Interview with HRNK Report Author Ken E. Gause on the Upcoming Launch of His New Book, “North Korean House of Cards: Leadership Dynamics Under Kim Jong-un”

Ken E. Gause at HRNK in October 2015.

© 2015 Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK)

About the Author

Ken E. Gause is the director of the International Affairs Group at CNA, a nonprofit research and analysis organization located in Alexandria, VA. He also oversees the Foreign Leadership Studies Program. For the past two decades, his area of particular focus has been the leaderships of countries including North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, and Russia. Mr. Gause’s work in this area dates back to the early 1980s with his work on the Soviet Union for the U.S. government. Mr. Gause has published widely on the North Korean leadership. In 2006, the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute published his book, North Korean Civil-Military Trends: Military-First Politics to a Point. He is also the author of HRNK’s Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment: An Examination of the North Korean Police State (2013) and North Korea Under Kim Chong-il: Power, Politics, and Prospects for Change, which was published by Praeger in 2011. His recent research interests include North Korean succession politics, the North Korean police state, and North Korean civil-military relations.

On October 8, 2015, HRNK’s Director of Programs Rosa Park sat down with author Ken E. Gause to discuss his upcoming book for HRNK, North Korean House of Cards: Leadership Dynamics Under Kim Jong-un.

Rosa Park: For someone who is reading about North Korea for the first time, your book on leadership changes could be an overwhelming amount of information. How would you summarize your findings for someone who is new to the North Korean leadership?

Ken Gause: My book was written not just for the general audience, but also for the specialized audience that knows quite a bit about the North Korean leadership. As far as how the book should be used, in order to understand North Korea, you really need to begin with an understanding of who the people at the top are, not just the Supreme Leader, but those people around him. And unless you have that understanding, you could very well misunderstand things that North Korea does.

RP: Why do you believe it is important to keep track of each advisor to Kim Jong-un as well as the wider leadership?

KG: Again, in terms of understanding the leadership, while Kim Jong-un, as the Suryong or the Supreme Leader, is no doubt the ultimate authority in the regime, in order to understand his worldview, you really need to understand that there are people around him who may provide advice and have some influence on him. To look at the regime as just being one person is really to simplify the regime. It is a much more complex relationship between a variety of individuals from the military, the party, and the economy or the cabinet and government apparatus. Unless you understand the dynamics between those individuals and the relationships they have with the Supreme Leader, you cannot really understand the Supreme Leader, his worldview, or how decision-making is done inside North Korea.

North Korea’s leadership extends far beyond just Kim Jong-un.

Source: CNN

RP: The UN Commission of Inquiry has found that crimes against humanity have been and are being committed in North Korea pursuant to policies established at the highest level of the state. One of the Commission’s recommendations was that the UN Security Council refer the North Korean case to the International Criminal Court. In his most recent report, UN Special Rapporteur Darusman focused on accountability. However, only a few human rights experts and organizations understand North Korea’s leadership structure and dynamics. How helpful is your work going to be in identifying the chain of command and individuals responsible for crimes against humanity in North Korea?

KG: In order to understand the crimes against humanity in their totality, you need to understand the relationship between the people at the very top all the way down to the people that are perpetuating a lot of the crimes on the ground. This book really outlines a lot of the people at the very top of the regime. It definitely helps us understand the motivations behind some of these crimes against humanity, but a lot more research and analysis still needs to be done in order to make the full connections between the top of the regime and things that are taking place on the ground.

RP: There has been a large number of purges under Kim Jong-un during his leadership transition. Kim Jong-un’s purges have been more intense compared to his father’s first four years as leader of North Korea, possibly on a par with the extent and intensity of Kim Il-sung’s purges of the 1950s. Does this tell us something about Kim Jong-un and the character of his leadership? Or, rather, is this happening just because he barely had three years to prepare, while his father had twenty? In other words, are the purges so brutal and intense because he didn’t really have a power base in early 2012, and he has been desperately scrambling to build one?

