North Korea, Human Rights, and Diplomacy: When Hell Freezes Over

A series of bleak new reports shows that after more than a decade of attempts by the United States and South Korea to liberalize North Korea though aid and engagement, life is as cheap as ever between the Yalu and the Imjin. The system is less closed than it once was, although this is mostly the result of the fraying of the regime’s control over its borders, economy, and the flow of information. Yet these changes have occurred in defiance of the regime’s brutality and desperation to preserve its power, not because the regime has changed it ways for the better.

The first and most powerful of these reports comes from the most surprising of sources: the United Nations. Ironically for an institution headed by a Korean, that institution’s only effective advocate for the North Korean people turns out to be a diminutive legal scholar from Thailand:

A UN rights expert has accused North Korea’s regime of turning the country “into one big prison,” saying widespread abuses by Pyongyang put it in a class of its own.

In a report due to be examined at the UN Human Rights Council on Monday, the expert, Vitit Muntarbhorn, said the ruling elite had created “a pervasive ‘state of fear’ or ‘state as one big prison'” for the masses.

He called on top UN bodies such as the Security Council and International Criminal Court to play a more active role in tackling the impunity of the state, potentially for crimes against humanity.

I would like to pause to wish Mr. Muntarbhorn the best of luck in enlisting Ban Ki Moon in this endeavor.

“Abuses against the general population for which the authorities should be responsible are both egregious and endemic,” the special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea said.

“The human rights situation in this country can be described as ‘sui generis’ — in its own category — given the multiple particularities and anomalies that abound.

“Simply put, there are many instances of human rights violations which are both harrowing and horrific,” Muntarbhorn’s report said, accusing the military regime of trying “to perpetuate its survival at the cost of the people.”

He called on North Korea to immediately restore equitable food distribution, halt executions, physical abuse and violations of civil liberties, and allow him into the country. [AFP]

Muntarbhorn specifically criticized North Korea’s “distorted food distribution, from which the elite benefits.”

“The international crime which would seem to be most closely related to the happenings in the country in question is ‘crimes against humanity’ and the criteria which would need to be fulfilled include widespread or systematic attack against civilians and knowledge of the attack,” he said in the report. [….]

The state is “seeking to prop up a regime which is out of sync with the general population and which tries to perpetuate its survival at the cost of the people,” he said. [Reuters]

Muntarbhorn also had some choice words for The Great Confiscation, essentially saying that the regime had failed to provide for the people and ought to at least let them provide for themselves. More here.

Does this guy really work for the U.N.? I’m sure a few people in Pyongyang and Beijing must have wondered the same thing.

The UN report was inspired by a Western conspiracy to “eliminate the state and social system” in North Korea, the country’s UN envoy Choe Myong Nam was quoted as saying by AFP. [BBC]

Muntarbhorn’s comments coincided with the release of the State Department’s annual human rights country reports, which had recently come under pressure from within the State Department for political reasons:

In the past border guards reportedly had orders to shoot to kill potential defectors, and prison guards were under orders to shoot to kill those attempting to escape from political prison camps, but it was not possible to determine if this practice continued during the year. During the year the security forces announced that attempting to cross the border or aiding others in such an attempt was punishable by execution. Religious and human rights groups outside the country alleged that some North Koreans who had contact with foreigners across the Chinese border were imprisoned or killed.

Press and South Korean NGOs reported that public executions were on the rise, but no statistics were available to document the reported trend. In February two officials from the Ministry of Electric Industry were reportedly executed for “shutting down the electricity supply” to the Sunjin Steel Mill in Kimchaek, North Hamkyung Province (see section 4). In June the navy allegedly killed three persons fleeing to South Korea on a small boat (see section 2.d.).

Also in June an NGO reported four inmates and a guard at Yodok prison camp were killed following a gas explosion. The incident reportedly occurred while five workers were unloading drums of gasoline. Two of the prisoners reportedly died in the explosion, and guards shot and killed two others. The guard on night duty who survived the accident reportedly was sentenced to death.

