What Is North Korea Human Rights

There are daily examples of discrimination and oppression throughout the world, but one of the most substantial examples is in North Korea. North Korea is an Asian country ruled by a totalitarian dictatorship, although it calls itself a socialist state. The Jong family has ruled North Korea for three generations since the Korean War. The country is said to be a cult as the country’s citizens are forced to worship the countries leaders, discouraged from holding religion and often punished from doing so, and are not allowed to leave the country. Additionally, in North Korea there are no human rights. People are killed or sent to labor camps for even the smallest infractions. North Korea remains one of the most repressive authority’s states on the world. A 2014 United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) report on human rights in North Korea stated that systematic, widespread, and gross human rights violations committed by the government included murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortion, and other sexual violence, and constituted crimes against humanity (McCurry,2017). Under international pressure North Korea always denies these allegations, but through defectors and satellite images the evidence is clear. Time and time again North Korea has violated human rights. North Korea is a superior example of oppression and discrimination because of the countries laws and judicial system, and the treatment of North Korean citizens.

In the book Northing to Envy, Barbara Demick describes North Korea as an undeveloped country. “You can see the evidence of what once was and has been lost…” (4,Demick) The North Koreas aren’t up to the modern world and still haven’t learned that all humans need rights to be happy. Many aspects of human rights are broken in North Korean society that affect the people negatively, making them feel violated.

North Korea is a country that is ruled by a dictator and has a communist government. A communist government rules all the land and gives the same amount of money and supplies to all the people in the country. “Daily Necessities were obtained from the Public Distribution System (PDS)” (95,Hassig). The PDS shut down in 1995 because foreign aid was cut off expect for Pyongyang, the capital city. In rural areas, a lot of the children were born as “no-count” meaning that when they were born they weren’t counted as part of the existing society and didn’t have supplies given to them. North Korea was once a unified country with South Korea until September 9, 1948 when it became a separate country. From 1910 to 1945 Japan had ruled

The problem with prison camps in North Korea back in the past were totally inhumane. “Prison tended to be a place where people were held before their trail or while awaiting punishment. It was very rarely used as a punishment in its own right. Men and women, boys and girls, debtors and murderers were all held together in local prisons” (History of Prison System). Basically, prisoners were punished equally, they all suffer with the same system of conditions, which was not fair for other prisoners in the sense of the judgment toward them. Prisons were dreadful dangerous for children in the fact that they were put into local jails with dangerous prisoners. Conditions in prisons were mostly one of many punishment toward prisoners, among other things.

Over 400,000 North Korean citizens have died from the torture of concentration camps, and more than 200,000 are still being held there to this day. Every day, North Korean prisoners are being beaten and abused, only a few of the many unthinkable tortures inflicted on them. William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, believes that the defects of society can be traced back to the defects of human nature. However, in contrast to Golding’s statement, countries like North Korea demonstrate that the torture in concentration camps can be traced back to defects in the government, depending on the circumstance.

Imagine life on the brink of death and being completely isolated from the outside world. Your surroundings are filled with the scent of rotting corpse and the image of walking skeletons with deformities due to scarce supply of food and countless beatings, torture, and even executions. What I am describing here is the reality for the prisoners in the concentration camps of North Korea. This is a clear violation of the UN Declaration of Human Rights because these prisoners are subjugated under these harsh treatments by the government of North Korea. One living example of the brutal treatment endured in these camps is about a survivor of the camps whose name is Shin Dong-hyuk.

To the North Koreans, their leader is like their God, everything he does or says is correct, “[they] will do as the party tells [them], [they] will die for the general, [and they] have nothing to envy” (Demick, 242) the world. The Workers Party has reinvented history and erected myths for the benefit of controlling the population (123). They keep the bad truths away from their citizens and manipulate all information given to the public. The people who realize the truth about their country, try to escape and go to South Korea. Many fail to escape, and end up in labor camps, where they are ill-fed and later

It’s easy to imagine that the Holocaust is behind us and that the Earth is moving towards a bright future. However, in many countries around the world, people are still being treated as less than human beings! North Korea is one of these countries, but many people do not understand what is happening there. In fact, North Korea is currently quite different than many other modern societies largely because of its immensely restricted human rights.

