Last year the UN released a sweeping and damning report on North Korea’s awful human rights performance. The document was heavy in word count and detail. Painstakingly researched using North Korean visitors and defectors the report charted the multiple and shocking shortfalls of the Kim dynasty.
Recently North Korea have hit back by producing their very own human rights report. They aim to set the record straight. This work of fiction would be funny if it was a joke, but it isn’t. It’s as if they don’t realise that we have hundreds and hundreds of first hand accounts of what’s going on in there.
The document itself is over 50,000 words long and I’ve extracted some snippets to give you an idea of just how brazenly incorrect it is. It’s mind-blowing, but not in a good way at all.
The intro sets the scene for the docume:
Recently, distorted views are floated by anti-DPRK hostile forces about the realities of the DPRK, especially its human rights situation, causing serious misunderstanding thereof. The United States and its followers are pursuing persistent anti-DPRK human rights campaigns aimed at interfering in its internal affairs and eventually overthrowing the social system by fabricating “human rights issue” of the DPRK to mislead international opinions and raise it to the United Nations. However, truth will always prevail and cannot be covered by whatever means.
No official North Korean document would be complete without at a quick dig at the West (fair enough):
The US and western countries misuse universality of the human rights standards established in the international human rights instruments and they are going still endless lengths in their manoeuvres to force their “human rights standards” upon other countries as they did before… These countries, unqualified to discuss the noble human rights, pretend to be “incarnation of human rights” and have been trying to force their standards as universal ones.
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
In the past, the Korean women were ill-treated and regarded with contempt domestically and socially for a long time due to the idea of predominance of men over women. Especially situation under the colonial rule of Japanese imperialist were miserable and tearful indeed. Japanese imperialists forced great number of Korean women and let work hard like beast of burden in the caves and wire entanglements in manufacturing war supplies. They even committed all kinds of atrocities such as forcibly drafting women to the war and to serve as sex slaves. The number of Korean women who lost their youth and lives due to inhuman oppression, exploitation and unbearable acts of manly insults, was countless. Out of this, legal confirmation and complete guarantee of women’s rights had been one of the essential issues in democracy in society and democratic human rights mechanism the after liberation. Law for Gender Equality was established by enactment of several laws and regulations on the equality between men and women.
North Korea is a patriarchal society and as such women are second class citizens. Men get jobs in government owned offices and factories, but in recent years these official jobs have paid very small salaries, and sometimes, if the coffers are dry they don’t get paid at all.
This lack of pay for able-bodied men has meant that the illegal (but officially tolerated) black markets have been keeping poor families afloat. The men, despite not always getting paid, still have to turn up at work leaving the women to man the stalls and bring home the bacon. In this situation it is the women who are becoming the main bread winners, this in turn is causing friction at home. The males feel castrated and according to the UN Human Rights report this has caused a rise in domestic abuse.
The Law of the DPRK on Protection of the Elderly was adopted by Decree No. 2214 of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly on 26 April 2007 and was amended and supplemented twice. Under this Law, the rights and interests of the elderly are guaranteed and their desire to lead a fruitful and happy life in mentally and physically good health is fully met.
If you are poor you have no chance of beating famine and hardship so you won’t get to be old in the first place. So I guess the only old people in North Korea are in the higher echelons of society, and maybe they are looked after well.
The views on the political rights defined in the international human rights laws are different from one State to the other and so are the levels of its realization. However, it is a common view of all states that the political rights are the most important rights to be given priority by the national and international laws… Thanks to the policy and legal and systematic measures of the DPRK Government which regards the political rights as the main rights, people are enjoying genuine political freedom and rights as the masters of the state and society.
The right to vote or to be elected is one of the most important basic human rights and major form of exercise of sovereignty of a state. In the international arena of today where the democracy is advocated, the state provision of the citizens’ right to vote or to be elected becomes a decisive factor in the evaluation of human rights situation of the state. It is an obligation of each and every state to provide legal guarantee for unhindered and unconditional participation and free expression of one’s opinion in the election. Of course, those who were deprived of the right to vote by the judgment of the court and mentally deranged persons are generally not given the right to vote or to be elected and many countries accepts this exception.
The right to vote and the right to be elected? JOKES! If one family has been in power for generations you can fairly safely assume that the people haven’t had a say, and you can certainly extrapolate that your average Joe hasn’t got much of a shot at the throne.
When the good people of NK do get to vote the turnout is near 100% – it was 99.97% in March 2014 (according to official records). Approval of the Democratic Front’s candidates is virtually unanimous. Hmmm… I smell a rat… Voters must cross the name of the politician they don’t want to win off their ballot paper. This crossing off is done in full view of officials and therefore a very risky thing to do.
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.
It is the freedom of a person to choose his or her religion and thought. That is why the international human rights laws require the issues of religion and thought to be solved according to every individual’s free will, not by coercion of the state or others. In the DPRK everybody is fully provided with the rights to choose and follow their own religion and thought according to their own free will. Every citizen has chosen to follow the Juche Idea which is the world outlook centred on human being, an ideology for the realization of independence of the popular masses and is firmly believing in Juche Idea thinking and acting according to its requirement.
