‘Our vision remains one of a North Korea in which everyone is free to exercise their rights and freedoms, including the right to freedom of religion or belief, and today we reaffirm our commitment to ensuring that this vision becomes a reality.’
– CSW’s CEO Scot Bower
A CSW delegation recently travelled to Seoul, South Korea to launch a report summarising the condition of freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) in North Korea over the past ten years. The report – titled North Korea: We Cannot Look Away was commissioned to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights Commission of Inquiry (COI) into crimes against humanity in the country.
In 2014, when the initial report of the COI was published it concluded that the situation in North Korea was one ‘without parallel’ in the world. The COI found evidence of ‘unspeakable atrocities’ against the North Korean people. They found evidence of ‘widespread, systematic and gross’ violations of human rights occurring across the country. And they found these state actions qualified as crimes against humanity – among them execution, enslavement, starvation, rape, re-education, forced labour and forced abortion.
The COI was considered the most thorough and most authoritative research into the situation of human rights in North Korea to date, and it played a crucial role in bringing human rights violations into conversations about North Korea – not only focusing conversations on nuclear proliferation.
Prior to this, CSW had published a report of our own in 2007, this one titled ‘A Call To Act.’ This was the culmination of a seven-year project in which we surveyed more than 80 North Korean escapees and mobilised a team of human rights lawyers to compile a prima facie/ first appearance report.
This initial research set the groundwork for the COI to be commissioned and launched. And thus it feels somewhat demoralising, 24 years after our research began, to again call for action.
This time, the call is slightly different. We have seen and we have confirmed without doubt that crimes against humanity are occurring in North Korea, but it is a protracted and incredibly challenging and complicated context to work in. Political will, public attention and resources are drawn to other crises, like those in Myanmar, Palestine, Sudan and Ukraine.
Western organisations like CSW are based thousands of miles away from the Korean peninsula and it is easy for us to forget the situation once we go back home.
But we cannot look away.
We have to stay proximate to the problem if we are to have any hope of being involved in any lasting solutions. Not only close in monitoring the situation, hearing the voices of escapees and in political advocacy, but also in building stronger ties with Korean-led human rights and accountability groups like the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG).
North Korea is often viewed with curiosity – a mysterious and hermitic kingdom few get to visit, and even fewer get to really see what goes on behind the Kim curtain. This creates genuine interest in the unknown; it is an information blackhole in a world where we have access to information on just about anything at any time and in any place. North Korea is an exception.
But this fascination with the unknown comes with a danger. If we only think about North Korea in terms of what the Kim regime dose or out of a macabre curiosity we run the risk of dehumanising the people that live there – the very people that live under the fear and tyranny of what the COI made clear.
These threats are particularly real for religious groups – especially Christians who have to operate in total secrecy and would face imprisonment, torture, re-education if they are caught practicing their faith.
CSW’s report highlights the human cost of the crimes committed in the DPRK. Real faces, real people living behind the ‘curtain’. The report specifically highlights victims of the recent refoulment of refugees from China to North Korea in October 2023, and names three missionaries who have been imprisoned in North Korea for over a decade: Kim Jung-Wook, Kim Kook-Kie and Choi Chung-Gil. We ask that the DPRK release these missionaries unconditionally
We still hope, as did the original report, that the DPRK will one day be brought before the International Criminal Court, and we remain committed to exploring all avenues to hold the regime to account. We stand in solidarity with those working towards transitional justice in North Korea, however long that may take, and we will not look away.
By CSW’s Lead Advocate and Researcher for North Korea
Featured Image: Illustration by Emily Paik.
Click here to read ‘North Korea: We Cannot Look Away’.