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Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment: An Examination of the North Korean Police State
Date and Time:July 19, 2012 12:00 pm ~ July 19, 2012 01:30 pm
Location:KEI 1800 K Street Northwest Suite 1010, Washington, DC 20006
Speakers:
Host Organization:
Description:
Please click on this link for the photo gallery from this event.
The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) launched the 130-page report, Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment: An Examination of the North Korean Police State, on July 19 at the Korea Economic Institute (KEI).
Authored by North Korean leadership specialist Ken E. Gause, Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment reveals that the Kim family created a pervasive state security apparatus to consolidate power, relying on constant surveillance and a network of informants to root out threats to the regime from the smallest neighborhoods to the highest levels of the military.
The report rollout, moderated by Greg Scarlatoiu, HRNK Executive Director, also featured remarks by discussants Chuck Downs, former HRNK Executive Director, Helen-Louise Hunter, HRNK Board Member, and Kim Kwang-jin, HRNK Non-Resident Fellow.
SPEAKER BIOS:
Ken Gause, the report author, is a senior research analyst with CNA Strategic Studies’ International Affairs Group and Iranian Studies Program. He oversees CNA’s work on foreign leadership studies and is expert on leadership issues concerning North Korea. Mr. Gause began his career as a leadership analyst with the U.S. government, posted for three years in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s, he has worked for a number of defense-related think tanks, where he has strived to push the boundaries of leadership analysis. Prior to joining CNA in 1999, Gause was Director of Research for Keesing’s Worldwide Directory of Defense Authorities. Mr. Gause holds a B.A. in Political Science and Russian from Vanderbilt University, and earned an M.A. in Soviet and East European Affairs from George Washington University.
Chuck Downs was HRNK Executive Director from 2008 to 2011 and Board member from 2001 to 2008. He authored Over the Line: North Korea’s Negotiating Strategy while serving as Associate Director of the Asian Studies Program at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Downs served for most of his career in the Pentagon, as Deputy Director for Regional Affairs and Congressional Relations in the Pentagon’s East Asia Office. Mr. Downs was also Senior Defense and Foreign Policy Advisor to the House Policy Committee of the U. S. House of Representatives. As a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Public Policy he chaired the North Korea Working Group, providing policy recommendations to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Mr. Downs graduated with honors in political science from Williams College in 1972.
Helen-Louise Hunter, member of HRNK’s Board and Executive Committee, is an attorney who has engaged in private practice with a large international law firm in Washington, D.C., and has served as Permanent Law Clerk in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. For more than 20 years, she was a Far East specialist at the Central Intelligence Agency. In the late 1970s, she served as the Assistant National Intelligence Officer for the Far East. She is the author of Kim Il-song’s North Korea (1999).
Kim Kwang-jin is a North Korean defector and former DPRK international finance agent. An HRNK non-resident fellow, Mr. Kim is currently a resident senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS) in Seoul, South Korea and HRNK non-resident fellow. Mr. Kim is an invaluable experienced resource shedding light into the darkest corners of the North Korean regime’s secret and illegal international financial operations. His revelations have saved re-insurance companies tens of millions of dollars and brought an end to an important method the corrupt regime employed to earn from foreign sources the funds it needed to maintain its internal oppression. Mr. Kim holds an MBA in Finance and Insurance from Kookmin University (Seoul, 2012), a Masters in Economics/IT of North Korea at the University of North Korean Studies (Seoul, 2008), a Degree in British Literature from Kim Il-sung University (Pyongyang, 1989), and a Degree in English from the Pyongyang Foreign Language Institute (1984). Working for the North Korean regime, Mr. Kim served as Singapore Representative of North East Asia Bank (2002-2003); an agent of the Korean Foreign Insurance Company and North East Asia Bank, Pyongyang, (2000–2002); a manager of the Foreign Trade Bank of DPRK (1999), and Professor of the Pyongyang Computer College (1991–1997). He has produced a number of publications on the North Korean economy and the current power transition in North Korea, including two HRNK reports.
This is the first satellite imagery report by HRNK on a long-term political prison commonly identified by researchers and former detainees as Kwan-li-so No. 18 (Pukch'ang). This report was concurrently published on Tearline at https://www.tearline.mil/public_page/prison-camp-18.
To understand the challenges faced by the personnel who are involved in North Korea’s nuclear program, it is crucial to understand the recruitment, education, and training processes through the lens of human rights. This report offers a starting point toward that understanding. North Korea’s scientists and engineers are forced to work on the nuclear weapons program regardless of their own interests, preferences, or aspirations. These individuals may be described as “moder
In this submission, HRNK focuses its attention on the following issues in the DPRK: The status of the system of detention facilities, where a multitude of human rights violations are ongoing. The post-COVID human security and human rights status of North Korean women, with particular attention to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). The issue of Japanese abductees and South Korean prisoners of war (POWs), abductees, and unjust detainees.