KG: What it tells us is more about the environment in which Kim Jong-un is operating than Kim Jong-un himself. I mean yes, Kim Jong-un has proven himself to be a leader who acts in bold strokes and acts very quickly against any people he may perceive as being threats to his regime. He is also involved in a power consolidation process. During power consolidation inside North Korea, especially with someone who has only been in power for a few years, the purges can be frequent and brutal. People can be made an example of as opposed to just being taken out because they are perceived to be threats. Therefore, I think that this tells us more about the environment in which Kim Jong-un is operating than his personality itself.

RP: Unlike his father, Kim Jong-un regularly gives speeches and does not shy away from the public eye. Do you believe his style and public persona have a significant impact on recent leadership dynamics?

KG: He definitely has a different leadership style than his father, Kim Jong-il. Whether it has an impact on leadership dynamics is unclear. It is definitely true that as part of the power consolidation process, Kim Jong-un has had to go back to the wellspring of legitimacy inside the regime, and that is Kim Il-Sung himself, so he is patterning a lot of his public persona after his grandfather. This is unlike Kim Jong-il, who he really reached back through the maternal line of his mother in order to establish legitimacy within the regime. Kim Jong-un is reaching back to Kim Il-sung, and therefore is patterning his mannerisms and speeches after his grandfather to elicit from the North Korean population a feeling of nostalgia for better times. Therefore, I think that an important thing to understand about Kim Jong-un’s leadership style and persona is that it is tied in with the power consolidation process.

Resemblance between Kim Jong-un and his grandfather Kim Il-sung.

Source: NKNews

RP: Do you have recommendations regarding U.S. policy towards North Korea? If so, are such recommendations based on the changes in Kim Jong-un’s leadership?

KG: Yes, there are recommendations that can be made for U.S. policy. In my opinion, the policy of benign neglect or strategic patience is not working. I believe that we have to engage North Korea. Even though it is a bitter pill to swallow for us to engage with a country that commits human rights violations and is not playing by the rules of the international community, I think through engagement we can have a much larger effect on North Korea than if we ignore them or place increasing sanctions on them. If what we want to achieve is some sort of soft landing inside of North Korea where you can have a peaceful reunification on the Korean peninsula, you have to think about things that will entice the regime to engage the international community, and hopefully over time it will begin to transform itself into more of a normal nation and one that plays by the rules.

RP: Are there any trends you anticipate in the leadership under Kim Jong-un in the next five years? Ten years?

KG: Kim Jong-un is having a lot of difficulty in consolidating his power. The primary reason that he has not been able to consolidate his power up to this point is that he has not been able to show definite progress on the North Korean economy. This means engaging the outside world in order to secure international aid. If Kim Jong-un is not able to consolidate power within the next two to five years, many “Pyongyang watchers” believe there will begin a transformation inside the North Korean leadership in which his ability to dictate from on high will become more and more marginalized. Whether this means that he becomes a puppet or more of a consensus builder is not entirely clear. But I think the two to five year period is going to be a very important time in terms of North Korean politics. As for the further out we go, five to ten years, it is just too hazy right now to tell. A lot of it depends on the two to five year time frame.

RP: What do you think Kim Jong-un’s criteria are for purges versus demotions? Is there any consistency? How does he make these decisions?

KG: Kim Jong-un’s decisions with regard to demotions are probably tied to policy. We have seen very many military figures that have been demoted and then re-promoted. We have seen some Party and government figures being demoted and some being re-promoted. This is probably tied to the fact that they did not execute policy in the way Kim Jong-un wanted. Purges, on the other hand, are directly tied to the consolidation process. Obviously, the most severe purge was done against Jang Song-taek, in which we know for a fact that he was executed, and this was because, I believe, he was becoming a threat within the regime, capable of creating a second center of power. We have seen other people, like most recently Minister of People’s Armed Forces, Hyon Yong-chol, being purged and presumably executed. That was probably done in order to rephrase the leadership and stop power struggles that are happening at the second and third echelons. So, the purges are a much more complex decision-making process that are definitely tied to Kim Jong-un’s ability to consolidate his power.

