United Nations General Assembly High-Level Plenary Meeting Addressing Human Rights Abuses and Violations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Statement by Greg Scarlatoiu, President and CEO

United Nations General Assembly

High-Level Plenary Meeting

Addressing Human Rights Abuses and Violations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Statement by Greg Scarlatoiu, President and CEO

Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK)

Your Excellency Philemon Young, President of the General Assembly at its 79th session; Ms. Ilze Brands Kehris, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights; Professor Elizabeth Salmón, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the DPRK; Your Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen:

Please allow me to speak on behalf of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea—HRNK. We're an NGO holding UN ECOSOC consultative status. Since 2001, we have embarked on a mission to research, investigate, and report on human rights violations perpetrated by the DPRK regime.

The point I wish to emphasize is that DPRK human rights violations reinforce a regime that is exporting violence and instability—not only in the Northeast Asia region, but also in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

You may all be familiar with the fact that the DPRK has been exporting weapons and ammunition to the terrorist groups that have encircled the State of Israel through Iran. The Type 73 submachine gun—you can see it in the hands of each and every fighter in the Middle East, whether you're talking about Syria, whether you're talking about Iraq, or whether you're talking about Yemen.

The first time the North Korean Musudan ballistic missile was tested—that's a missile based on an old Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missile—it did not happen in North Korea. It happened in Iran.

You all remember that massive missile attack against Israel. Those liquid-fuel missiles were based on a North Korean design.

And you know, we see what's happening on the Ukrainian front right now. Millions—millions—of North Korean artillery shells have been exported to Russia, to the Ukrainian front. KN-23 and KN-24 ballistic missiles have been deployed against Ukraine—Ukrainian cities, Ukrainian civilians: men, women, children.

Even troops from the 11th Armed Corps of the Korean People's Army—the North Korean People's Army—have been deployed to the Ukrainian front. 11,000 of them, at the very least. The numbers are increasing.

I do not believe reports that they're just gun fodder. They're not. They're very good troops—well-trained, well-fed, well-indoctrinated. What they have to learn is combined operations: artillery, drones, infantry. They're learning fast.

So, what is the point I'm trying to make here? The point I'm trying to make is that North Korea is no longer just a Korean Peninsula threat. The DPRK is no longer just a Northeast Asian threat. The DPRK is exporting instability and violence to the Middle East and to Europe. And the root cause of this is the human rights violations that the DPRK perpetrates.

Let me quote my good friend John Sifton, and my colleagues at Human Rights Watch, who issued a press release on May 18—just yesterday:

“The United Nations General Assembly should establish a new body to examine the connections between the North Korean government's repressive system and its military programs and nuclear weapons development.”

Concerned governments need to send high-level officials to this plenary today to offer specific ideas on how the General Assembly can better hold North Korea accountable—by documenting the links between the DPRK’s human rights abuses and its weapons programs.

Ladies and gentlemen, what do we know about human rights denial in North Korea?

Most of the 25 million people of North Korea are victims of the Kim family regime's policy of human rights denial. The people of North Korea face discrimination based on a loyalty-based system called Songbun.

The regime preserves itself through producing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, maintaining the Korean People's Army, and keeping its key elites happy through access to luxury goods and hard currency procured from the outside world—generally through illicit means, and also in violation of applicable UN sanctions.

In order to procure the resources needed to preserve itself, the regime oppresses and exploits its people at home and abroad. Prior to COVID, we knew that there were about 100,000 North Korean people deployed—primarily to Russia, China, and the Middle East. Up to 90% of their salaries were being confiscated by the regime.

This DPRK regime perpetuates itself through overwhelming coercion, control, surveillance, punishment, as well as strict information control.

We also know that the major agents of potential change in North Korea are the very people of North Korea. And when I say change, I mean peaceful change—peaceful transformation.

All right. I'm an adopted American, a naturalized American. I was on the streets of Bucharest in December 1989, during the anti-communist revolution. I know how terrible a non-peaceful transformation can be.

