Stop Pyongyang's Autogenocide
by Jared Genser
Far East Economic Review
November 2006
SINCE NORTH KOREA'S nuclear weapons test on Oct. 9, 2006, the international community has focused on urging the country to refrain from raking further provocative acts while also trying to manage the global implications of the test. There has been little media coverage about the terrible suffering of the North Korean people. Nevertheless, it is critical to remember that the situation in North Korea is also one of the most serious human-rights and humanitarian disasters in the world today.
Since its founding, North Korea's communist leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il have implemented a policy of juche, or self-reliance. As a result, North Korea intentionally isolated itself. It was only after the famine in the mid-1990s, in which at least one million people are thought to have died, that tens of thousands of refugees streamed out of the country in search of food. With these refugees came reports of the horrors of life in North Korea -- about the government's failure to feed its own people and a widespread system of political prison camps. Up to that point, many mainstream human-rights groups, which would ordinarily issue human-rights reports only after visiting a country, had refrained from reporting on North Korea because they were unable to access the country.
It has, therefore, only been in the last five to 10 years that NGOs have been formed to focus on the situation in North Korea. At the outset, this burgeoning grassroots movement was fractured because the dialogue about how to address these concerns covered the political spectrum. On the left, many groups, including a number in South Korea, argued that raising human-rights and humanitarian concerns would drive North Korea from the nuclear talks, create greater tension on the Korean Peninsula and ultimately make unification of the two Koreas more difficult.
This perspective underpinned South Korea's official attitude, embodied in the "Sunshine Policy" first adopted in 1998.
And a number of other governments around the world also embraced a softly, softly approach, Those on the right -- including a number of Christian evangelical groups -- publicly advocated regime change, believing that such a hard-line position was the only moral solution to the situation and could ultimately yield the kind of change required in North Korea,
At the same time, there was also substantial debate within the movement about the efficacy of providing humanitarian aid to the North Korean people. While such aid clearly saves lives if administered within internationally recognized guidelines, the North Korean regime has tended to reduce its food purchases by the amount of aid received and then divert resources to its military and nuclear programs. Whether such aid should continue has long been a point of contention.
More recently, however, progress has been made to narrow the gap in views about the best way to proceed. The largest catalyst to that end has been the now more than 7,600 North Korean defectors living in Seoul who have told their stories of suffering and oppression under Kim Jong Il's regime. As a result, both left and right have slowly been moving toward a pragmatic center. Many on the left have now recognized that the problems in North Korea are enormous and the international community has some obligation to try to ameliorate the suffering. And many on the right have acknowledged a drumbeat for regime change, while a strong and unequivocal moral statement, is not an actionable approach in the international community and at the United Nations in particular. While divisions persist, there is a critical place for advocates who are now prepared to place progress above ideology.
It is in this context that former President Václav Havel of the Czech Republic, former Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik of Norway and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel commissioned the writing of a major report on the human-rights and humanitarian situation in North Korea. As articulated by these leaders, it was their intent to broaden international understanding, build support among groups across the political spectrum, and ultimately seek to break the logjam on engagement with North Korea.
Kim Jong Il's recent test of a nuclear weapon presents the international community with a unique opportunity to reassess its entire approach toward North Korea. For those who had argued for years that suppressing criticism on human-rights grounds would keep North Korea engaged in the nuclear talks and implicitly increase the chances for a deal, North Korea's detonation of a nuclear device has been a bitter wake-up call. In that one action, Mr. Kim demonstrated that the international community's compromises on human rights did not affect his behavior on security issues.
This moment could not have come at a more opportune time. The U.N. Security Council recently adopted the doctrine previously endorsed by the General Assembly at the World Summit in New York in 2005 that each state has a "responsibility to protect" its own citizens from the most egregious human-rights abuses. While under the U.N. Charter states retain sovereignty to control their own territory, if they fail to protect their own citizens from severe human-rights abuses, the international community now has an obligation to intervene through regional bodies the U.N., up to and including the Security Council. The formal adoption of was a historic and unprecedented action by the community of nations to acknowledge what had already been understood for many years -- that the world should not use state sovereignty as an excuse to turn a blind eye to the most serious suffering and oppression.
The crux of the Havel-Bondevik-Wiesel report is that the North Korean government is actively committing crimes against humanity against its own people, that U.N. engagement to date on these issues has been unable to yield either symbolic or concrete results, and therefore it is time to launch a parallel track effort in the U.N. Security Council to ease the suffering of the North Korean people.
In the case of North Korea, two sets of actions qualify as crimes against humanity. With respect to food policy and famine, North Korea allowed as many as one million -- and possibly many more -- of its own people to die during the famine in the 1990s. This was caused, in part, by the North Korean government's choosing to reduce food purchases as international assistance increased so it could divert resources to its military and nuclear program. Hunger and starvation remain a persistent problem today with over 37% of North Korean children chronically malnourished. Malnutrition not only stunts physical growth, but also causes countless mental defects and learning disabilities among North Korean children.