RP: The North Korean leadership is extremely complex and there is not exactly a wealth of reliable sources. What is your methodology for determining the leadership structure? Where do you find your most reliable sources?

Ken E. Gause discussing his charts on North Korea's leaders.

© 2015 Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) 

KG: In order to understand the North Korean leadership, it takes years, if not decades, of studying this regime in order to understand the dynamics that occur among the various leaders and leadership groupings and how the Supreme Leader makes decisions. It is critical to understand that it is a regime that is based on personalities. It is a regime that is based on relationships. And so the way that I have dealt with it and the way that my methodology works, is that I have developed a model based on decades of looking at the leadership. When I see things happen, I then try to understand the motivation behind those actions, and I have tweaked my model over the years. I believe that if you just try to pay attention to the actions of the moment, about the person being purged or demoted or whatever, it tells you very little in the larger context of how North Korean leadership dynamics operate. Therefore, you have to look at a variety of different sources. I have sources inside the regime, and I have very high-level defectors that I have talked to. I have talked to numerous high-level defectors over the years. I have talked to most regional experts on the North Korean regime and leadership, as opposed to just Northeast Asia or Korean scholars. And I have also delved through what North Korea says about itself through its own media and things. And if you take all of these various sources and begin to put them together and look at them over time, internal logic to a model begins to evolve and then you begin to build your model around that logic.

RP: Based on your assessment of recent leadership dynamics, how stable is the regime of Kim Jong-un?

KG: The North Korean regime right now, in my opinion, is fairly stable. Especially since the purge of Hyon Yong-chol at the end of April, it seems as if the dynamics within the regime have calmed down somewhat. I believe that at least for the near term, for the next two to five years, the regime will be stable, but if Kim Jong-un is not able to show progress on the economy, those dynamics could shift and the elements of instability could begin to creep into the regime.

RP: There has recently been more press coverage of the women in the North Korean leadership, including Kim Yo-jong. How important do you find Kim Sul-song’s role in the leadership, even as a woman in North Korea’s patriarchal society? Ri Sol-ju, Kim Jong-un’s wife, also appears quite frequently in public. How do you see her role, when compared to that of wives and concubines of the two previous Kims?

KG: This is related to the earlier question about Kim Jong-un’s leadership style and how he is portrayed and his public persona. If you go back to the period of Kim Il-sung, the roles of the women around him were quite prominent. Women have always played prominent roles behind the scenes inside North Korea. In Kim Il-sung’s period, there was his first wife and then his second wife. For Kim Jong-Il, especially prominent was his wife Ko Yong-hui, the mother of Kim Jong-un, and also, I must say, under Kim Jong-il, his sister Kim Kyong-hui, played a major role. And under Kim Jong-un, we see several women who have begun to play a prominent role—family members—the most prominent being Kim Yo-jong, his younger sister. The women, I think, play a very important advisory role behind the scenes. These are people who are very close to him personally, and I think that these personal relationships carry a lot of weight.

For example, if we go back to the Kim Jong-il period, probably one of the primary reasons why North Korea decided to open up its negotiations and seek a summit with Japan in the early 2000s was largely driven by Ko Yong-hui and her relationship and family ties back to Japan. This was something that the regime had even advised Kim Jong-il not to do. Today, we see Kim Yo-jong, who has been put in place to replace her aunt, Kim Kyong-hui, as the primary advisor behind the Supreme Leader. A lot of the ways that she has been portrayed in the media are reminiscent of the mid-1990s when Kim Jong-il came to power and of how Kim Kyong-hui was portrayed in the media. As far as Kim Sul-song, she is definitely not of the same mother and lineage as Kim Yo-jong and Kim Jong-un, but I believe that she, as somebody who was very close to her aunt, Kim Kyong-hui, and probably her father, was one of Kim Jong-il’s favorite offspring. As a person that’s been around North Korean politics for decades, I think she probably plays a critical advisory role behind the scenes.