What we need in North Korea is peaceful transformation. We need a coherent information campaign focused on telling the North Korean people three stories: the abysmal human rights situation; the corruption of their leadership, particularly the inner core of the Kim family; and the truth about the outside world—especially the free, democratic, and prosperous Republic of Korea, South Korea.

Like-minded UN member states—democracies—must reassume leadership.

We must retake the high ground we once held on DPRK human rights at the UN, and the General Assembly can play an extraordinary role in this process. We must resuscitate the coalition of these like-minded UN member states and democracies. We need stronger UN General Assembly resolutions. We need to advance human rights through multilateral diplomacy, and we need to focus on a human rights-upfront approach to the North Korean conundrum.

We must truly rely on the members of this like-minded coalition. We know who they are: the EU, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and other UN member states. Of course, the Global South—the Global South is extraordinarily important. We must rely on our friends, our partners, our allies in the Global South, who have themselves experienced tremendous human rights violations. They can be absolutely helpful—tremendous, critical allies.

Advancing human rights through multilateral international diplomacy will be key to what I propose as a human rights-upfront approach to the North Korean conundrum.

And of course, I'm speaking on this hallowed ground at the UN. When you say a human rights-upfront approach, what you mean is bringing together the three branches: political, humanitarian, and human rights.

What I mean by this is placing human rights front and center as we deal with the DPRK. What I mean is inducing peaceful change in North Korea.

So let us try to empower the people—and I repeat, the people—of North Korea. Let us step up efforts to send them information from the outside world—information telling them three fundamental stories:

1.     The story of their own human rights.

2.     The story of the corruption of their leadership.

3.     The story of the outside world—especially the story of South Korea, the Republic of Korea.

North Korea joined the UN at the same time as South Korea, in 1991. Upon becoming a UN member state, North Korea assumed international obligations. It must observe the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

North Korea acceded to the two core human rights covenants in 1982—nine years before joining the UN: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

The DPRK has also joined the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

And yet, each and every conceivable civil, political, economic, social, and cultural right is violated in North Korea.

Let us take a look at the constitution of the DPRK. Please excuse this shameless exercise in self-promotion—it's on our website, hrnk.org. You can take a look at the constitution of the DPRK there.

The constitution and other laws supposedly protect rights such as freedom of religion and freedom of assembly—but none of these rights are observed in practice. All that matters is North Korean ideology and the TPMI—the Ten Principles of Monolithic Ideology.

So again, we used to think about North Korea as a Korean Peninsula issue, as a regional issue. That is no longer the case.

In order to support the regime—and to support the exportation of instability and violence to the Middle East and Europe—the DPRK regime relies on human rights violations.

And I will strongly argue in favor of a human rights approach to the DPRK. Unless we resolve the abysmal human rights situation, there will be no answer to this challenge.

And we have had a report from the UN COI—the United Nations Commission of Inquiry. I know that some of the distinguished delegates here have an issue with country-specific mechanisms, and that is all right.

But in February 2014, a UN Commission of Inquiry—three head commissioners: one Serbian, Sonja Biserko; one Australian, Michael Kirby; and one Indonesian, Marzuki Darusman—found that crimes against humanity were being committed in North Korea, pursuant to policies established at the highest level of the state.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I will argue that the DPRK regime thrives on crimes against humanity. This regime thrives on human rights violations.

And if we are to bring some resolution to the Korean Peninsula—if we are to restore peace, prosperity, and stability to the Northeast Asia region and other parts of the world—we must focus on North Korean human rights.

Thank you very much for listening, and please remember: hrnk.org.
Thank you very much.

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North Korea’s Lawfare Strategy

North Korea’s Lawfare Strategy^[1]

By Robert Collins

Edited by Greg Scarlatoiu

October 30, 2024

 

The weakening of totalitarian regimes results in the worsening of human rights denial. North Korea is no exception. The Kim regime's latest indicator of this weakness is its recent "lawfare" strategy of extreme punishment for cultural violations, as demonstrated by 2021-2023 legislation designed to stop the infiltration of South Korean culture into the North.