Although most governments put positive spins on things, normally, they would at the very least give us a glimpse of the truth. North Korea doesn’t do that. Finally, Demick concludes that The citizens of North  Korea aren't treated the way they should

North Korea has been hiding concentration camps from the entire world for years. Their restrictive laws keep the rest of the world from finding out, or that’s what the tiny country tries to achieve. This results in a major problem. Many people are being held against their will in camps that feed them barely any food and other necessary resources-- Some even resorted to desperate measures. “One witness said that young male inmates in North Korean prison camps became so desperate for food they would eat live worms or snakes caught in the field to feel something in their stomachs” (Park, CNN) This catastrophe affects “...up to 200,000 prisoners...” (Reist 5) and needs to be fixed. There are many stories about people who have been taken by the North Korean government and were put in concentration camps. For example, two foreign journalists were visiting North Korea and were put into a camp with no real reason specified from North Korea; it’s believed that these two girls are innocent. “[The ladies] were tried and convicted of grave crimes against North Korea, the nature of which was never specified” (NPR 6). They are

Kim has used nearly all of the income of money on nuclear weapons and other testings of the sort. In the article by world affairs journal, they say that,” There is unparalleled humanitarian and human rights emergency unfolding in the country every day.” Because of all the weapons testing this causes a lack of money for citizens allowing for thousands of people to starve to death all around. This genocide isn’t primarily targeted towards any one group but is instead depriving people of their basic rights. They are getting tortured, killed in masses, and having their freedoms ripped away. In an article by hir.harvard.edu they said that,” Hundereds of thousands of North Koreans have fled to China to survive. The majority are women, 80 percent of whom are sex-trafficked or sold into forced marriages.” An example of having freedoms ripped away would be the camps set up in North Korea. Christians and other people of religion are not allowed to pray anymore and people get tortured to death. The laws are so strict that even if you minorly step out of line you could get killed. An article entitled “Genocide in North Korea” states that North Korean refugees who flee to China carry a knife, because they would rather kill themselves then get caught by the

Many countries are against what is being done in North Korea prison camps (gulags) and sympathize with the victims, because it is a crime against humanity. After watching an interview of Shin Dong-hyuk with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, I found the testimony of the ex-prisoner appalling yet intriguing. It made me question, how can an entire country get away with heinous crimes against humanity for this long? The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea continues to be defiant to international law by committing a crime against humanity through means of imprisonment of the wrongly accused, imprisonment without a fair public trial, child labor, and cruel

The summary of this article shows that there is no democracy is North Korea and it is a Dictatorship. North Korea killed about 1,382 people who did not follow the ways of the dictatorship during 15 years of control under Kim Jong Un and his father Kim Jong Il. These deaths occurred because all those people did not abide by the rules and additionally confronted the dictatorship which you cannot do in North Korea . The execution rate was incline to be higher than the number of deaths that authentically occurred. "The North claimed that it has bequeathed capital penalization in very constrained cases, but it has carried out executions in cases of a wide range of malefactions," according to Yonhap. Kim Jong Un has executed 15 senior officials

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.

Hyeonseo Lee gave a presentation on TED Talk entitled, “My Escape from North Korea”, summarizing about her life in North Korea. She was born and raised there and sing patriotic songs. All the history books told her that North Korea was the best country in the world. As she got older, a famine struck North Korea in the mid-1990’s. Although, she never experienced starvation, she witnessed the events first hand. This was the pushing point for Hyeonseo, who decided to leave North Korea. Due to China and North Korea’s stringent border policies and the Chinese government immigration policy, the life of a North Korean refugee is challenging and extremely risky. They risk being deported back to the very country that they escaped from. There are reports and stories about the violation of human rights and labor camps in North Korea. She would live in China for ten years before moving to South Korea. Hyeonseo was forced to help her family escape from North Korea. The regime caught Hyeonseo for sending money to her family. Lee’s family to be relocated by the order of the North Korean government. She needed to smuggle them through China to a South Korean embassy in Laos. Unfortunately, Hyeonseo Lee’s story won’t be the last we hear about the abysmal conditions in North Korea. There are, potentially millions more, stories detailing the humanitarian disaster in the country and we must take steps to prepare for the eventual collapse of the country.