemic improvements in civic and political rights, and that the a weakened regime structure and economic difficulties have led to slight but unintended improvements in the rights of regular North Koreans. Public executions have been become less frequent since the start of the decade, and they have become more common for crimes like corruption on the part of party officials, murder, human trafficking, and narcotics production and sale than for political crimes. It also says that while there have not been the same urgent food crises as there were in the 1990s, the social security system [
The report also describes what it says is increasing class and regional disparity in human rights. There are, on the one hand, some who are enjoying various rights for having adjusted to a new climate created by the allowance of some market activities by the “July 1 Economy Management Improvement Measure”; they amassed wealth in the process. Those who have not been able to take advantage of the new rules are, according to the report, having their livelihoods threatened and are “exposed to a violently oppressive regime.”

It also describes an increasingly weak sense of community in North Korean society, saying that people often no longer care when others are starving and suffering.

“The human rights situation in North Korea is influenced by the one-party system, patriarchal culture and a regime weakened by economic difficulties,” said Lee. “It is also being influenced by inter-Korean relations over the past decade and international pressure.”

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]