$19.93 (USD)
Publisher: Routledge
Release date: 2011
Format: PDF
Size: 1.86 MB
Language: English
Pages: 240
https://issuu.com/patrickho77/docs/human_rights_discourse_in_north_kor
Human Rights Discourse in North Korea: Post-Colonial, Marxist and Confucian Perspectives
Jiyoung Song
Routledge, 16 Dec 2010 - Political Science - 240 pages
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This unique book examines the conceptual development of human rights in North Korea from historical, political and cultural perspectives.
Dr Jiyoung Song explains how North Korea has understood the concepts of human rights in its public documents since its independence from Japan in 1945. Through active campaigns and international criticism, foreign governments and non-governmental organisations outside North Korea have made numerous allegations of human rights violations. On the other hand, the efforts to engage with North Korea in order to improve the human rights situation through humanitarian assistance and to understand how North Koreans interpret human rights are often overshadowed by "naming and shaming" and "push-until-it-collapses" approaches. Using close readings and analyses of the collected works of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, as well interviews with North Korean defectors and diplomats in South Korea, China and Europe, Dr Song gives thought-provoking and highly debatable accounts for the historically post-colonial, politically Marxist and culturally Confucian elements of North Korean rights thinking.
As a piece of research on a nation shrouded in mystery this book will be essential reading for anyone researching human rights issues, Asian politics and international relations.
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Human Rights Discourse in North Korea: Post-Colonial, Marxist, and Confucian Perspectives
Citation metadata
From: The Journal of Korean Studies(Vol. 17, Issue 1.)
Publisher: Duke University Press
Document Type: Book review
Length: 2,034 words
Article Preview :
Human Rights Discourse in North Korea: Post-Colonial, Marxist, and Confucian Perspectives by Jiyoung Song. New York: Routledge, 2011. 240 pp. $130.00 (cloth)
Human Rights Discourse in North Korea offers three different perspectives with which to understand North Korean discourses about human rights as explicitly laid out in the subtitle: namely, postcolonial, Marxist, and Confucian. By bringing these three approaches to human rights, the book attempts to provide an alternative conceptualization of human rights, broadening its very definition. Rather than focusing on the traditional emphasis on individual political and civil liberties as the core of human rights, the author challenges liberal notions about human beings as essentially autonomous individuals by incorporating collective duty-bound conceptualizations of human rights. The three perspectives not only show that North Korea has been actively engaged in human rights discourse since its foundation, but also serve to situate North Korea's discourse within Korea's historical context, as well as within the international evolution of more communitarian human rights discourses, thereby contesting common characterizations of North Korea as a country without any notion of rights.
After the first chapter lays out a general introduction to the evolution of ideas about human rights and the concomitant theoretical concerns, the book follows a chronological timeline, moving from premodern Korean ideas relevant to human rights--namely, Confucianism, Sirhak, and Tonghak--to postcolonial Marxist ideas on human rights, the development of chuch'e ideology and its relationship to human rights, and finally turns toward "Our Style" human rights under Kim Jong Il (Kim Chongil). Each of the chapters tries to show the combination of postcolonial, Marxist, and Confucian influence on the development of human rights discourse in North Korea to reveal commonalities between North Korean and international human rights discourses.
While the author must be applauded for attempting a historically and culturally informed constructivist approach to analyzing North Korean human rights discourse, serious problems plague the book. Theoretically, the biggest problem is in framing North Korean human rights discourse as a linear evolution, best exemplified by the flow chart at the beginning of the book: "Chosun Confucian state ideology (1392-1910), Sirhak (late seventeenth century), Tonghak (late nineteenth century), Early Korean communism and independence movements (1910-45), Post-colonialism (1945- ), Korean Marxism (1948- ), Juche Ideology (1955- ), 'Our Style' human rights (1995- )" (p. 3). The author, thus, traces contemporary North Korean discourses all the way back to the fourteenth-century adoption of Confucianism by the Choson state, the seventeenth-century Sirhak--a form of neo-Confucianism stressing people's material well-being and philosophical independence from China--and the nineteenth-century Tonghak, a radical peasant movement advocating social equality and land reform.
