EAI Asia Security Initiative Working Paper No. 12

Author

Dr. Kim, Research Fellow at Korea Institute for National Unification, received his doctoral degree at Seoul National University, and currently serves as a standing committee member of the National Unification Advisory Council and a policy advisor at the Ministry of For-eign Affairs and Trade. His research is focused on North Korean human rights, aid to North Korea, and inter-Korean humanitarian agendas. Dr. Kim has published numerous research papers and briefs. Some of his most recent briefs are “Daebukjiwongwa gungmin-jeok habui” (Aid to North Korea and the National Consensus), “Yueningwollejimgwa buk-haningwon: ‘jeollyak’gwa ‘gwangye’reul jungsimeuro” (The UN Human Rights Regime and North Korean Human Rights: With “Strategy” and “Relations” at the Center), “Helsingki choejonguijeongseoui ui uiwa teukjing: ingwonuijereul jungsimeuro” (Meaning and Fea-tures of Helsinki’s Final Act: With the Human Rights Agenda at the Center).

I. Introduction

In the 1990s, food shortages in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) caused an impassable systemic crisis that forced Pyongyang to request emergency aid from the United Nations and the international community. During this period, a great many North Koreans crossed the border into China despite the DPRK regime’s threat of punitive measures. From the defectors, stories about the deterioration of human rights in the DPRK began to spread to the international community.

North Korea is on a watch list under the UN’s Human Rights Resolution, indicating the UN’s concern for human rights conditions in the DPRK. The resolution “The Situation of Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” represents a decision of all member countries. Although it is not legally binding as resolutions of the UN Security Council are, adoption of this resolution nevertheless serves to put extra pressure on the North Korean regime, both politically and diplomatically. The North Korean regime views this resolution, publicizing human rights realities in the North, as a political conspiracy designed as a negative blow to North Korea’s national security. In spite of the DPRK’s rejection and denial, “The Situation of Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” works as a tool has a significant impact on the North Korean regime’s survival strategy.

Considering the current circumstances of international politics, gangseongdaeguk(a strong and prosperous state), North Korea’s survival strategy to maintain its supreme dictator, can be ridiculously erroneous in the twenty-first century. The new century’s platform of international politics requires not just wealth and power, as that of the nineteenth century did, but also the soft values—such as knowledge, human rights, and preservation of the environment. The platform is thus becoming complex. For example, processes of development cooperation in the current international community no longer simply define the concept of “poverty” as “lack of wealth.” Observers now pay more attention to comprehensive and multi-faceted characteristics of “poverty,” including “injustice” and “deprivation.” These changes in the global platform make clear that another look at North Korea’s survival strategy is necessary. What does the North Korean regime need in order to come up with a survival strat

egy that is appropriate to this complex platform of the new age? A comprehensive reform in the DPRK’s perception of human rights is a lynchpin for the North’s future development strategy. If the DPRK just pretends to adopt the international standard of human rights and does not fundamentally transform its behavior, it will be difficult to expect future international support for North Korea.

In the future, it would be wise if North Korea adopted the human rights agenda insofar as it does not threaten the regime’s safety and survival. North Korea must seriously consider whether it could survive in the twenty-first century should it persist in approaching human rights issues as a threat to the regime. In other words, Pyongyang has no other option but to agree to human rights concerns and search for survival strategies in tandem with the international community. This paper looks at the implications of the human rights agenda for North Korea’s survival strategy, and in addition, it analyzes and suggests a direction in which North Korea must approach human rights issues in order to succeed in its prosperity strategy.

II. Human Rights Awareness in the Military-First Era: Content and Evaluation

1. Perceiving the Human Rights Issue as a Threat to the DPRK Regime’s Security

In the 1990s and in the military-first era, the DPRK’s perception of human rights was established based on the fear of threats from the outside. The fall of Communism and Pyongyang’s own evaluation on the causes of the fall greatly affected the way Pyongyang understands human rights. In the 1990s, when the Soviet Union and communist states in Eastern Europe collapsed, North Korea was faced with a grave threat to its national security. The North Korean regime believed that the expansion of freedom and human rights and the subsequent escapes of the residents en masse were the main causes of the fall of Communism. The DPRK regime took a special caution to restrict the inflow of information, which it believed to have shifted public perception. For this reason, the international community’s criticisms of human rights violations were interpreted as a security threat. To support this assumption, the regime spoke of the war in Iraq as an exemplary case that revealed the covert intention of the United States and the international community to topple the regime in North Korea.

North Korea misunderstood the international community’s strategy as one of bringing down the socialist system and regimes, and justifying its actions in the name of human rights. The North defines the world order as a battle between imperialism and self-reliance, and human rights as a weapon of imperialism. The DPRK argues that the ambition of the imperialists, which is to dominate the world, never changes but only their methods do. In short, human rights are being used as a tool of the imperialists in dominating the world, in the eyes of the North Korean authorities.

The North Korean regime particularly emphasizes that the “human rights attack” is a strategy to ruin Socialism, and believes that this strategy must be countered considering the context of the system’s security. To put it another way, the Western way of public discussion of human rights is nothing but a nominal reason that Westerners employ in order to bring down Socialism. At the core of that strategy, North Korea points out, lies the proliferation of human rights awareness and support for anti-regime forces—the final goal of which is the fall of Socialism and its core values such as solidarity and collectivism. According to Pyongyang, the Soviet Union and other Socialist states in Eastern Europe fell because they failed to see through the toxic intentions hidden behind the “human rights attack,” and therefore no effective management measures were developed against such a strategy. Looking back on this historical lesson, North Korea claims that it must prepare a fierce ideological front line against Western tactics for the protection of the Socialist system. In short, the North Korean regime is taking a security approach in dealing with human rights issues.

Pyongyang argues that there is not one absolute standard for human rights. Due to the differences in cultures, there cannot be a single standard for human rights that is applied to every state. Therefore, the insistence of Western states to apply “their way” of human rights to North Korea, regardless of the differences, can only be interpreted as a strategy to conquer the world. North Korea also applies this argument against globalization. For North Korea, globalization is another strategy to conquer the world based on Western values, in particular, American values. North Korea calls it “homogenization.” Through this homogenization, the North Korea asserts, Western states are trying to turn the entire globe into one free world, and then subordinate and assimilate all the people to their system. In particular, North Korea criticizes the United States for trying to “Americanize” other states by setting its standard of human rights as a global standard. In this way, the North Korean regime perceives Western and American diplomatic strategy to impart the values of human rights as a threat to their system...(Continued)