North Korea Releases Human Rights Report About Themselves
Freedom of Speech and the Press
The freedom of speech and press is an indispensable factor of democracy and one of the important issues of political rights. The freedom of speech and press includes the rights to search for information, freely express one’s idea and opinion and receive and convey that of others whether it is through speech, writing, printing, radio, TV, movie, electronic means, music, chart or whatsoever. The DPRK has more than 480 kinds of newspapers published at national and provincial level and factories, firms, and universities, hundreds of magazines printed by scores of publishing houses and several TV and radio channels… All the citizens are freely exercising their rights to express their view and will anywhere through publications including various kinds of newspapers, magazines and books and TV and radio. The rights to free writing and creation of works are legally guaranteed (by the constitution and Laws on Protecting Intellectual Property Rights) and according to the Law on Appeals and Petitions the rights to making appeals and proposals to improve the work of State organs, firms, organizations and officials.
In a country where people put their lives on the line to smuggle in cheap radios from China this section seems just a touch fanciful. In North Korea people’s homes can be searched without prior warning and if a radio is found in your possession that isn’t fixed to the DPRK official news channel then you can wind up in jail.
To keep a despotic family in power for generations freedom of speech must be destroyed first. If you have people complaining or spreading negative information and opinions about the supreme overlords they might just rise up against you.
The DPRK elite employ, by some estimates, as many as 1 in 10 citizens to be professional snitches. This position gives these low-level spies some immunity and inflates their social level. Spies are rife, freedom of speech certainly is not.