Despite this, the North Korean government has requested less food assistance from the World Food Programme and continues to deny access for transparent distribution of food to 42 of its 203 counties. At the same time, the government has also criminalized many of the coping mechanisms used by North Koreans. If you are a starving North Korean, you can neither forage for food in a neighboring county because of the limitation on the right to free movement, nor purchase food from a private market. As a result of cuts in food aid, WFP has indicated millions of North Koreans will face "real hardship" this winter.
The situation with food policy and famine constitutes both extermination (which includes in its definition under international law the creation of conditions of life leading to great suffering and death) as well as other inhumane acts. These actions are systematic, widespread and directed at a civilian population. Although many of these acts appear to be intentional, there is no need to prove this point. Under customary international law, there is a presumption of knowledge if acts are themselves systematic or widespread. Acts of this nature do not happen in a systematic or widespread way by accident, and knowledge can therefore be inferred.
Furthermore, the North Korean government's operation of its gulag system constitutes crimes against humanity. North Korea imprisons as many as 200,000 people in its political prisons. Not only are real or imagined dissenters imprisoned without due process of law, but so are their family members, including the elderly and children, under a guilt-by-association system instituted by North Korea's founder Kim Il Sung. Prisoners in the gulag are provided starvation-level rations, forced to work long days under brutal conditions, and many face torture or execution for trivial offenses. It is estimated more than 400,000 have died in the North Korean gulag over 30 years.
Attempts by the international community to engage with North Korea on human rights and humanitarian concerns have come up short. Resolutions adopted by the U.N. General Assembly and former Commission on Human Rights have been rejected by North Korean representatives and ignored. North Korea also refuses to recognize the mandate of the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea, Vitit Muntarbhorn, and has denied his numerous requests for access to the country. Having already sanctioned North Korea, the Security Council must now reinvigorate its efforts to help suffering people of the country. As a first step, the report recommends a non-punative resolution urging open access to North Korea for human relief, release of political prisoners, access to the U.N. Special Rapporteur and ongoing engagement by the U.N.
Some skeptics have suggested that this approach is doomed to failure. They argue that not only will North Korea be unwilling to engage with the international community, but that historic allies of the country on the Security Council, such China and Russia, will block any action in the Security Council. It is true that China in particular has very legitimate concerns about the stability of the situation in North Korea and needs to watch its step. For example, if the North Korean government was to collapse or the country was to have another famine, tens of thousands of North Koreans could stream into China looking for food, much as happened during the 1990s famine. This would have a serious destabilizing effect on the region.
Given the consequences of a humanitarian crisis, it would be in China's national interest to take steps that seek to stabilize the precarious situation in North Korea, whether or not North Korea wants to see these steps taken. Even more importantly, China has more leverage than any other country to persuade the North Korean government to cooperate. If the Security Council were to try and engage with North Korea by adopting a resolution of the kind recommended in the Havel-Bondevik-Wiesel report, it would be possible, for example, to urge North Korea to provide open access for humanitarian assistance. While North Korea would likely balk at such a request from the Security Council, China Russia, and other members of the Council would be in a position to urge North Korea to comply. Nothing could be more in China's self-interest than to ensure that the people in North Korea be fed, especially those who happen to live close to the Chinese border.
So why would China want to act now? Simply put, it is running out of time. Given the ominous warning signs, unless the world acts quickly, there could be a torrent of refugees fleeing into China in search of food across China and North Korea's 880-mile border within several months. More importantly, increasing assistance under the auspices of a Security Council engagement process could direct that food aid be provided through WFP, not like the unconditional aid that has historically been provided by China and Russia. Such an approach would give the requisite transparency and accountability to ensure that the neediest people are being fed and that resources are not being diverted to feed the military or other elites.
It is only if the contemplated engagement process fails that the Havel-Bondevik-Wiesel report recommends moving to the adoption of a binding resolution under Chapter VII of the U.N. Such a resolution is binding under international law and would also carry the implicit threat of sanctions. Nevertheless, the report intentionally does not call for, encourage or take a position on sanctions because its focus is on merely trying to spark an engagement process with North Korea.
Regardless of whether China will reach the same conclusion about the need for stability along its border, the world cannot sit idly by while so many people are suffering. Whatever happens, we owe it to the people of North Korea to try.
- Mr. Genser is an attorney with the law firm DLA Piper LLP in Washington, D.C. that produced the Havel-Bondevik-Wiesel report in collaboration with the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. The opinions expressed here represent his personal views.