However, the connections between these large intellectual currents are made without sufficient argumentation as they are understood rather superficially. For example, Song maintains that Confucian emphasis on benevolent leadership results in the cult of personality in contemporary North Korea while the emphasis on family unity leads North Korea to shun foreign relations (p. 61). Religious overtones in chuch'e ideology are the result of Kim Il Sung's exposure to Christianity as a child...
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Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Kim, Suzy. "Human Rights Discourse in North Korea: Post-Colonial, Marxist, and Confucian Perspectives." The Journal of Korean Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, 2012, p. 214+. Gale Academic Onefile, Accessed 6 Dec. 2019.
nknews.org
http://www.nknews.org/2014/05/interview-with-song-jiyoung/
Studying North Korea’s concept of ‘rights’
In her 2011 book, Human Rights Discourse in North Korea
, Singapore-based professor Jiyoung Song exploresthe North Korean view of human rights by analyzing a vast array of primary sources, in relation to modern andcontemporary views of individual and collective freedom developed in North Korea since its inception.Song argues that the general notion of North Korea as a country that knows no rights at all is not only erroneous,but detrimental to our understanding of the country. The DPRK, she argues, has developed a set of norms toregulate its domestic life, and although such norms differ drastically from the Western understanding of humanrights, they are nevertheless important and ought to be thoroughly analyzed.
NK News
has spoken to Song tounderstand what the notion of human rights entails in North Korea and how it can be understood in Westernstandards.
NK News: At the beginning of the book you describe the importance of: a) acknowledging that NorthKorea does have its own version of human rights, and b) the fact that most relevant literature on the topicdoes not consider the North Korean perspective at all, assuming that since the country neglects “our”idea of human rights, then they probably have none.
Song:
When I started studying North Korea 15 years ago the simple methodological question on how to better understand North Korea was hijacked by political, ideological or often self-interests among South Koreanacademics on North Korea. Those who argued we needed to understand “why the DPRK think what they think”from the North Korean perspectives were accused of being North Korean sympathizers, communists or in today’s term,
Chongbuk (pro-Pyongyang). As a graduate student, I found this accusation groundless. How can you not study and investigate the primarysources of the subject country when you say you are an expert? With the more relaxed inter-Korean relations inthe late 1990s and early 2000s, many scholars started reading the Rodong Sinmun and analyzing the New Year’sDay editorials in South Korea. What I found missing in the then-existing literature, especially the discourse of human rights in North Korea, was systematic and historical analyses of how their conceptions of human rightshave evolved since 1948 in North Korean public documents, not just Rodong Sinmun but also the works of Kim IlSung and Kim Jong Il, as well as the party’s periodic magazines.
‘North Korea is not a communist state … but a late-feudal, post-colonial, de jure socialist state that has not gone through the proper modernization processes and its people have never had a taste of democracy’
When I started studying North Korea 15 years ago the simple methodological question on how to better understand North Korea was hijacked by political, ideological or often self-interests among South Koreanacademics on North Korea. Those who argued we needed to understand “why the DPRK think what they think”from the North Korean perspectives were accused of being North Korean sympathizers, communists or in today’s term,
Chongbuk (pro-Pyongyang). As a graduate student, I found this accusation groundless. How can you not study and investigate the primarysources of the subject country when you say you are an expert? With the more relaxed inter-Korean relations inthe late 1990s and early 2000s, many scholars started reading the Rodong Sinmun and analyzing the New Year’sDay editorials in South Korea. What I found missing in the then-existing literature, especially the discourse of human rights in North Korea, was systematic and historical analyses of how their conceptions of human rightshave evolved since 1948 in North Korean public documents, not just Rodong Sinmun but also the works of Kim IlSung and Kim Jong Il, as well as the party’s periodic magazines.