Juche, usually translated as “self-reliance”, and often referred to as Kimilsungism, is a political thesis formed by Kim Il-sung which states that the Korean masses are the masters of the country’s development. It’s written in confusing, fluffy lingo and kind of means very little. In a speech in 1955 Kim Il-sung said about Juche…
To make revolution in Korea we must know Korean history and geography as well as the customs of the Korean people. Only then is it possible to educate our people in a way that suits them and to inspire in them an ardent love for their native place and their motherland.
The socialist Marxist DPRK are agnostic by definition and religion is frowned upon. When I say “frowned upon” I mean punishable. Robert Park smuggled a bible into the country a few years ago and found himself on the wrong side of a DPRK jail. Bible carrying surely can’t be considered particularly offensive if you genuinely are a state where religion is tolerated. Park was tortured extensively and has been left deeply mentally scarred; he’s attempted suicide and can no longer bear to be touched by strangers.
According to Open Doors UK, North Korea has been the most oppressive place for Christians to live for 12 years in a row. They estimate 300,000 Christians in total but all must worship in secret for fear of being sent to the labour camps.
Apparently the religious vacuum is filled by private prayers behind double locked doors and an obsession with fortune tellers.
Now this one really is rich. American, Chinese, British and North Korean prisoners along with defecting prison guards and officials have all reported torture. I won’t bother to discuss torture at length here because there’s no need to try and prove it’s a fact, because it is a fact. Here’s a first hand account from a survivor if you want the grizzly detail. So yeah, as I said – rich…
It is strictly prohibited to intentionally torture, that is, to inflict pain upon humans and to treat and punish them in an inhuman and degrading manner, whether physical or mental. Torture is an act that forces humans to confess or make a statement by inflicting physical or mental pain upon them. This is the most barbaric act that violates personal rights of humans… Students in the institutes of training officials of law enforcements are educated in such a way that they fully ensure scientific accuracy objectivity and prudence in dealing with a case based on proper understanding of illegality and harmfulness of inhumane and degrading methods of interrogation and that they strictly abide by the principles of “Evidence First”
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
When you remember that people who work for the government don’t always get paid and that the desolate north of North Korea is so destitute that cannibalism is rife, this sees almost laughable…
Right to adequate standard of living is important in the socio-economic rights of the people. Only when the people have the right to adequate standard of living, can they have the dignity and value as human beings and successfully conduct creative activities for transformation of nature and society. Rewarding according to the quantity and quality of the work done is the main form of compensation in the socialist society and serves as an important tool for improving people’s living.
The people with disabilities can take part in sports good for keeping their health and improving their physical abilities. They can enjoy their lives at cultural and recreation centres for them built by the state. The people with disabilities, who engage in physical and mental labour, have the right to adequate rest. Preference is given to them in terms of recuperation, rest and medical treatment. The people with disabilities who rendered distinguished service to the state are awarded medals, orders and honorary titles. Allowance is provided to those who completely lost the ability to work. Convenience is fully offered to the people with disabilities in the utilization of communication and transport means, convenience facilities. Atmosphere of treating them in a preferential manner is encouraged throughout the society.
Numerous witnesses have reported that disabled people are considered lower than animals; they’ve even been used as lab rats in experiments on chemical weapons and germ agents. Eugenics isn’t a far cry from the general DPRK regime’s intentions. Disabled people aren’t allowed in the capital and are taken to special gulags where they are subjected to “subhuman” conditions, according to the recent UN human rights report.
These people of disability – including mentally ill people and dwarves – are kept in these conditions for life and prevented from “mating”.
I’ll end with a small part of the report’s sprawling conclusion. As is often the way with the DPRK they can be crushingly incorrect in so many ways, but sometimes their brazen insight is quite arresting…
The U.S. and other Western countries, under the signboard of “protecting human rights”, unleash a war against other countries to enslave people, openly interfere in their internal affairs and severely infringe upon the rights of the people. The aggressive wars trample down the sovereignty of countries, take the lives of a great number of innocent people and threaten their rights to existence and hold back the socio-economic and cultural development.
The U.S. made an armed invasion against Grenada, conducted indiscriminate air raids on the former Yugoslavia and ignited wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, all of which were carried out under the pretext of “protecting the human rights”. The U.S. has set up secret prisons in different parts of the world and kidnaps people on a worldwide scale and conducts torture against them. At least 160 prisoners are now experiencing all sorts of hardships in secret prisons in Guantanamo Bay, run by the U.S. Navy. Its indiscriminate drone attacks take the lives of innocent civilians in various countries including Pakistan and Yemen. The U.S. has committed such indiscriminate atrocities as wiretapping and intercepting e-mails, targeting many countries and people. This is not only an illegal and outrageous act of espionage but also a disgraceful act that violates human rights.
They have a point, but that really doesn’t make up for the rest of it.
MORE FROM NORTH KOREA:
NORTH KOREAN INSIGHT INTO CAPITALIST CELEBRITY WORSHIP
NORTH KOREA’S ARCHITECTURAL FUTURE