South Korean culture continues to permeate into North Korean society slowly but surely, particularly among the younger generations of the North. Hallyu, the “Korean Wave,” or South Korean culture, entertainment, and information, has proven to be so attractive to younger North Koreans that they are willing to risk their lives and future to enjoy the likes of K-pop, South Korean movies and anything else they can gain access to electronically.

As a response to this infiltration of South Korean culture into North Korea, the Kim regime has taken to the concept of threatening punishment for anyone caught watching or listening to South Korean culture and information. This punishment goes beyond the previous historical approaches to state violence. According to the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB), there has been a 40-fold increase in human rights violations by the Kim regime against the citizens of North Korea.^[2]

The Kim regime has expanded its cultural control to its own version of “lawfare.” While the concept of “lawfare” has been in use for a while, it has recently gained added significance in the United States. The term refers to one political party employing legal challenges and court decisions to attack another political party for the purpose of discrediting the other party and/or its representatives.

In the last four years, the Kim regime has compelled the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Supreme People’s Assembly to pass laws designed to restrict North Korean citizens from learning of what the world is like outside the borders of North Korea, especially what life is like for their fellow ethnic Koreans in the South. Consequently, the Kim regime compelled North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly to promulgate the Law on Rejecting Reactionary Ideology and Culture in 2020, the Youth Education Guarantee Law in 2021 and the Law on Protecting Pyongyang Cultural Language in 2023.

The Law on Rejecting Reactionary Ideology and Culture (반동사상문화배격법) was amended in August 2022 and supplemented by Order No. 1028 of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly. It is made up of four chapters and 41 articles. Articles 1-7 define and list the aims of the anti-reactionary thought law. Articles 8-14 address the responsibilities of the local officials to enforce the law. Articles 15-26 target the media violators of the law access and use. Articles 27-40 describe the punishments to be applied to violators of the law.^[3]

The Youth Education Guarantee Act (청소년 교육 보장법) of 2021 is designed to eliminate among the youth “anti-socialist and non-socialist thought” and ideologically educate young people how to be totally loyal to orders from the party and Kim Jong Un. The law has five chapters and 45 articles. The law states what young people “must not do during efforts to establish a socialist lifestyle,” and lists other institutional and individual violations. It also states that violators must “take legal responsibility” for their wrongdoing. Punishments range from years of forced labor to death sentences.^[4]

The Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act (조선민주주의인민공화국 평양문화어보호법) was implemented by the Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly’s Order No. 1028 on August 19, 2022. This act has 4 chapters and 41 articles.^[5]

North Koreans are punished for using ‘anti-socialist’ words picked up from smuggled South Korean dramas. Those youths who are found guilty of violating these laws – listening to K-pop, watching South Korean movies, illegally importing South Korean media technology – are arrested in front of captive youth audiences to emphasize the Kim regime’s staunch attitude against South Korean cultural infiltration into the North. It should be understood that violations of the party’s Ten Great Principles of Monolithic Ideology (TPMI) and not violations of the criminal code are the reason most people are sent to political prison camps. The Kim regime’s lawfare is designed to support these ideological principles.

Under the Kim regime, party influence is pervasive in both criminal and political cases. In criminal cases, the government assigns lawyers to the defense. Defense lawyers are not considered advocates for the defendant so much as independent parties to help persuade the accused to admit his/her guilt, although they apparently present facts to mitigate punishment.^[6] "With the influx of external culture and information such as South Korean soap operas and K-pop, many North Koreans are consuming Juche culture by day, South Korean culture by night," Unification Minister Kim Yung-ho said in his keynote speech at the 2024 International Dialogue on North Korean Human Rights held in Washington.

Regardless, one can be sentenced to prison and heavy labor by organizations other than a court. The Ministry of State Security (the secret police), peer trials and locally based Socialist Life Guidance Committees all can sentence a person without going through the established legal system. Peer trials are particularly political and focus on non-support of the TPMI; failing to study or criticism/distortion of the teachings of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il and party policy; and minor economic crimes.  

