Liberty In North Korea

NORTH KOREA CRISIS

North Korea is widely recognized as the most repressive country in the world.

UN reports have described the human rights situation in the country as sui generis - in a category of its own, and “harrowing and horrific.” The North Korean regime attempts to deny its people almost every basic human right you can imagine. North Korea’s human rights abuses are so bad, in part, because the regime has had to rely on extreme repression to stay in power. Regime stability is the ultimate objective for the ruling elite, and the brutally efficient system of political oppression, including the prison camps, public executions and collective punishment, are the tools they have used to maintain their system.

DENIAL OF ALMOST ALL BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS

Criticism of the government or the leadership in North Korea is enough to get you and your family sent to a political prison camp. People caught practicing or spreading religion in secret are punished extremely harshly, including by public execution or being sent to political prison camps. It is illegal to leave the country without state permission, and the regime attempts to control the North Korean people’s movement even inside their own country.

POLITICAL PRISON CAMPS

Six political prison camps hold an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 inmates, and some of them are the size of cities. They have existed five times as long as the Nazi concentration camps and twice as long as the Soviet Gulags. Many people imprisoned in these camps were not guilty of any crime but were related to someone who supposedly committed a political crime. There is no due process or rule of law. Even children who are born in the camps are raised as prisoners because their blood is guilty. Forced labor, brutal beatings and death are commonplace.

INFORMATION BLOCKADE

Knowing the threat that outside information poses to their propaganda and ideology, and ultimately its control over the people, the regime has invested massive resources in trying to maintain an information blockade with the outside world and keep its monopoly as the only source of information and ideas to the North Korean people. It is illegal to own a tunable radio in North Korea, there is no access to the internet (except for a few hand-picked and monitored regime officials), and North Korean landlines and mobile phones cannot make international calls. North Korea remains one of the most isolated countries in the world today.

CHRONIC FOOD SHORTAGES

The collapse of the state-socialist economy in the 1990s brought down the Public Distribution System (PDS: national system for allocating food supply). Suddenly, the system that all North Koreans relied on for food was out of operation. Food supplies to less politically favored regions and sections of society were cut first. The resulting famine killed up to one million people in the mid to late 1990s, making it one of the worst famines of the 20th Century.

North Korea’s failed agricultural policies, susceptibility to adverse climate conditions confounded by environmental mismanagement, and an inability to purchase necessary agricultural inputs or food imports mean that North Korea has had chronic food shortages ever since the famine. Millions of malnourished children and babies, pregnant women and nursing mothers bear the brunt of the shortages today.

REFUGEE CRISIS

Since the famine, hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have crossed the border into China in desperate search of food, medicine and money. Even now, thousands of North Koreans flee their country every year, escaping from a combination of economic hardship and political persecution (in North Korea, these are inextricably linked). There are currently an estimated 30,000-50,000 North Korean refugees hiding in China.

If caught trying to escape, or if they are caught in China and sent back, they are at risk of extremely harsh punishments including brutal beatings, forced labor, forced abortions, torture, internment in a political prison camp and even execution.

An estimated 70-80% of North Korean women are trafficked in China. China’s lack of marriageable women, especially in the rural areas of its Northeast provinces, creates a demand for North Korean women who become at risk of being forced to work in brothels or online sex chatrooms, or are bought and sold as wives. Some women are sold for as little as $200.

BUT NORTH KOREA IS CHANGING

North Korea is changing. Significant grassroots changes have been happening since the late 1990s, driven by the people themselves, and these developments and trends have the potential to lead, eventually, to a radically transformed and better North Korea.

However, there has not been enough focus on these changes happening at the people-level, and the issue of North Korea is not associated with dynamism or change. This is because, traditionally, the focus of the international community has been on the level of international politics and nuclear weapons.

If the world knew of the dynamism and resilience of the North Korean people in the face of extraordinary challenges, and could see that underneath this Cold War style stalemate, there is a far more interesting story of hope for change, we believe many more people would be motivated to help the North Korean people.

MARKETIZATION

After the state-socialist economy collapsed in the 1990s the regime was no longer able to provide for the people, and up to a million North Koreans lost their lives a terrible famine. Through this great adversity the North Korean people had to survive by their own strength, so they abandoned defunct work units, got creative and engaged in illegal market activities and foraging to obtain food.

North Korean women in particular emerged from their traditional roles to play a key role in this process, and to this day many market activities continue to be female-dominated. The market became the main source of food for ordinary North Koreans, and as food markets gradually grew to encompass a broader range of goods and services, the market mindset and profit motive spread throughout North Korean society, transforming the country from the bottom up. The regime has periodically tried to crackdown on the markets, but the people have proven their resilience. The markets are here to stay.

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CROSS-BORDER TRADE

Grassroots marketization triggered unprecedented levels of internal and cross-border movement - much of it illegal - and trade with the outside world has grown rapidly. The influx of foreign consumer goods, primarily from China, and their spread through North Korea’s markets, is giving the North Korean people even more tangible evidence of the advancement of their neighboring countries.

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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

North Korea is still the most closed media environment in the world, but compared to two decades ago North Koreans have a lot more access to outside information. This is having a real impact on their views and attitudes.

The regime’s information blockade is being broken down by cross-border movement, trade, and new technologies. Marketization is increasing the proliferation of mobile phones, televisions, radios, DVD players, and foreign media to consume on them. It is possible to buy cheap DVD players from China for around $20, and DVDs themselves are available for less than a dollar and can even be rented. USB drives are growing in popularity and are used with computers and newer DVD players that have a USB input port. This makes it easier to share and watch foreign media without being detected, because USB drives are much easier to conceal. The markets also provide a rare gathering space that can act as a forum for news, rumors and ideas.

North Koreans are learning more about the reality of life on the outside, and they cannot unlearn these things. All signs are that this ‘education in reality’ will only continue, and will further empower the North Korean people to push for the change they want inside the country.

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RELATIONSHIPS

Authoritarian regimes rely on preventing the formation of bonds between the people as separate from the regime. To achieve this they utilize a society-wide system of snitches and informants to keep people’s everyday behavior in check, generating a pervading sense of distrust and fear in the process.

However, North Koreans are increasingly engaging in shared illegal activities such as illicit trade or gathering with small groups of friends to watch foreign DVDs. They are more reliant on each other for goods and information that the regime is either unwilling or unable to provide. This leads to mutual dependence, trust building and the normalization of such activities within communities. North Koreans now report on each other less, and this in turn encourages the further strengthening of bonds between the people. Ultimately this could result in the emergence of a growing civil space for the people, who are breaking off from the state not just at an individual level but increasingly at a community level. This is massively significant because it would enable people to push back against the regime collectively, on small and localized issues at first. Indeed there is evidence that this is already beginning to happen.

THE MARKET GENERATION

North Koreans who are now in their 20s and early 30s came of age after the collapse of the state-socialist economy - an era of marketization and eroding state relevance - and that is the only North Korea they remember. They are the Jangmadang Generation (Jangmadang being North Korean for market) and their attitudes, values and even behaviors are significantly different from their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

The Jangmadang Generation are increasingly separate from the state, traditional ideology seems hollow and irrelevant to them, and they are more influenced by outside information. It is no surprise then that these young North Koreans show more interest in foreign dramas, films, fashions and music, and feel little attachment to the regime or the leadership, seeing regime officials as takers rather than providers and as the source of problems inside the country. They have both less respect and less fear of the regime compared to previous generations, and they could prove to be a crucial demographic in pushing for change in the future.