As far as Ri Sol-ju is concerned, I believe that she plays maybe an advisory role. She tends to be brought out in public in periods of time when the regime has reestablished stability or is very stable. She disappears in times when there is particular stress within the regime, so she is somebody that we can watch to try to get a sense about internal dynamics and the stability of those dynamics inside the regime. But altogether, I believe that these women are people who are going to play increasingly important roles under Kim Jong-un, whether they are on the center stage or whether they are behind the curtain.

Left to right: Kim Yo-jong, Kim Sul-song, and Ri Sol-ju.

Source: AsiaNews

HRNK invites you to attend its launch of Mr. Gause’s book, North Korean House of Cards: Leadership Dynamics Under Kim Jong-un, on Friday, October 30, 2015 at 9:30am at the National Press Club. More information is available at this link. Please RSVP to rosapark@hrnk.org by Wednesday, October 28, 2015.

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Categories: analysis, news

Muddying the Waters: North Korea’s Deceptive Media Offensive

By Greg Scarlatoiu

Greg Scarlatoiu is executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) in Washington, D.C. At HRNK, he supervises, manages, and coordinates the drafting, publication, and dissemination of reports investigating the North Korean human rights situation. In close coordination with HRNK’s board of directors, Scarlatoiu shares HRNK’s findings and recommendations with UN agencies and international NGO networks. A seasoned lecturer on North Korean human rights, political security, and economic issues on the Korean peninsula, he has appeared as an expert witness at several Congressional hearings on North Korean human rights. An experienced social audit consultant, he is currently finalizing a report on North Korean workers officially dispatched overseas. For twelve years, Scarlatoiu has been authoring and broadcasting the weekly Scarlatoiu Column to North Korea for Radio Free Asia (RFA). A visiting professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) in Seoul, he holds a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (MALD) from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and an MA and BA from Seoul National University, Department of International Relations. Scarlatoiu was awarded the title of Citizen of Honor, City of Seoul, in January 1999. He is fluent in Korean, French, and Romanian.

On Monday, September 21, 2015, the 30th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva featured a panel discussion on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), including the issue of international abductions, enforced disappearances, and related matters, moderated by Michael Kirby, former chair of the Commission of Inquiry on human rights in the DPRK (UN COI). The panelists included Mr. Koichiro Iizuka, vice secretary-general of the Association of Victims Kidnapped by North Korea.

The main panel was followed by a side event featuring the tragic accounts of South Korean, Japanese, Romanian, Thai, and other nationals abducted by North Korea. The panelists included Mr. Hwang In-chul, whose father was a passenger on Korean Air Lines YS-11, hijacked by North Korean agents on December 11, 1969. Mr. Hwang's father was one of 11 passengers and crew members who were never returned to South Korea.

On the same day, CNN’s Will Ripley and Tim Schwarz published a story based on sources inside North Korea, claiming that Ms. Mun Su Gyong, a North Korean national, was allegedly abducted by South Korean agents while working as a waitress at a North Korean state-owned restaurant in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. One of the sources quoted is the former manager of the respective restaurant, who reportedly believes that South Korean spies posing as North Korean businessmen “frequented the restaurant for two years,” befriended Ms. Mun, and then abducted her, forcing her into a car and driving away. At the time of the alleged “abduction” four years ago, Ms. Mun was twenty years old. The report included an interview with Ms. Mun’s parents.