North Koreans are punished for using ‘anti-socialist’ words picked up from smuggled South Korean dramas. Yet, there are reports that even the lead initiator of these laws, Kim Jong-un, has been watching some of these South Korean movies, as evidenced by the language he has been using in his public addresses to the North Korean people. When addressing older flood victims recently, though normally referring to them as “comrades”, he referred to them as “citizens.” Rather than referring to older victims as “senior,” he called them “elders.” He called television “TV” rather than the normal North Korean term “terebi.” Lastly, Kim referred to the flood situation as “navigating rough terrain,” a change from the more normal North Korean term of “difficult and tiring situation.”^[7]

Recommendations to pass legislation to change conditions in North Korea historically ignore the actual political power system of the Kim Regime which is party-based and not state-based.  Demands should focus on changing party policies because all state agencies strictly follow party guidelines.  Each state agency or department, regardless of size or level, follows the decisions of the embedded KWP committee in that organization.  An example is asking for changes in the criminal code that presumably would be enforced by the courts and police agencies.  However, all court representatives, including judges, and police take orders from the party, not the state, and legal decisions are made based on political consequences and requirements.^[8]

South Korea's cultural wave is fiercely battling the cultural indoctrination of the Kim Jong-un regime to win the hearts and minds of North Koreans. When human rights demand begins to effectively pressure human rights denial, ruling regimes such as that of North Korea’s Kim double their efforts at suppression through new policies and legislation.

^[1] This paper is a version of a recent conference presentation in Seoul, South Korea.

^[2] 북한인권정보센터, The Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB). 2024년 북한인권백서, White Paper on North Korean Human Rights. October 8, 2024. Pages141 and 356. https://nkdb.org/publication/?bmode=view&idx=121771392. 

^[3] Seulkee Jang, “Daily NK acquires full text of the anti-reactionary thought law,” dailynk.com, March 21, 2023. URL: https://www.dailynk.com/english/daily-nk-acquires-full-text-of-the-anti-reactionary-thought-law/.

^[4] Mun Dong Hui, “North Korean young people stupefied by strong punishments in “Youth Education Guarantee Act”, dailynk.com, February 17, 2022. URL: https://www.dailynk.com/english/north-korean-young-people-stupefied-strong-punishments-youth-education-guarantee-act/.

^[5] DailyNK, “The Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act of The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” dailynk.com, January 2023. URL: https://www.dailynk.com/english/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Pyongyang-Cultural-Language-Protection-Act_English-and-Korean-Versions_Daily-NK.pdf 

^[6] Kyu Chang Lee, Gwang Jin Chung, “The North Korean Criminal Trial System: Characteristics and Actual Practice,” KINU Research Abstract 11-05. URL: www.kinu.or.kr.

^[7] Ahn Chang Gyu and Park Jaewoo, “Kim Jong Un shocks listeners by using South Korean terms in speech,” rfa.org, August 16, 2024. URL: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/north-korea-south-korea-korean-wave-language-dialects-kim-jong-un-speech-yalu-river-flood-08162024111909.html/ampRFA.

^[8] Andrea Matles Savada, “Country Study – North Korea,” Federal Research Division
Library of Congress, 1993. URL: http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-9648.html.

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Testimony before the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)

Testimony before the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)
September 26, 2024
10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Via Zoom
Greg Scarlatoiu
Executive Director
Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK)

Abstract: This testimony will address religious oppression in North Korea, which USCIRF classifies as a “country of particular concern” (CPC). North Korea has persecuted Christianity and other religions with extreme prejudice, although the capital city of Pyongyang was once known as the “Jerusalem of the East.” The witness will highlight the importance of a “human rights upfront approach” and reenergized information campaigns to empower the people of North Korea through information from the outside world, in order to promote human rights, in particular religious freedom. The testimony calls for a transformation of the UN ECOSOC NGO Committee, in order to open access to genuine pro-religious freedom, pro-human rights organizations, and enhance their influence at UN fora.

Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. North Korea policy has been rightfully focused on doing away with the production and proliferation of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. However, according to the February 2014 report of the UN Commission of Inquiry on human rights in the DPRK and to countless reports by human rights CSOs, the Kim family regime has been committing crimes against humanity, often involving persecution of people of faith, primarily Christians. There is a need to elevate North Korean human rights, in particular freedom of religion, to bring the issue on par with the other critical issues, including the political, security, and military conundrum surrounding North Korea.

Religious Oppression in North Korea

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has designated North Korea as a "country of particular concern" (CPC). The United States continues to stand for both national security and values we share with trusted friends, partners, and allies such as South Korea. South Korea is home to Asia’s second largest percentage of Christians, second only to the Philippines. South Korea’s most prevalent religion is Christianity (19.7 percent Protestant, 7.9 percent Catholic). Respect for human rights, in particular respect for religious freedom, lies at the very heart of the fundamental values we share with our South Korean friends. And faith can provide an avenue of communication with our South Korean allies. 

In North Korea, the Kim regime has continued to oppress human rights, in particular religious freedom, for nearly eight decades. A quarter century after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the Kim regime has not only managed to survive, but also to accomplish two hereditary transmissions of power, from grandfather Kim Il-sung to son Kim Jong-il in July 1994, and from son Kim Jong-il to grandson Kim Jong-un in December 2011. One possible explanation for the longevity of the Kim regime is that it is the result of the fusion of four totalitarian political systems. All North Koreans have known for the past six centuries has been totalitarianism: five hundred years of the feudal Chosun dynasty; forty years of Japanese imperial occupation from 1905 to 1945; Stalinist communism; and the Kim family regime’s kleptocratic tyranny.

As the tragedy of Korean separation continues, one remembers that the northern half of the Korean peninsula was once the cradle of the Korean Presbyterian Church. Prior to the communist takeover, the capital city of Pyongyang used to be known as the “Jerusalem of the East.” However, in 1946, the North Korean People’s Committee forced the closure of churches with congregations that did not meet a certain predetermined number of attendees. The Committee began to forbid Protestant and Catholic in-house assemblies and made Sunday a workday and Monday a rest day. Under the pretext that the sound of religious songs disturbed public life, the same Committee asked churches to relocate. Communist party agitators were inserted into Christian communities and church assemblies. They began criticizing the sermons as being “unprogressive.”

In North Korea, religious freedom went from restriction to suppression to violent obliteration. In a 1962 speech before the People’s Safety Agency, the North Korean secret political police, Kim Il-sung said:

“We cannot move towards a communist society with religious people. That is why we had to put on trial and punish those who hold positions of deacons or higher in Protestant or Catholic churches. Other undesirables among the religious people were also put on trial. Believers were given the choice to give up religion so they can get away with labor work. Those who did not were sent to prison camps.”

Soon after the establishment of the DPRK in 1948, according to the 1950 North Korean statistical yearbook, 22.2 percent of North Koreans were religious. In the second national human rights report submitted by the North Korean delegation to the UN Human Rights Council for review in July 2001, the delegation said that there was a total of about 38,000 religious believers in North Korea, including 10,000 Protestants, 3,000 Catholics, 10,000 Buddhists, and 15,000 Chondoists, a total of 0.2 percent of the population. It is estimated that there are about five Russian Orthodox churches as well. The cataclysmic drop from 22.2 to 0.2 percent happened swiftly. Over just a few years, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, North Korean Christians were imprisoned, executed, driven into exile, and Christianity almost went extinct. Violent repression of suspected underground Christians continues today. Even 0.2 percent official Christians is likely doctored data. In truth, Christianity has only survived underground, despite grave danger. The Kim regime tries to appear before the international community as tolerating religion and guaranteeing religious freedom, while in reality it suppresses religion internally. Through this duplicitous policy, the Kim regime aims to deflect international criticism and seek economic aid. Such aid comes in particular from well-meaning Christian groups that often fail to understand the true nature of the Kim regime and its policy of human rights denial.

