You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
China-Japan-Koreas
New report describes slight improvements in N. Korea
2009-03-15
“North Korea’s human rights situation is wholly poor. Economic, social, and cultural rights are growing notably worse, while there have been institutional improvements in civic and political rights. Also, the human rights situation is different by social group and region, with continually deepening disparity.”

So goes the National Human Rights Commission’s description of the state of human rights in North Korea in its report, “Findings on the State of Human Rights of the Residents of North Korea,” released March 11.

The report is based on interviews with 122 North Korean defectors, 93 of which are women receiving orientation at a South Korean education facility for new defectors and 30 of which are defectors who came to the South in 2007 and 2008. The interviews were conducted between July 2008 and February of this year. It was drafted by a team of researchers at the University of North Korean Studies led by Professor Lee Woo-young.

People who leave North Korea and enter China but are then repatriated are more often than not being given relatively brief sentences of six months labor, while North Koreans who leave the North repeatedly, attempt to go to South Korea or have contact with Christians outside the country are being treated as political prisoners, the report says.

The document notes that there have been systemic improvements in civic and political rights, and that the a weakened regime structure and economic difficulties have led to slight but unintended improvements in the rights of regular North Koreans. Public executions have been become less frequent since the start of the decade, and they have become more common for crimes like corruption on the part of party officials, murder, human trafficking, and narcotics production and sale than for political crimes.
They might be running out of bullets. Or the soldiers may be too hungry to lift their weapons.
The report also describes what it says is increasing class and regional disparity in human rights. There are, on the one hand, some who are enjoying various rights for having adjusted to a new climate created by the allowance of some market activities by the “July 1 Economy Management Improvement Measure”; they amassed wealth in the process. Those who have not been able to take advantage of the new rules are, according to the report, having their livelihoods threatened and are “exposed to a violently oppressive regime.”
So capitalism is springing up in the North ...
It also describes an increasingly weak sense of community in North Korean society, saying that people often no longer care when others are starving and suffering.

“The human rights situation in North Korea is influenced by the one-party system, patriarchal culture and a regime weakened by economic difficulties,” said Lee. “It is also being influenced by inter-Korean relations over the past decade and international pressure.”
The situation won't improve until riots in Pyongyang grab the current leaders and stand them against a wall.
Posted by:Steve White

#1  Clean nails.
Posted by: Shipman   2009-03-15 15:18  

00:00