Source: CNN

By offering this story to a prominent U.S. media organization, the North Korean authorities likely attempted to counter efforts by the UN and the international community to focus attention on South Korean nationals and citizens of other countries abducted by North Korea. As we learned from an excellent David Hawk piece published by US-Korea Institute’s 38 North about a year ago, the North Korean government reacted to the highly critical report of the UN COI through: a “counter-report” by the North Korean Association of Human Rights Studies; a significantly revised approach to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism; and a diplomatic “counter-offensive,” which involved the North Korean foreign minister appearing before the UN General Assembly for the first time in 15 years, and so-called “press briefings” focused on denial of the appalling North Korean human rights record.

By offering this story to a prominent U.S. media organization, the North Korean authorities likely attempted to counter efforts by the UN and the international community to focus attention on South Korean nationals and citizens of other countries abducted by North Korea. 

As part of the same strategy, the North Korean regime’s propaganda website, Uriminzokkiri, launched ferocious attacks against UN COI witnesses, including former political prisoners Jung Gwang-il and Shin Dong-hyuk, and also North Korean defector and scholar Cho Myung-chul, the first North Korean escapee to become a South Korean National Assembly member.

On the upside, the North Korean regime’s approach to human rights has surely changed post-UN COI. Its fundamental strategic stance on human rights used to be utter neglect. Always overshadowed by nukes and missiles, human rights would easily disappear off the radar screen of the international community, so the Kim regime knew there wasn’t much to worry about. Post-UN COI, even the North Korean regime has come to the realization that human rights is here to stay, and it can no longer just ignore attempts by UN agencies, foreign government agencies, and international NGOs to shed light on its abysmal human rights situation. Pursuant to the findings of the UN COI, North Korea is no longer seen as a bizarre relic of the Cold War, but as a post-communist, post-industrial, dynastic kleptocracy that is subjecting its own people to crimes against humanity in order to maintain its grip on power.

Post-UN COI, even the North Korean regime has come to the realization that human rights is here to stay, and it can no longer just ignore attempts by UN agencies, foreign government agencies, and international NGOs to shed light on its abysmal human rights situation.


On the downside, North Korean attempts to compromise witnesses and muddy the waters by misleading foreign media organizations will continue. Since the release of the UN COI report in February 2014, CNN has done excellent reporting on the North Korean human rights situation, and perhaps that is why it was the media organization targeted by North Korea’s deception in this case. 

In the particular case of the young North Korean woman allegedly “abducted” by South Korean agents, the story, published undoubtedly with the approval of the North Korean authorities, presents the following problems:

• The former manager of the respective restaurant claims that Mun Su Gyong had been befriended by "South Korean spies" posing as North Korean businessmen. I have interviewed former restaurant workers who escaped and found their way to South Korea. The waitresses' "befriending" customers is reportedly a big red flag for the managers running these restaurants. The girls who get too close to customers are quickly disciplined, and in extreme cases sent back to North Korea. Sustaining such "friendship" with customers, well known to other waitresses and the manager, would be impossible. One has to remember this is a tightly confined space. The waitresses work and live together under strict surveillance. They are only seldom allowed to go shopping or sightseeing, and even then only in groups, never alone. 
• With 28,000 former North Koreans already living in South Korea, including some former senior officials, there is absolutely no conceivable need for South Korean intelligence agents to kidnap North Koreans. 
• There are former restaurant workers already living in South Korea. There would be no practical need for South Korean intelligence agents to kidnap additional restaurant workers. 
• South Korea is a liberal democracy that has discarded the dark legacy of its authoritarian past. The UN Secretary-General is a South Korean national, the president of the World Bank is a Korean American born in South Korea, and South Korea contributes in many meaningful ways to international humanitarian and development assistance as well as peacekeeping operations. South Korea is not a rogue state conducting abductions of its own nationals or other countries' nationals overseas. It is North Korea that has kidnapped nationals of South Korea, Japan, China, France, Guinea, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Macau, Netherlands, Romania, Malaysia, and Singapore.

It is North Korea that has kidnapped nationals of South Korea, Japan, China, France, Guinea, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Macau, Netherlands, Romania, Malaysia, and Singapore.