Freedom of religion does not exist in North Korea, although Article 68 of the DPRK Constitution allows it on paper. The people of North Korea are not allowed the opportunity to read their own constitution. They do not have access to international human rights treaties that protect freedom of religion, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which North Korea acceded to in 1981.

Like other communist leaders before him, Kim Il-sung rejected religion as “the opium of the people.” Religious persecution was a common thread in the atheist ideology of Feuerbach, Marx, Engels, and in the policies of Lenin and Mao. But it is the Kim family regime that has taken religious persecution to a level practically unprecedented in the modern world.

In deceitful displays of “Potemkinism,” foreign visitors and residents of North Korea will be taken to so-called “Protestant” churches whose doors are chained on Easter Sunday and so-called “Catholic” Mass devoid of Holy Communion, holy water, or Catholic prayer. Regime agents will masquerade as ministers, priests, and parishioners, saying so-called “prayers” for Kim Jong-un and his regime and blasting American “imperialism.”

In North Korea, anyone suspected of being a Christian, of having a Christian family member, of associating with Christians, or having been exposed to the Christian faith is harshly punished. When North Korean escapees are arrested in China and forcibly repatriated to North Korea, in direct violation of China’s obligations under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, they are aggressively interrogated, beaten, and tortured. North Korea’s Ministry of State Security and Ministry of Social Security ask them two questions: “Did you come across any Christian missionaries while outside the country? Did you come across any South Koreans along the road of defection?”

Religious repression is embedded in the fundamental ideology of the North Korean regime. Kim Il-sung said: "Religion is a form of superstition. Whether you believe in Jesus or Buddhism, you are by nature a superstitious person." [‘종교는 일종의 미신입니다. 예수를 믿든, 불교를 믿든 그것은 본질상 by nature다 미신을 믿는것입니다’].

Why does the Kim regime fear and resent Christianity so much? The answer lies in the nature of the regime. Kim Jong-un sits at the top of a post-communist, post-industrial, kleptocratic dynasty. The Kim family regime is a criminal organization masquerading as a sovereign state. This is a regime that holds absolute monopoly on political power through oppression unparalleled in the contemporary world: indoctrination, information control, a policy of human rights denial, and prioritizing its apocalyptic weapons programs over the human rights, welfare and human security of its citizens. 

Any religious belief and Christianity in particular as well as free, democratic, prosperous South Korea constitute the only challenges to the Kim regime’s absolute monopoly on power. Christianity offers an alternative way of life that delegitimizes tyranny and transcends oppression. Despite mortal danger and overwhelming coercion, control, surveillance, and punishment, underground churches have been growing in North Korea, with the help of outside missionaries and churches. The underground church provides a venue for the free exchange of ideas. Its members desperately endeavor to escape the overwhelming control of North Korea’s three internal security agencies, their 270,000 agents, and their omnipresent informer networks. Underground North Korean Christians are now in the range of tens, if not hundreds of thousands. This is a small number for a population of 25 million, but Christianity and other religions are still surviving tyranny.

Public discourse and advocacy on North Korea have been focusing on markets and information. And those are true agents of transformation, slowly but surely eroding the regime’s grip on power. Yet, there is one more agent of change, and that is the growing underground church of North Korea. Under the tyranny of the Kim Jong-un regime, there is no civil society, and no hope for a nascent civil society, in the absence of dramatic change. Underground Christian churches provide the only hope for the advent of civil society in North Korea, perhaps playing a similar role to that of Solidarnośc in Poland in the 1980s. Sending in information from the outside world and supporting the underground church of North Korea will be the best international civil society and like-minded democracies can do to empower the people of North Korea and enact peaceful transformation from within.

