North Korea

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK; Korean: Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmin Konghwaguk; Hangul: 조선민주주의인민공화국; Hanja: 朝鮮民主主義人民共和國), also known as North Korea, is a country in East Asia, covering the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Locally and in mainland China, it is more commonly called Pukchosŏn ("North Chosŏn"; 북조선; 北朝鮮), a name that associates the country with the Joseon Dynasty. Bukhan ("North Han"; 북한; 北韓) is commonly used in South Korea.

Human rights

North Korea has one of the worst human rights records of any nation. Reports by human rights organizations and foreign governments regularly accuse the government of failing to protect the human rights of North Koreans (Amnesty International); North Korea receives particular criticism for its policy of preventing citizens from leaving the country freely.

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North Korea is accused of severely restricting most freedoms, including freedom of speech and freedom of movement, both inside the country and abroad. Most infamously the DPRK employs concentration camps (video link). These camps are believed to hold as many as 200,000 inmates, including children whose only crime is having so-called "class enemies" for parents - not to mention entire families of up to three generations. Pregnant women who gave birth inside these camps either have forced abortions {{ref|1}} or, once the child is born, it is brutally murdered by the guards, in at least one testified case by kicking it around with spiky boots, in the name of preventing the birth of a new generation of dissidents http://ncafe.com/northkorea/SunOkLeeTestimony_w_llus.pdf http://hrnk.org/hiddengulag/toc.html. However, this could not be verified, as the DPRK government simply denies, but never allowed independent human rights observers to investigate.

Related Topics:
Freedom of speech - Concentration camp - Class enemies

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In some of the camps, the annual mortality rate approaches 25% (http://www.hrnk.org, http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3071466). A recent BBC documentary (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/3436701.stm) also reported that in one of these camps the North Korean government tests chemical weapons on prisoners in a gas chamber: " 'I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber,' he said. 'The parents, son and and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.' has drawn detailed around the corners. Scientists observe the entire process from above, through the glass." http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1136440,00.html Again this could not be verified, as no human rights groups have access to North Korea. The DPRK authorities even threatened the families of testimonies to denounce in order to cover up these crimes.

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Some of North Korea's major concentration camps can be seen from space with Google Earth by inputting the following co-ordinates:

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• Camp 15 (Yodok): 39d36'42.59"N, 126d50'56.85"E
• Camp 16 (Hwasong): 41d15'19.39"N, 129d29'33.94"E
• Camp 22 (Hoeryong): 42d26'49.24"N, 129d44'09.63"E

Less often discussed are the human rights implications of North Korea's famine (http://freekorea.blogspot.com/2005/05/one-kwangju-per-day-for-six-years.html), which killed between 600,000 (http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/11.13/13-koreaeat.html) and 3.5 million people (http://217.29.194.251/msfinternational/invoke.cfm?objectid=335007FE-29B7-4E69-B88BBDF0379FFE1A&component=toolkit.article&method=full_html&CFID=5514940&CFTOKEN=15148554 ), mostly during the 1990's (http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9808/19/nkorea.famine). By 1999, food and development aid reduced famine deaths. However, North Korea's deteriorating foreign relations resulting from its pursual of nuclear weapons led to a decline in foreign aid. In the spring of 2005, the World Food Program reported that famine conditions were in imminent danger of returning to North Korea (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4072280.stm), and the regime was reported to have ordered millions of city-dwellers to the countryside to perform farm labor (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20810F6345D0C728CDDAF0894DD404482).

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Yet during this same period, North Korea maintained a massive military machine and supported an extravagant lifestyle for its leader, Kim Jong-Il (http://www.time.com/time/asia/news/magazine/0,9754,201976,00.html). The World Food Program currently seeks $200 million in emergency food aid for North Korea (http://www.wfp.org/newsroom/subsections/search.asp?section=13&countryid=408#) an increase from its 2004 request of $171 million (http://www.wfp.org/country_brief/indexcountry.asp?country=408). By comparison, its 2002 defense budget was $5.2 billion (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/Military).

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In 2005, news sources reported that North Korea continued to raise food prices while reducing food rations to the below-subsistence amount of 250 grams per person per day, the equivalent of two medium-sized potatoes (http://www.command-post.org/nk/2_archives/018642.html#more).

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North Korea claims that natural disasters caused the famine. At worst, it is a program of political classification and cleansing not unlike that used in Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s, or political cleansing by engineered famine (http://www.ditext.com/conquest/intro.html).

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