This report provides an abbreviated update to our previous reports on a long-term political prison commonly identified by former prisoners and researchers as Kwan-li-so No. 25 by providing details of activity observed during 2021–2023. This report was originally published on Tearline at https://www.tearline.mil/public_page/prison-camp-25.
This report explains how the Kim regime organizes and implements its policy of human rights denial using the Propaganda and Agitation Department (PAD) to preserve and strengthen its monolithic system of control. The report also provides detailed background on the history of the PAD, as well as a human terrain map that details present and past PAD leadership.
Oct 17, 2023
HRNK's latest satellite imagery report analyzes a 5.2 km-long switchback road, visible in commercial satellite imagery, that runs from Testing Tunnel No. 1 at North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear test facility to the perimeter of Kwan-li-so (political prison camp) no. 16.
This report proposes a long-term, multilateral legal strategy, using existing United Nations resolutions and conventions, and U.S. statutes that are either codified or proposed in appended model legislation, to find, freeze, forfeit, and deposit the proceeds of the North Korean government's kleptocracy into international escrow. These funds would be available for limited, case-by-case disbursements to provide food and medical care for poor North Koreans, and--contingent upon Pyongyang's progress
For thirty years, U.S. North Korea policy have sacrificed human rights for the sake of addressing nuclear weapons. Both the North Korean nuclear and missile programs have thrived. Sidelining human rights to appease the North Korean regime is not the answer, but a fundamental flaw in U.S. policy. (Published by the National Institute for Public Policy)
Sep 26, 2022
North Korea’s forced labor enterprise and its state sponsorship of human trafficking certainly continued until the onset of the COVID pandemic. HRNK has endeavored to determine if North Korean entities responsible for exporting workers to China and Russia continued their activities under COVID as well.
George Hutchinson's The Suryong, the Soldier, and Information in the KPA is the second of three building blocks of a multi-year HRNK project to examine North Korea's information environment. Hutchinson's thoroughly researched and sourced report addresses the circulation of information within the Korean People's Army (KPA). Understanding how KPA soldiers receive their information is needed to prepare information campaigns while taking into account all possible contingenc
This report is part of a comprehensive long-term project undertaken by HRNK to use satellite imagery and former prisoner interviews to shed light on human suffering in North Korea by monitoring activity at political prison facilities throughout the nation. This is the second HRNK satellite imagery report detailing activity observed during 2015 to 2021 at a prison facility commonly identified by former prisoners and researchers as “Kwan-li-so No. 14 Kaech’ŏn” (39.646810, 126.117058) and
This report is part of a comprehensive long-term project undertaken by HRNK to use satellite imagery and former prisoner interviews to shed light on human suffering in North Korea by monitoring activity at civil and political prison facilities throughout the nation. This study details activity observed during 1968–1977 and 2002–2021 at a prison facility commonly identified by former prisoners and researchers as "Kyo-hwa-so No. 3, T'osŏng-ni" and endeavors to e
This report is part of a comprehensive long-term project undertaken by HRNK to use satellite imagery and former detainee interviews to shed light on human suffering in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, more commonly known as North Korea) by monitoring activity at political prison facilities throughout the nation. This report provides an abbreviated update to our previous reports on a long-term political prison commonly identified by former prisoners and researchers as Kwan-li-so
Through satellite imagery analysis and witness testimony, HRNK has identified a previously unknown potential kyo-hwa-so long-term prison-labor facility at Sŏnhwa-dong (선화동) P’ihyŏn-gun, P’yŏngan-bukto, North Korea. While this facility appears to be operational and well maintained, further imagery analysis and witness testimony collection will be necessary in order to irrefutably confirm that Sŏnhwa-dong is a kyo-hwa-so.
Jul 22, 2021
"North Korea’s Long-term Prison-Labor Facility Kyo-hwa-so No. 8, Sŭngho-ri (승호리) - Update" is the latest report under a long-term project employing satellite imagery analysis and former political prisoner testimony to shed light on human suffering in North Korea's prison camps.
Jul 01, 2021
Human Rights in the Democratic Republic of Korea: The Role of the United Nations" is HRNK's 50th report in our 20-year history. This is even more meaningful as David Hawk's "Hidden Gulag" (2003) was the first report published by HRNK. In his latest report, Hawk details efforts by many UN member states and by the UN’s committees, projects and procedures to promote and protect human rights in the DPRK. The report highlights North Korea’s shifts in its approach
South Africa’s Apartheid and North Korea’s Songbun: Parallels in Crimes against Humanity by Robert Collins underlines similarities between two systematically, deliberately, and thoroughly discriminatory repressive systems. This project began with expert testimony Collins submitted as part of a joint investigation and documentation project scrutinizing human rights violations committed at North Korea’s short-term detention facilities, conducted by the Committee for Human Rights