A Human Rights Upfront Approach, Including Religious Freedom

In order to promote religious freedom in North Korea, an approach to North Korean policy featuring human rights issues more prominently will be needed, in addition to highlighting other critical issues, such as North Korea’s nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and its exportation of instability and violence to the Middle East and the Ukrainian front, through arms and ammunition sales to Iran and its proxies as well as Russia.

To procure the hard currency needed to develop its nuclear and missile programs, the North Korean regime oppresses and exploits its people at home and abroad. The very nature of a regime armed with nuclear weapons, that commits crimes against humanity is a threat to regional and international peace and security. There is a direct connection between North Korea’s human rights violations and the threats it poses to international peace and security, and thus the human rights-security nexus must be emphasized.

A Human Rights Upfront Strategy, Including Promoting Religious Freedom

A strategy promoting human rights in North Korea must involve: the ROK and US governments and the governments of like-minded democratic UN member states; the private sector, in particular IT and AI companies; and international civil society, including ROK, US, Japanese, and EU civil society organizations (CSOs) that can generate content, information, and analysis critical to understanding and influencing North Korea’s human rights and information environment. Moreover, efforts should be directed towards enlisting UN member states in the Global South to engage in pro-active measures addressing the North Korean human rights crisis.

 

The Need for a Reenergized Information Campaign

Moving forward, information campaigns targeting North Korea will have to tell its people five fundamental stories: the story of their own human rights, especially their lack of religious freedom, which the Kim family regime has abused for decades; the story of the corruption of the regime elites, especially the inner core of the Kim family; the story of the outside world, especially free, democratic, prosperous economic power house South Korea; the need for Korean unification as a matter of destiny, and not of choice, for all Koreans, who lived under the same political system, sharing the same language, culture, history, and civilization for one thousand years prior to the 1945 division; and the North Korean people’s right to self-determination. Religion, especially Christianity, has been a distinctive feature of the idea of Korean nationalism, especially during the tragic times of Japanese imperial occupation (1905-1945). North Koreans must be reminded that history did not begin with Kim Il-sung. Koreans have a rich shared 5,000 year history, religion has been an important part of that history, and Christianity a critical part of Korean identity for two centuries.

 

Strengthening International Civil Society Participation, Including NGOs Advocating International Religious Freedom, in the UN Process

In order to effectively address the need for religious freedom and human rights compliance in North Korea, international civil society needs UN access. UN action on North Korean human rights has been centered on the Human Rights Council, the General Assembly and the UN Security Council. The Committee on NGOs of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), gatekeeper of civil society access to the UN, has not received the deserved and much needed attention. Dominated by anti-human rights undemocratic regimes, the NGO Committee strives to refuse UN ECOSOC consultative status to real human rights defenders, including NGOs advocating international religious freedom. On occasion, through the valiant and diligent efforts of the United States, Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Korea and other like-minded ECOSOC members, the NGO Committee’s rigged decision to reject human rights defenders including North Korean human rights NGOs was overturned. HRNK, PSCORE, NKDB and Christian Solidarity Worldwide have obtained consultative status. But these are isolated success stories, the exception rather than the rule. In the world of North Korean human rights NGOs, dealing with a regime responsible for crimes against humanity, consultative status should be the rule, rather than the exception. In order to open wide the gates of ECOSOC consultative status access to human rights organizations, including religious rights defenders, a move that would surely displease revisionist powers Russia and China and their allies, a patient, steady, sustainable approach to NGO Committee membership change is needed. For example, while China’s and perhaps India’s membership may be inevitable, it is highly desirable that fellow democracies Republic of Korea and Japan seek membership. This endeavor will take more than just international cooperation among the like-minded. It will take internal inter-agency prioritization of bidding for the NGO Committee, and the respective allocation of government resources in the Republic of Korea and Japan. Despite inherent cultural, bureaucratic, and institutional biases, this approach could be conducive to the slow, but steady creation of an international civil society platform capable of creating the pressure needed to promote religious freedom and induce overall human rights change in North Korea.

 

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