An NGO reported that in June four soldiers beat and killed a security guard after he refused to give them the potatoes he was guarding. Security agents reportedly arrested the soldiers. There was no additional information available regarding the soldiers’ status at year’s end. [U.S. Dep’t of State, 2009 Annual Country Report on Human Rights]

To this, former Yodok inmate Kang Chol Hwan adds:

Rape and sexual torture of female political prisoners are no longer banned. One North Korean defector who was imprisoned at a concentration camp, said, “Since 2000, it has become routine for security agents to sexually abuse female prisoners.” The defector added, “Now, moral standards have been tossed out of the window as rumors spread that Kim Jong-il himself enjoys all kinds of decadent acts with his coterie of female entertainers.” As a result, officials now turn a blind eye to abuses lower down the chain of command. [Chosun Ilbo]

The center-left Korea Herald surveys the State Department report, acknowledges that North Korea is a “hell on earth,” and calls for raising human rights in the six-party talks:

One way to exert pressure on the North Korean regime is through the six-party nuclear disarmament talks. There are signs that the stalled negotiations may restart soon. When talks do resume, the humanitarian and human rights issues should also be actively discussed.

If the editors of the Herald read the Joongang Ilbo, you might be tempted to think they’d gotten their wish:

The United States will raise the issue of North Korean human rights in future six-party nuclear talks, once they have resumed and made a certain amount of progress, a U.S. envoy said.

“At this point, what we need to do is restart the six-party talks,” Robert King, U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, said Friday in a media roundtable about the release of the State Department’s 2009 Human Rights Report the previous day.

But King added: “The six-party talks are not just one little narrow box,” hoping that the multilateral nuclear talks will become the venue to address human rights and other issues involving the reclusive communist North.

“The relationship between the United States and North Korea is very much going to be affected and influenced by North Korea’s record on human rights. [Joongang Ilbo]

Keep reading, however, and you’ll see that it’s pretty much the same old story: after North Korea denuclearizes (as in, never) and when we get to the point of talking about normalizing relations, then we’ll get to the subject of human rights. Eventually. Of course, even that could change if North Korea shows up for the talks, and then throws a tantrum demanding that we never raise the topic again … and after Sam Brownback retires from the Senate. Oh, and King himself will not attend to talks, as a gesture to North Korean sensitivities, of course.

But in one way, there is some marginal improvement over the Chris Hill trajectory. Whereas Hill once said that human rights issues could be discussed in the context of two states that have diplomatic relations, King is saying that improvements are a precondition to normalization, at least that’s what he said if the Chosun Ilbo quoted him accurately:

The new U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues has reaffirmed that the U.S. will not normalize relations with the North unless it improves the treatment of its people. Robert King was speaking at the State Department on Friday in his first meeting with reporters since he started the job.

King said the U.S. enactment of the North Korean Human Rights Act reflects these concerns, while the six-party nuclear talks are a step into the future of U.S.-North Korea relations. [Chosun Ilbo]

It’s better than the alternative, I suppose, but of course, it presupposes a some dubious points — that North Korea wants diplomatic relations with the United States, and that it will ever get far enough in the disarmament process for normalization and human rights to be raised at all. In other words, we’ll talk about the fiddling with hell’s thermostat only after it freezes over. That would suit Kim Jong Il, but it’s of no use at all to the people of North Korea.

I feel, at the same time, a sense of futility in making too much about the absence of something with as little promise as diplomacy has in addressing North Korea’s behavior in any number of ways. It’s not the lost opportunity that offends me; it’s the refusal to acknowledge reality and its relevance. I don’t doubt that many people refuse to recognize it for the very reason that they also realize that diplomacy is of no use. Perhaps they think that we can delay or moderate Kim Jong Il’s provocations for a while longer if we overlook his basic contempt for humanity. But of course, it’s his contempt for humanity that causes the provocations. Can that be altered? The results of several experiments — the Sunshine Policy, Agreed Framework I, Agreed Framework II — are as conclusive as anything in diplomacy ever is.

With that, I will close with the one thing that the U.S. government is doing that holds out any prospect for changing North Korea for the better. Treasury official Daniel Glaser is visiting Seoul to discuss international sanctions against North Korea while generating as little media interest as possible. While the entire press corps focuses on the State Department and the United Nations as our last slender hope for changing North Korea, keep your eye on the Treasury Department instead.