Human Rights Watch: Raise Human Rights in Bilateral Talks with North Korea

Kay Seok of Human Rights Watch is one of the few people doing laudable work in an industry so invested in defending terrorists of late that it’s often too distracted to address the worst atrocities since the fall of the Khmer Rouge. This time, however, HRW’s letter, addressed to Special Envoy Stephen Bosworth, is a useful contribution to the policy discussion about North Korea:

For too long has the world sidelined human rights in North Korea while single-mindedly focusing on security issues. One and a half decades later, North Korea’s nuclear problem remains unresolved. For a long-term resolution of security issues, one needs to address the repressive system underneath. With that in mind, we welcome Robert King’s statements on November 5 at a Senate panel that the US government should balance its security efforts with human rights concerns.

The letter asks Bosworth to demand an end to public executions (all executions, in fact); cooperation with the UNHCR and the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, particularly with regard to its “detention facilities;” and humane treatment of returning refugees, among other items. With regard to the food situation, I’ll reprint a longer quotation, just in case Christine Ahn is, like, you know, reading this, and stuff:

Although the country recovered from the 1990s famine that killed millions, North Korea still suffers from widespread hunger. In September 2009, the World Food Programme reported that a third of North Korean women and children are malnourished and that the country will need to import or receive aid of almost 1.8 million tons of food to feed the most vulnerable population.

We believe humanitarian aid should continue and should never be used as a political tool. But we would like to emphasize that it is crucial to monitor the distribution of such aid. Humanitarian aid should reach the most vulnerable, including young children, the elderly, the disabled, and pregnant and nursing women. Donors should make sure that aid is reaching the intended recipients.

The deterioration of the state rationing system as food has become more of a market commodity has made food too expensive for many North Koreans to access in sufficient quantities. Market “trickle down” effects do not ensure that those on the bottom of the economic ladder receive sufficient food. For this reason, we believe that the US should continue to urge the North Korean government to […] [a]ccept proper monitoring of food aid distribution consistent with international standards of transparency and accountability. These standards include access around the country to determine needs and the ability to make visits to places where food aid is delivered.

A nominally socialist system in which the state won’t provide for the vulnerable and restricts the right of the people to provide for themselves combines features of the worst of both systems. The main advantage of the black markets is that for many North Koreans, they’re all that stands between them and mass casualty famine. But I also suspect that in these times, North Korea’s elderly, orphans, sick, handicapped, and mentally ill don’t last long unless they have relatives who can care for them.

I doubt President Obama raised any of these points in Beijing:

* Approach other governments in the region, particularly China, to ensure that all North Korean refugees who seek refuge at US diplomatic facilities receive prompt assistance to be safely transferred to their desired destination, including the US.

* Send clear instructions to all US diplomatic facilities on the principle of receiving and sheltering North Korean refugees and assisting with their transit. Accelerate the screening process for North Korean refugees who wish to settle in the US.

* Press North Korea to abolish penalties on North Koreans who leave the country without official permission, halting their punishment in practice, and enabling international monitoring of those who are repatriated or voluntarily return. The persecution of persons for leaving North Korea creates thousands of refugees sur place every year, and deepens regional instability and tension with North Korea’s neighbors.

* Press China to stop arresting and repatriating North Korean refugees, and to fulfill its obligations to shelter and protect them under the 1951 Refugee Convention. Press China to allow the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees access to North Koreans to determine their status, and assist with their safe and speedy settlement in China or transit to a third country.

Here is an issue where the U.S. government is as full of shit as anyone. There are plenty of reasons the State Department isn’t raising this issue with the Chinese, starting with the fact that State itself is flouting its own U.S. statutory obligations to “facilitate the submission of applications” for asylum by North Korean refugees. State, which measures its success in the number of agreed frameworks with North Korea, isn’t going to let the law, principle, or basic humanity interfere with that larger objective. And really, what kind of chutzpah would it take for our diplomats to demand that China observe principles that it has spent the last five years ignoring?

The last point I’ll leave you with is on the Kaesong Industrial Complex, where capitalism at its most exploitative meets socialism at its most oppressive:

However, in the KIC Labor Law, many fundamental rights are missing, including the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining, the right to strike, prohibition of sex discrimination and sexual harassment, and a ban on harmful child labor. In addition, although the KIC Labor Law stipulates that South Korean companies shall pay the North Korean workers directly in cash, South Korean employers are forced to pay workers’ salaries to the North Korean government instead. If the North Korean government can force South Korean employers to break a regulation designed to protect the workers, there is no guarantee that other such regulations are respected.

The letter then discusses the pernicious “outward processing zones” in the U.S.-Korea FTA, code talk for Kaesong and other initiatives of this kind that arise with stupefying regularity, despite their well established track record. The FTA, an issue that’s ever on the lips of every South Korean diplomat in Washington, will certainly come up when President Obama visits President Lee in Seoul. Here, HRW need not bother. There’s no way this FTA is going to pass with Detroit looking more like Chongjin every year and with the POTUS beholden to the unions that would like to build cars to sell to Korea, but which won’t be able to do so until years after GM is finally sold off and broken up.

Why Kaesong even continues to operate is completely beyond me. There’s no way it’s ever going to attract more investors and turn a profit now. Kaesong’s existing investors are losing money and need government subsidies to survive. Even watchmaker Romanson, one of Kaesong’s biggest and most-touted investors, has invested far less than originally forecast and is backing toward a quiet exit. Romanson, noting that “the political risks are burdensome,” has invested less then half of what was originally planned, canceled further investment plans, and sold off land on which it had originally planned to expand its operations.

In other words, the Kaesong experiment is working out just as I’d expected. What’s more, I can’t see how anyone sees the cash payments to the workers Kim Jong Il as compliant with UNSCR 1718 or 1874 (see sidebar).