To the reader interested in learning more about North Korea’s abduction of citizens of South Korea and other countries, I highly recommend HRNK’s report “Taken,” by Yoshi Yamamoto, published in the spring of 2011. While I do hope that, if she is indeed alive and separated from her family, Mun Su Gyong will be reunited with her loved ones, one has to remember: 82,959 South Koreans were abducted by North Korea during the Korean War; 3,824 South Koreans, most of them fishermen, have been abducted since the July 27, 1953 Korean War Armistice; 93,000 ethnic Koreans residing in Japan were lured back to North Korea and never allowed to leave, many of them trapped together with Japanese spouses; hundreds of Japanese and Chinese nationals have been abducted to North Korea; and at least 25 nationals of countries other than South Korea, Japan, and China have been reportedly taken against their will. With 180,108 nationals of South Korea and other countries taken by North Korea, that regime must provide a full accounting of those abducted and detained, facilitate the reunification of abductees’ families, return the remains of deceased abductees, and observe the right of freedom of movement by allowing the surviving abductees to return to their families. With abductions by North Korea featured prominently in UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the DPRK Marzuki Darusman’s most recent September 8, 2015 report to the General Assembly, this issue is here to stay. The North Korean regime should rest assured that its attempts to muddy the waters and run anti-human rights media campaigns will, once again, be doomed to failure.

With 180,108 nationals of South Korea and other countries taken by North Korea, that regime must provide a full accounting of those abducted and detained, facilitate the reunification of abductees’ families, return the remains of deceased abductees, and observe the right of freedom of movement by allowing the surviving abductees to return to their families. 

To download a free PDF copy of “Taken,” go to: http://hrnk.org/uploads/pdfs/Taken_LQ.pdf.

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Categories: analysis, CNN, ColdWar, DPRK, HRNK, hrnkus, humanrights, KimJongUn, NK, nonprofit, NorthKorea, southkorea, UN, UNCOI, UNGA

Statement of Roberta Cohen at the Launch of "Hidden Gulag IV: Gender Repression and Prisoner Disappearances" and "Camp 15 Imagery Update"

© 2015 Committee for Human Rights in North Korea

by Roberta Cohen, HRNK Co-Chair Emeritus

STATEMENT OF ROBERTA COHEN, CO-CHAIR, COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN NORTH KOREA ON THE LAUNCH OF “HIDDEN GULAG IV: GENDER REPRESSION AND PRISONER DISAPPEARANCES & CAMP 15 IMAGERY UPDATE” AT THE NEWSEUM, SEPTEMBER 18, 2015

I find the reports of David Hawk and Joe Bermudez significant because they make everyone so uncomfortable. Most people don’t want to know about the camps, especially diplomats who hope to negotiate with North Korea, humanitarian organizations on the ground seeking to get along with the host government, and all other parties who want to engage with Pyongyang and feel good about their doing so. These reports provide inconvenient information. It puts a human face on the political prison and re-education camps by providing testimonies of survivors, satellite imagery of camps, and for the first time a list of 181 incarcerated prisoners from Kwan-li-so Camp 15. 

David's report brings to light how women in North Korea are facing particular repression. Most of the North Koreans today who cross the border illegally are women trying to improve their lives and the lives of their families. Increasingly they are arrested, ill-treated and imprisoned. I am pleased the United States recently called for the release of female political prisoners around the world and singled out North Korea. 

The Hawk and Bermudez reports are also significant because they provide evidence that can be used in future trials against the Kim Jong-un regime. Since the UN Commission of Inquiry report of 2014, the need for accountability has begun to take root. Last year, the United Nations General Assembly called upon the Security Council to consider referring the North Korean human rights situation to the International Criminal Court. It also called for targeted sanctions against those most responsible. And a UN human rights office has been set up in Seoul to compile information with a view to accountability. 