‘North Korea is not a communist state … but a late-feudal, post-colonial, de jure socialist state that has not gone through the proper modernization processes and its people have never had a taste of democracy’
NK News: What kind of fieldwork and analysis did you conduct to document North Korea’s concepts of human rights and what have you learned in the process?Song:
I conducted a series of confidential interviews with North Korean diplomats in London and Geneva andwith North Korean defectors in Yanbian (China), Seoul and Ansong (South Korea), and London in 2004-09. Under the Roh administration in South Korea, it was not impossible to meet and have reasonable conversation withNorth Korean diplomats as a Ph.D. student in Cambridge. Neither North nor South Korean authorities kidnappedme for doing that, which (has been) my poor mother’s biggest worry until now.What I learned from the interviews was the confirmation of my thesis that North Korea is not a communist state(which the BBC and the U.S. State Department still define North Korea as), but a late-feudal, post-colonial,
de jure
socialist state that has not gone through the proper modernization processes and its people havenever had a taste of democracy. North Koreans were Koreans before they were to be communists, which theynever become.
NK News: You describe North Korean human rights as being easier to understand if we think about howWestern states (especially the U.S. or the UK post-9/11) are moving toward limiting personal freedoms tovalue collective rights like national security.Song:
When I was doing the literature review of Western philosophies of human rights in the introduction of mybook, what deeply confused me was Jeremy Waldron’s
Nonsense Upon Stilts
. Learning how Burke, Bentham andMarx opposed the Lockean idea of human rights provided a platform to draw how international human rightsconcepts have evolved, especially over the past hundred years. British conservatives, communitarian neo-liberalsand orthodox Marxists are all against classical liberal human rights. The United Kingdom, the place whichI believed to be the origin of human rights (according to) Locke, was also (where) the very idea was fiercelyopposed. I was fascinated by the irony and dynamics of ideational transformation. The essence of Lockeannatural law, too, was based on the right to property to be protected from absolute rule.
‘When a state perceives its national security as under imminent threat, extra-legal measures aretaken to ensure its survival’
A more contemporary example from the U.S., especially after 9/11, is that the language of human rights hasretreated from the official discourse in the U.S. foreign policy. Instead, the U.S. Department of HomelandSecurity’s anti-terror measures, the use of torture, increased surveillance, and restricted privacy and civil libertieshave been justified for national security, public order and morals as permissible limitations on individual humanrights. When a state perceives its national security as under imminent threat, extra-legal measures are taken toensure its survival. This is probably more universal than human rights. The level of threat perception in NorthKorean documents is indescribably high. What is interesting is its use of the “rights” of people to survival andsubsistence in its official discourse.
‘Christianity helps many North Koreans smoothly transit from Kimilsungism to evangelical Protestantism’
NK News: What is the role of religion in the work of smaller NGOs that deal with North Korean refugees inChina, in comparison with more prominent advocates such as Human Rights Watch or AmnestyInternational?
Song:
As far as I know, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have contacts with some of thoseunderground religious, human rights and humanitarian organizations in China. I haven’t compared the differentdiscourses or actions among NGOs, but I think Danielle Chubb at Deakin University did work on NGOs for her Ph.D. Religion plays a big role. Christianity, for example, helps many North Koreans smoothly transit fromKimilsungism to evangelical Protestantism as, according to my interviews with North Korean defectors, theconcept of the Trinity (Father-Son-Holy Spirit) is very similar to North Korean Kim Il Sung-Kim Jong Il (and nowKim Jong Un)- Juche ideology. Even the practice of South Korean missionaries’ Bible readings every day early inthe morning is similar to the collective readings of the works of Kim Il Sung in school and workplaces in NorthKorea. Like it or not, it helps North Korean defectors’ social integration into South Korean society, at least temporarily.
