 By Carter Thompson, HRNK Research Intern
Edited by Rosa Park, HRNK Director of Programs and Sophia Hapin, HRNK Research Intern May 6, 2021 North Korea and the Kim regime are synonymous with nuclear weapons proliferation and isolationism. However, there is much more occurring that fails to reach the mainstream media when it comes to North Korea. While the regime’s nuclear priorities fill the news, a much darker truth continues unencumbered—crimes against humanity. North Korea runs merciless political prison camps in which arbitrarily imprisoned individuals are forced to endure brutal crimes, including torture, starvation, forced abortions, and enslavement.[1] Justice Michael Kirby, Chair of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, stated that the crimes being committed in these camps rival those committed by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.[2] How then, is nothing being done? Perhaps it is the Kim regime’s nuclear capabilities or the protection of Russia and China’s veto power on the United Nations Security Council shielding North Korea. Maybe the complicated legal framework of sovereignty and intervening in a state’s affairs erects an additional barrier. Undoubtedly, all of these factors play a role. However, is it possible that there is another contributing factor, something grimmer, something that is not being asked in the highest levels of academia and international governing bodies regarding passivity—do we just not care enough?
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 By Damian Reddy, HRNK Research Intern
Edited by Rosa Park, HRNK Director of Programs and Sophia Hapin, HRNK Research Intern May 5, 2021 In a public statement to the Human Rights Council in March 2014, the Chairman of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Michael Kirby, asserted that the North Korean government had established a system of apartheid.[1] This was further emphasized in 2015 in Seoul, South Korea, by former United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights, Navi Pillay, who expressed her thoughts on the North Korean government by likening it to South Africa’s discriminatory apartheid regime. She further stressed that North Korea’s songbun caste system is, in fact, a new form of apartheid.[2] North Korea’s government is actively practicing apartheid, a crime against humanity that is condemned by international law. The main question is whether it is possible to extend the meaning and legal definition of apartheid to be inclusive of a system that is perpetrating human rights violations, but not only in the strict sense of racial segregation as seen in South Africa. |
DedicationHRNK staff members and interns wish to dedicate this program to our colleagues Katty Chi and Miran Song. Categories
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