Ten years ago, the United Nations took an extraordinary step by denouncing North Korea for its awful human rights record. The situation has worsened, as the COVID pandemic caused Pyongyang to effectively seal its borders. Human Rights Watch recently reported that this crackdown “has effectively closed off North Korea from the rest of the world and stopped almost all cross-border movement of people, formal and informal commercial trade, and humanitarian aid.”
The North has long topped the list of global human rights abusers, criticized even by other authoritarian states. For years, many of the worst governments joined the Human Rights Council and defended each other from criticism. However, Pyongyang found itself virtually friendless when the Human Rights Council created the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea by the United Nation’s Human Rights Council.
The commission faced a difficult task, reporting: “The most significant investigative challenge faced by the commission, aside from the inability to have access to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, was the fear of reprisals by witnesses. Most of the potential witnesses residing outside the State were afraid to testify, even on a confidential basis, because they feared for the safety of family members and assumed that their conduct was still being clandestinely monitored by the authorities.”
Nevertheless, the commission proceeded, and its investigation revealed horrific levels of repression. For instance, the body stated, “Systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations have been and are being committed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. In many instances, the violations found entailed crimes against humanity based on State policies.”
The commission further stated: “[A]mong the most striking features of the State has been its claim to an absolute monopoly over information and total control of organized social life. The commission finds that there is an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as of the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, information and association.” It is difficult for someone living in the West to imagine such a life.
One’s position in North Korea was once almost entirely determined by the songbun system, which assigned people to different political/social classes based on family status and regime loyalty. That system has weakened in recent years, as corruption and markets have empowered new actors. Nevertheless, observed the commission, “significant segments of the population who have neither the resources nor favorable songbun find themselves increasingly marginalized and subject to further patterns of discrimination, given that basic public services have collapsed or now effectively require payment.”
North Koreans enjoy no freedom of movement. Food is used “as a means of control over the population. It has prioritized those whom the authorities believe to be crucial in maintaining the regime over those deemed expendable.” And the authorities ruthlessly maintain their power: “The police and security forces of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea systematically employ violence and punishments that amount to gross human rights violations in order to create a climate of fear that pre-empts any challenge to the current system of government and to the ideology underpinning it.”
Unsurprisingly, the commission concluded that Pyongyang had committed crimes against humanity. The list was long and terrible: “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.”
Some observers held hope for change after Kim Jong Un succeeded his father in December 2011. He had spent some time in school in Switzerland, becoming a fan of the Chicago Bulls, and later dabbled in Western culture. For instance, Disney characters made an appearance at a 2012 concert attended by Kim. In 2018, he and his wife appeared at a Pyongyang event featuring 11 South Korean music acts. However, he has dramatically reversed course. Now the regime denounces foreign entertainment as a “vicious cancer” and imprisons or executes those caught listening, watching, or distributing South Korean music and videos or using South Korean lingo.
Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch released a 161-page report detailing the further closing of the North Korean mind. The regime has largely ended trans-border traffic, the group has reported:
Ostensibly to address the Covid-19 pandemic, North Korean authorities instituted strict border and regional lockdowns, issued a shoot-on-sight order to guards—still in effect in January 2024—for any person or wild animal approaching the northern border, fortified or built new border fences and security facilities, imposed strict limitations on foreign trade and domestic travel and distribution of food and essential products, strengthened implementation of rules and regulations, cracked down on critical informal trade, and implemented excessive and abusive restrictions on freedom of movement and quarantine measures.
The DPRK crackdown has been unusually brutal, largely ending a trade once fueled by bribes to border guards. Moreover, “The government also further tightened already strict restrictions on communication with the outside world and access to information, while intensifying other ideological controls to prevent unrest.” Although the ostensible justification for sealing the border was to keep North Korea COVID-free, the regime had a far more malign agenda. Human Rights Watch explained that Pyongyang “sought to reimpose its control in areas in which its dominance had weakened over the past two and half decades: in particular, control over the border, market activity, unsanctioned travel, and access to information.”
The North recently underwent its periodic Human Rights Council human rights review. It faced the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, which has detailed the DPRK’s extensive system of prison and labor camps. The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea focused on this issue when addressing the council:
satellite imagery and escapees’ testimonies continue to prove the existence and expansion of such camps. HRNK has found the continued operation of political prison camps (kwan-li-so) and long-term prison labor facilities (kyo-hwa-so). Kwan-li-so are high-security political prison camps primarily used for detaining political prisoners, where individuals are deported without due process or legal proceeding. Here, most inmates are imprisoned for life together with their families up to three generations of family members.