Accountability is essential to address deliberate state policies of starvation of prisoners, lack of medical attention, forced labor and beatings. Such practices are estimated to have led to over one hundred thousand deaths in the political prison camps over the past 50 years. Yet there seems to be an international reticence when it comes to demanding access to these camps. The United States to its credit began two to three years ago to speak out strongly against the camps and about accountability. And UN resolutions have called upon North Korea to release all political prisoners unconditionally. But one doesn’t hear much about governments coming together to make joint demarches or intercessions on a regular basis for access to these camps. One doesn’t hear a drumbeat internationally to gain entry. But there should be one because camp commanders, the officials issuing the orders to them and those carrying them out, need to become aware that what they are doing constitutes crimes against humanity and could lead to their being brought before a court in the future. South Korean experts have actually reported anecdotal evidence that commanders in some detention centers may have modified practices out of fear of possible future prosecution. Accountability has rattled the Kim Jong-un regime. Last year the focus at the UN on the ICC led the DPRK to offer for the first time visits for the High Commissioner for Human Rights and other UN officials in order to try to remove from a General Assembly resolution the reference to accountability. 

Of the 181 prisoners listed in the Hawk report, more than 120 are reported to be missing. Their names should be part of dialogues developed with North Korea and part of demarches or statements. Where are these people? It is time for the international community to call for an accounting of prisoners—their whereabouts, the reasons for their incarceration, whether family members are held with them, whether they have perished. The UN General Assembly has called upon states that have relations with North Korea to use their influence to encourage the closure of political prison camps. But no joint strategy yet exists. 

Contingency plans being developed by different governments to deal with any sudden change in North Korea should include strategies for bringing political prisoners to safety. The UN Commission of Inquiry reported the existence of standing orders at the political prison camps to kill all prisoners in the event of conflict or revolution. The purpose of these orders is to destroy the evidence. While it’s impossible to know whether anything can be done to stop this, publicizing this information is important. And including prisoner protection in contingency planning should be urged. The Atrocities Prevention Board established in the United States in 2012 should have on its agenda as a standing item–the risk of potential massacre of North Korean political prisoners. And the U.S. should begin to add names of persons and entities engaged in serious human rights abuses in the camps to the sanctions list under the President’s executive order of January 2015. NGOs for their part should be sending information to the International Criminal Court. Even though the prosecutor cannot now address the situation, the NGOs can publicize the information with a view to future accountability. This might reach the attention of camp officials and sow doubt among North Korea’s elites.

At the present time, the situation is especially precarious for prisoners. Drought is plaguing North Korea and serious food shortages are predicted. In the past when there has been serious malnutrition and starvation in parts of the country, prisoners have suffered disproportionately. They have been left to eat grass and rats. 

Do international humanitarian agencies and NGOs on the ground have a responsibility? Yes, their stated goal is to reach the most vulnerable in the country. They should begin to compile privately whatever information they can find about starvation and disease in the camps and hammer out strategies to gain entry, in particular for organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross. 

North Korea’s population could actually benefit from allowing the World Health Organization entry to the camps. Tuberculosis is on the rise in the country and reported to be rampant in the camps. The WHO has found in other countries that effective TB control in prisons protects the community at large. Shouldn’t the UN encourage the WHO to gain entry to the camps to try to help eradicate TB from the country? And shouldn’t improved treatment of women—another goal of the UN—extend to women prisoners in North Korea? The Secretary-General introduced a Human Rights Up Front Approach in 2013 that calls upon the entire UN system, when faced with serious violations of human rights, to develop a system wide strategy. This approach needs to be applied to North Korea, and HRNK has been calling upon the UN to do so. North Korea’s government must receive the message that the camps in North Korea are a blight on the civilized world and on any aspirations North Korea might have to improve its relationships with other countries and receive the political, economic and investment support it badly needs for its development.

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Categories: analysis, committeehrnk, DPRK, HRNK, hrnkus, humanrights, KimJongUn, NGO, TB, UN, UNCOI, UNGA, UNHRC, WashingtonDC, WHO