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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