Prisoners detained in political prison camps are accused of having engaged in “political crimes”, including any form of behavior or conduct considered as a threat to the State. In Kyo-hwa-so facilities individuals are imprisoned for criminal and political offenses, including violent and economic crimes but also for exercising their basic human rights. The regime often sends individuals to these camps for re-education purposes or as a form of punishment for committing criminal offenses. Inside of kyo-hwa-so, detainees are subjected to forced labor and constant abuse, and guards have the legitimacy of beating, punishing, and torturing prisoners without facing any accountability.
There is more, so much more, to the North’s odious human rights practices. The State Department’s 2023 country report on the DPRK makes for equally depressing reading. The State Department pointed to “arbitrary or unlawful killings,” “enforced disappearance,” “torture,” “arbitrary arrest,” lack of judicial independence, “political prisoners,” “transnational repression,” privacy violations, “punishment of family members,” “serious restrictions on freedom of expression,” “internet freedom,” freedom of assembly and association, “religious freedom,” and “freedom of movement,” lack of political freedom, “serious government corruption,” restrictions on human rights organizations, “extensive gender-based violence,” human trafficking, restrictions on workers’ rights, and child labor. In short, the Kim dynasty has left few human rights unmolested.
Unfortunately, it is easier to detail the North’s abuses than offer a means to end them. Indeed, Pyongyang’s ever-expanding nuclear program — the regime appears to be engaged in a major nuclear build-up while developing ICBMs capable of targeting the U.S. homeland — neutralizes military threats and will provide substantial diplomatic leverage when Kim decides to reengage Washington. Complicating the situation is Russia’s recent rapprochement with the DPRK, since in retaliation for U.S. aid to Ukraine Moscow could offer technical assistance to speed Kim’s efforts. In practice, denuclearization is a dead end. If there is any diplomatic deal to be had, it likely is some form of arms control.
Still, the Kim dynasty looks shaky. The execution of children is a desperate measure. It might be able to terrorize North Koreans into submission, but for how long? Continuing economic privation provides an ongoing reminder to North Koreans that Kim’s promises of better times have gone a-glimmering. China, though not inclined to cooperate with the U.S., is uncomfortable with Vladimir Putin’s disconcerting embrace of Kim. The latter has been shifting the dynastic cult to himself from his father and grandfather, presumably to bolster his authority. Rumors of his ill health persist alongside claims that he is preparing his 11-year-old daughter to succeed him in a radically patriarchal society. The nomenklatura — political, economic, and military — may eventually tire of Korea’s version of Louis XVI.
Which suggests an allied strategy that emphasizes peace, information, dialogue, and patience. The U.S. and its friends should avoid military confrontation. Weakness may make Pyongyang confrontational and trigger-happy. Nothing is more important than avoiding Korean War II. Promoting arms control and offering to trade some sanctions relief for some nuclear limits might ease tensions.
However, the only sure answer to “the North Korea problem” is domestic political change. The regime appears superficially formidable but, like Romania before December 1989, likely is extremely brittle, dependent on endless repression to survive. North Koreans know they have been lied to and younger North Koreans are evidently looking beyond Kim for answers. Breaching the DPRK’s Iron Information Curtain could help promote future political change. Even a move to normal authoritarianism would be an improvement.
Diplomatic engagement would give the North the international respect that it craves without sacrificing allied security. An offer of talks and/or recognition could include attention to all issues, including human rights. Individuals, NGOs, and international organizations could be invited to contribute to the dialogue, increasing pressure for change.
Finally, Washington and its allies should play the long game. Pyongyang is an extreme, dysfunctional regime even by communist standards. Rather like Romania’s Ceausescus, the royal Kims are a totalitarian caricature. Imagine the crimes required for the United Nations to denounce a member! Friends of the Korean people should continue to publicly challenge and embarrass the Kim regime and its nominal allies and press for peaceful change.
Were the human cost not so great, the DPRK could be preserved as a museum exhibiting man’s cruelty to man. Instead, people of goodwill everywhere should advocate for the liberation of those trapped in the world’s only absolute monarchy in communist camouflage.
The decade-old judgment of the special UN panel investigating North Korea still reverberates:
Systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations have been and are being committed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, its institutions and officials. In many instances, the violations of human rights found by the commission constitute crimes against humanity. These are not mere excesses of the State; they are essential components of a political system that has moved far from the ideals on which it claims to be founded. The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.
That such a regime continues to exist should horrify us all.
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of several books, including Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World and co-author of The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea.