North Korean citizens are born into a society in which free speech is nonexistent, starvation is endemic and an oppressive regime feeds propaganda to its citizens exalting its “glorious leader” — but Sarah Palmer thinks those very people are the key to reversing more than 60 years of brutal dictatorship.
As a rescue team coordinator for Liberty in North Korea, a grassroots organization aimed at shedding light on the human rights crisis in the country and helping refugees assimilate into freer societies, Palmer has observed that even under the harshest governance, there is hope.
She has seen North Koreans reunite with family members, tell their stories and even saw one boy study all hours of the night to prepare for the SATs, proving that growing up under a regime responsible for some of the most egregious modern-day human rights violations hasn’t deterred the people from aspiring for more.
“We believe that there is definitely hope in North Korea, and that the North Korean people are actually the agents of small change that’s happening on a grassroots level in the country,” Palmer said.
Just this week, the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved tougher sanctions on North Korea in response to its potential to advance its nuclear program. While the international community has always been concerned about the human rights issuse, such concerns have been secondary to a fear of North Korea as a nuclear threat.
“The nuclear problem poses a direct potential threat to neighboring countries, and it also poses a threat to the broader nuclear nonproliferation regime, and so it scares people,” said public policy professor Mac Destler, adding that a human rights conflict in the country “doesn’t really threaten anybody except for North Koreans.”
And that’s where several chapters of LiNK across the globe, including one at this university, have looked to shift the focus. Amid talks of the high politics and nuclear ambitions in North Korea, a lot flies under the radar, said Matt Parsons, vice president of this university’s chapter of LiNK.
“Nobody really pays attention to the people that are suffering at the hands of the government,” the senior government and politics major said. “There are a number of issues from a humanitarian perspective that are very severe and that nobody really pays attention to.”
Prison camps, food shortages, a crackdown on defectors and the free flow of information from the outside world now define the human rights crisis in North Korea, a situation that has only looked more grim since the death of leader Kim Jong Il in December 2011 resulted in the transfer of power in Workers’ Party of Korea to his son Kim Jong Un.
“The state of human rights in North Korea continues to be deplorable,” said Greg Scarlatoiu, U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea executive director. “We have no indication that under the regime of Kim Jong Un, the human rights situation has improved. On the contrary, we have indication that the human rights situation has deteriorated.”
Mounting evidence compiled by the committee and Amnesty International suggest the regime is expanding its prison camps, which house whom the government considers society’s most hostile class. Any affiliation with religious beliefs, perceived wrongdoings or opposition to the regime has been common ground for the estimated 100,000 to 200,000 prisoners relegated to this life.
And offenders can expect their actions will lead to more than just their imprisonment.
“You’re afraid to speak against the regime, not necessarily because you will be sent to the gulag, but because your wife, children and three generations of your family will be sent to the gulag,” Scarlatoiu said.
Also rife with famine, limited food distribution channels and nutritional deficiencies, the country counts starvation among its most pressing concerns. This falls entirely on the governance, even though it is a U.N. member state and thus bound by certain human rights doctrines and international law.
“Each and every conceivable human right is being violated,” Scarlatoiu said. “There’s no reason why a Northeast Asian country should be starving other than the actions of the regime. The North Korean regime has continued to adamantly oppose openness and reform, and as a result of that and several other reasons … there are still food shortages.”
But in the face of all of this, the North Korean people are still told by a constant barrage of propaganda they live on “the greatest country on the planet,” and their neighbors to the south are “lackeys” to the “American imperialists.”
“The overwhelming majority of North Koreans, including presumably many high-level bureaucrats, have absolutely no idea of such a thing as human rights; they do not know what human rights are,” Scarlatoiu said. “At the same time, there are some things that as a human being you understand that are fundamentally wrong.”
But the famine in the ’90s and the perpetual food shortages may well prove to be the catalysts that help raise awareness among the people. To address the collapse of the government’s former public distribution food system, black markets began to form to fill the vacuum, and it is not only food that has been making its way across borders.
“More information is getting in and out of the country through these markets,” Palmer said. “People are crossing into China and crossing back into North Korea, bringing more information and money into the country than ever before.”
While drastic change or a toppling of the oppressive regime doesn’t seem to be in the near future, the continued freer flow of information could help spark grassroots efforts to inspire change.
“This market generation of North Koreans, they don’t really have strong loyalty to the North Korean government,” Palmer said. “More and more North Koreans are definitely aware of what’s going on.”
The international community can also continue to bring sanctions down on North Korea to encourage the regime to back off defense spending and its nuclear program and instead redirect resources to address the widespread starvation, Scarlatoiu said. This can all be done without regime change, which Scarlatoiu doesn’t necessarily support, although that is the ultimate hope for many experts.
“The one very important reason why the Kim regime is still in power is that life is still meaningful for the overwhelming majority of the people in North Korea,” Scarlatoiu said. “Everyone still has a family, a husband, a wife, children, relatives, everybody cares about something … everybody has hopes and dreams, limited, of course, within the confines of that regime.”
