The US recently instituted the first sanctions against North Korea Worker’s Party Chairman Kim Jong-un for his human rights violations, but the party has yet to inform the citizens of this news, and is thoroughly restricting related information. Roberta Cohen, an American North Korea human rights activist, interprets these information restrictions as a desperate countermeasure by Kim to block any criticism that would undermine his legitimacy. At this time, we will listen to this expert’s views on this issue during our exclusive interview with Cohen, who is Co-Chair Emeritus of the US non-profit organization Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Byun Chang-seop reporting. 

In the wake of a North Korean rocket launch in clear violation of international sanctions, there is growing skepticism about the effectiveness of negotiations with North Korea. The Kim regime sees the relinquishment of its nuclear capabilities as an existential threat. It naturally responds negatively to the international community’s attempts to persuade it to do so, in spite of any economic and political benefits it might receive in exchange. Therefore, Gershman proposes a paradigm shift: the US and its allies should adopt an integrated approach to North Korea that not only aims to deter aggressive behavior, but also to defend human rights, thereby empowering the population to reject the closed, repressive nature of the current totalitarian system.

A group of feminists led by Gloria Steinem announced a plan to stage a peace march starting in Pyongyang and crossing through the DMZ to Seoul, urging a formal end to the Korean War. HRNK Board Member Rabbi Abraham Cooper and HRNK Executive Director Greg Scarlatoiu caution that permission to march through North Korea, unlikely as it is, would merely be a cosmetic gesture intended to draw attention away from the many state-sanctioned human rights abuses. Instead, Cooper and Scarlatoiu suggest a protest at the border with China, which many North Koreans refugees cross to escape the Kim regime.

In 2011, a United Nations Panel of Experts found the UN system to have acquitted itself poorly in the face of widespread human rights violations in Sri Lanka. According to a 2012 Internal Review, some field staff “failed in their mandates to protect people,” some “under-reported Government violations,” and some in senior positions at headquarters “suppressed reporting efforts by their field staff.” Overall, these panels told the Secretary-General that the UN “did not adequately invoke principles of human rights”—the foundation of the organization—but instead, did “what was necessary to avoid confrontation with the government.”[1]...

To read more please follow the link to the 38North website. 

Last month marked the one-year anniversary of the report of the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry (COI) on human rights in North Korea. UN reports often have very limited impact and resonance. But this report was different. Its impact has already been significant, which is testimony to the quality of the work done by the three commissioners—the Australian judge Michael Kirby, who chaired the body; the Indonesian lawyer and politician Marzuki Darusman, who is also the UN special rapporteur for North Korea; and the Serbian human rights defender Sonja Biserko.

North Korea has made a number of intriguing gestures recently on human rights. At the United Nations, its Foreign Minister announced his country’s readiness to hold a “human rights dialogue with countries not hostile to it.”[1] The North Korean Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) International Affairs Secretary, on a visit to Brussels, offered a human rights dialogue to the European Union (EU).[2] Even earlier, a North Korean official told a United Nations meeting that his government would accept some of the recommendations put forward by states in the Universal Periodic Review (a UN process that evaluates all countries’ human rights records).[3] And a Foreign Ministry official admitted to the press the existence of “reform through labor detention centers” in North Korea.[4]

To read the full article, please click here. 

The UN Commission of Inquiry (COI), set up in 2013 to investigate widespread, systematic, and grave human rights violations in North Korea, has strongly implicated China in North Korea’s commission of crimes against humanity because of its forced repatriation of North Korean refugees and asylum seekers who are severely punished once returned. China, however, insists that North Koreans exiting without permission are ‘economic migrants,’ not refugees, and that deportations are essential to maintaining its national security, social order, and border controls, as well as the stability of the Korean Peninsula. Although a preponderance of states at the United Nations have rejected China’s position, China has continued to subordinate UN human rights and refugee standards to its immediate political objectives and deny North Koreans their right to leave their country and seek asylum abroad. As greater international pressure focuses on China’s policies and practices, a vigorous international effort is needed to protect North Korean refugees and encourage China to see that its interests may be better served over the longer term by modifying its policies. 

An international response to North Korea’s egregious human rights record has begun to take shape. Building on the work of NGOs and UN human rights experts, the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2013 set up a Commission of Inquiry to investigate whether North Korea’s systematic, widespread and grave violations constitute crimes against humanity for which DPRK officials could be held accountable. Although the COI was denied access to North Korea, this article argues that its findings and report are based on persuasive evidence and can have impact if a broad range of actors — governments, international organizations, NGOs and civil society — are mobilized. The author puts forward an array of strategies to more fully engage the world community and argues that the proactive carrying out of such initiatives may work to promote human rights in North Korea.

Key Words: North Korea, Human Rights, Humanitarian, United Nations, Commission of Inquiry

“The message of this searing camp memoir, and of everything else that we have come to know about the North Korean dictatorship, is that there is no greater evil in the world today,” writes NED President Carl Gershman in his review essay of Blaine Harden’s Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West.

The article will appear in the April issue of the Journal of Democracy.

On March 21, 2013 the United Nations Human Rights Council, a body of 47 states, adopted by consensus a resolution to establish a commission of inquiry (COI) into North Korea’s “systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights.”[1] The commission is to be composed of three experts who will intensively investigate for a period of one year the human rights violations perpetrated by North Korea’s government with a view to ensuring “full accountability, in particular where these violations may amount to crimes against humanity” [emphasis added].