North Korea Human Rights Issues

In the book Escape From Camp 14, the child refugee Shin Dong-Hyuk faces unimaginable traumatizing experiences while being held captive in the Camp 14 concentration camp. Before Shin, no one has escaped or lived to share what life was inside a concentration camp in North Korea. Within Camp 14, the imprisoned families and individuals struggle through the severe realities that the North Korea government establishes. These laws and rights formed by the government and given to the citizens affect their human rights by violating their political, economic and also by treating them with unfair punishments. In the lawless land of North Korean, laws are just for decorative and show that the North Korea government knows what they are doing and

    Liberation for the oppressed people must be obtained as soon as possible. ‘Rocket Man’ is starving his citizens and causing them to live in poverty. One third of children in the nation have suffered stunted growth do to the lack of food available (Newman). Not only is North Korea’s economy so weak it can not pay to feed its people, the citizens only make two-three dollars a month (Newman). Although the majority of people make so little, it is

This paper will delve into the little known aspects of North Korea. Hopefully, a better understanding of the country’s characteristics can benefit both the neighboring

North Korea’s brutal prison camps, little freedom, and nearly no hope for refugees are challenging to stop. Considering North Korea’s treatment of their citizens, they are easily the center of attention as far as world human rights abuse. While neither war nor peaceful negotiations seem like effective ways to stop North Korea’s abuse, world citizens can be aware of the terrible abuse happening around the world and take action to stop similar events from happening in their

Our homes are often berated and subject to inspections to insure mandatory portraits of our leaders are in good condition. Homeowners with portraits found to be “improper” often face arrest, execution, and torture. We live amongst the most rights repressing government in the world and we will no longer support it. Political and civil rights are nonexistent. Those critical of the Kim’s are executed. We have fearfully followed the strict restraints set in place by the government for far too long. It is the government's duty to bestow the right of free will upon its people, yet it has failed. They rely on methods of intimidation to control the people's will. (“North Korea” ❡1; “World Report 2015: North Korea” ❡4; “North Korean Defectors Building an army to topple Kim Jong-Un”

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, also known as North Korea, has always had a history of imprisoning people that disagree with the governments policies, or for “disrespecting” the countries leaders, but these prisons are not just any prisons, they are prison camps, which function similarly to Nazi Concentration Camps.

In his article on “Forced Labor”, Scott Johnson informs to the readers the terrifying truth about labor camps that reveals an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 families are kept as prisoners in these camps scattered in North korea, and there is only so much food to feed the people. With the intentions of punishing citizens of North Korean for what he thinks is necessary to stop protests against him, citizens of North Korean people have been rising up and choosing whether they want to expel Kim Jong Un from his throne, or be expelled by him.

Cultures are unparalleled with North Korea maintaining a communist government ran by the Kim Family for generations rather than a democracy like the United States. North Korea consists of a population conditioned from a very young age to accept the words and deeds of the elder and junior Kim’s to be the absolute truth. “The greatest meaning in life lies in bullets and bombs.” With a society referred into three categories as basic, chaotic and enemy, depending on the background and social origins. With a culture that operates as a communist Government raising human rights issues in addition to concerns over nuclear and chemical weapons. Human rights are nonexistent in the country. Officials above Deputy Prime Minister Level are provided vehicles at state expenses. Party operates at a level of discipline surpassing that of the military. For example, “public self-criticism is the punishment for being a minute late after lunch. Surveillance is much tighter to include listening devices at home and watching their every move.” Corruption is highest in the government trading and foreign exchange departments. Almost equally severe in departments responsible for housing and employment. Nuclear and chemical weapons have always been an interest between the two. A Stalemate, escalation, or an agreement.

Of the myriad human rights abuses that are presented by the North Korean regime, the American detainees present a special interest to the United States. North Korea has made a policy of detaining certain American journalists and tourists that enter the state. These detainees may be held for indeterminable amounts of time and face horrid conditions in labor camps (North Korea). The human rights violations involved with these detentions are what draw ire of the United States and many other countries around the globe. To fully understand this policy, North Korea’s history of abductions and the current prisoners’ situations should be examined. With that insight, one can determine that North Korea is detaining Americans for three specific reasons: to promote domestic security, restart international negations, and to gain additional economic capital.

At the onset of the Cold War, between the United States and the Soviet Union, the people of Korea could not have foreseen the critical role their relatively small nation would play in world affairs over proceeding generations. The separation and subsequent rise of the North Korean state has given rise to, what is widely considered the most oppressive regime in modern history. This regime, unfortunately, has managed to gain control of some of the most destructive weaponry known to humanity. The people of North Korea are captives to the imaginations of its dictatorial leadership and unless the great efforts for reform receive pressure from without or within,

Human Rights Watch. "World Report 2015: North Korea." Italicized Title of Periodical. (2015): Web. 27 April 2016. .

“There is no independent media, functioning civil society, or religious freedom” (Human Rights Watch). Getting caught trying to run away resulted in many different ways “Public execution by hanging or firing squad, and prolonged detention in boxes so small that prisoners cannot lie down or stand up, causing loss of circulation or limb-atrophy that often leads to death within weeks” (North Korean Gulags). North Korea remains among the most harshly repressive countries in the world. United Nations inquiry found that North Korea’s human rights abuses include murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, and rape. Anyone could get sent to these secret camps for no reason just because their leader says so. One man talked about the places they slept at “Conditions were horrific with as many as 50 people crammed into one room, each one having just enough space to lie huddled together, person-to-person inside”. They crammed people in small rooms when the have a 31 mile camp. The UN reported on North Korea and included details of starvation, killings, and huge prison camps holding up to 120,000 people. “North Korea is in a category North Koreans sent to prison camps and detention centers are often subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of its own when it comes to human rights violations” said by Amnesty International (Godhill). No matter who you were you could have been sent to the horrendous concentration camp. “Crimes against humanity with strong resemblances to those committed by the Nazis, a United Nations inquiry has concluded” (Walker,

North Korea is currently imprisoning its own people as political prisoners who did not commit any crime. North Koreans were “imprisoned for watching soap operas, trying to find food for their families, traveling without permission or having family members

In the wake of the inquiry into North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses published in February 2014 by the United Nations Human Rights Council, there has been a large global focus on the abuses of human rights by the rogue state. The inquiry, which compares the North Korean regime to that of Nazi Germany (Kirby, Darusman, and Biserko, 2014), has generated widespread global discussion about the conditions within the totalitarian state, and for the international community it is difficult to dismiss the considerable injustices that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRKs) citizens are suffering under the current North Korean regime.

North Korea appears on the international stage as a country existing beyond the world we all know. It isolates its citizens from the rest of international community and does not obey any rules determined by international law, but requires respect and recognition. Moreover, North Korea is one of the countries that remains aggressive towards its neighbors and applies various terrorist techniques, i.e. illegal contraband, political terror and mass abductions of other countries’ citizens in its foreign policy. The reasons for which the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) behaves so unpredictably and irrationally are diversified. First of all, the DPRK as a country is managed very irrationally – regimes of Kim Il-sung and