As far as I know, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have contacts with some of thoseunderground religious, human rights and humanitarian organizations in China. I haven’t compared the differentdiscourses or actions among NGOs, but I think Danielle Chubb at Deakin University did work on NGOs for her Ph.D. Religion plays a big role. Christianity, for example, helps many North Koreans smoothly transit fromKimilsungism to evangelical Protestantism as, according to my interviews with North Korean defectors, theconcept of the Trinity (Father-Son-Holy Spirit) is very similar to North Korean Kim Il Sung-Kim Jong Il (and nowKim Jong Un)- Juche ideology. Even the practice of South Korean missionaries’ Bible readings every day early inthe morning is similar to the collective readings of the works of Kim Il Sung in school and workplaces in NorthKorea. Like it or not, it helps North Korean defectors’ social integration into South Korean society, at least temporarily.
NK News: Some experts argue that the interest South Korean society invests in North Korean humanrights (or refugees) seems low, and is often left to religious groups or individuals, to either take someaction or document what they think is going on in North Korea in terms of human rights violation. Wouldyou agree?
Song:
I disagree. South Korea has spent an enormous amount of government expenditures on flights for NorthKorean defectors from Southeast Asia to Incheon, followed by settlement packages for them – not as generous asbefore but still quite substantial. Since 2006, the number of North Koreans entering South Korea is close to
I disagree. South Korea has spent an enormous amount of government expenditures on flights for NorthKorean defectors from Southeast Asia to Incheon, followed by settlement packages for them – not as generous asbefore but still quite substantial. Since 2006, the number of North Koreans entering South Korea is close to
2,000 annually. There are numerous new NGOs working on North Korean human rights, meaning that there areenough resources poured in. Some focus on shocking storytelling and documentaries – many in the noxious BBCPanorama-syle – while others genuinely help develop the agency of North Koreans so that they can self-organize to survive in the harshly competitive South Korean society.
‘Gender-based violence, discrimination against women and male chauvinism are morefundamental problems, not just in North Korea but also in South Korea’
NK News: How much weight do gender issues have in the human rights situation of North Korea?Song:
Gender is of key importance. Many victims of human rights violations are women and children. Wesimply don’t know how many vanish in the perilous journey for survival. We don’t have to find “perfect victims” of rape or trafficking in persons. Women in traditional Korean culture in general are expected to play certaingender roles in society. Gender-based violence, discrimination against women and male chauvinism are morefundamental problems, not just in North Korea but also in South Korea.
NK News: I have found the choice of perspectives in the book (post-colonial, Confucian and Marxist) veryinteresting. However, those who oppose the DPRK would argue that no cultural understanding of NorthKorea excuses the living conditions of those at the bottom of the social system. How would you respondSong:
The constructivist approach by no means serves as an excuse for the poor records of human rights inNorth Korea. The three perspectives were not my choices but the outcomes of my text-based analyses of theevolution of North Korean human rights thinking. What I try to argue in the book is that the North Korean regimehas its own endogenous cognitive mechanism to rationalize their understanding of human rights and this was anevolutionary process over the past 70 years from the strictly post-colonial and anti-imperialist perspective toMarxist-Leninist one with limited interactions with the former Soviets and the People’s Republic of China and, withfurther isolation after the end of the Cold War, back to the neo-Confucian practical and anti-foreign thinking, whichis different from more metaphysical Chinese Confucianism.
NK News: Finally, can we get your take on the UN Commission of Inquiry, its findings, the recentdeliberations of the UN assembly and a forecast for the coming months?
Song:
The UN COI report on the DPRK strikes me as a good compilation of all past human rights allegationreports published by NGOs without any concrete development in communications with the DPRK. The country-specific UN special procedures mechanism has been criticized by many for its lack of effectiveness, selectivityand politicization. The two UN Special Rapporteurs on the DPRK were carefully selected within the genuineinterests to get access to information in North Korea, but still in vain.Kirby and the UN COI charges Kim Jong Un and the DPRK regime for crimes against humanity and urges the UNSecurity Council to refer the case to the International Criminal Court, which also has been pushed by NGOs for awhile. With China and Russia having the veto power, this is highly unlikely to happen. What then? Information iskey in dealing with the DPRK. On how to interact with this highly impermeable country, we need to seriously thinkabout it.
Picture:
Eric Lafforgue
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