Human Rights Discourse in North Korea Jiyoung Song

Human Rights Discourse in North Korea Jiyoung Song

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. However, 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 offi cial 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.
Dr Jiyoung Song is a research associate at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at the University of Oxford, UK, and consultant for the UN Offi ce of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.


Human Rights Discourse in 
North Korea
Post-colonial, Marxist, and 
Confucian perspectives
Jiyoung Song

First published 2011 by Routledge
Contents
List of illustrations ix Acknowledgements xi
Foreword xiii
Transliteration xvi
Abbreviations xvii
 Introduction 1
1 The evolution of international human rights 13
A historical overview of Western ideas on  human rights 13
Marx and Marxist states on human rights 20
Universalism versus cultural relativism 31
Individual versus collective rights 37
Civil/political and economic/social/cultural rights 43
Rights and duties 47
Conclusion 50
2 Late Chosun philosophies and human rights 54
Chosun Confucianism and human rights 55
Sirhak and human rights 63
Tonghak and human rights 69
Conclusion 73
3 Post-colonial people’s rights: 1945–8 75
Establishing rights in the nation-building phase 75
Institutionalising human rights: copying the 
Soviet model 77
People’s rights in the People’s Democracy 84
Conclusion 89
viii  Contents
4 The Marxist rights thinking of the DPRK 92
An overview of pre-1945 Korean communism 92
The denial of human rights in capitalist society 94
Human rights contingent on a person’s class status 102
Collective interests over individual rights 105
Primacy of socio-economic rights 113
Citizens’ duties 116
Conclusion 120
5 Human rights in Juche Ideology 122
An overview of Juche Ideology 123
The divine concept of rights and the role of leadership 127
The sovereign right of man and the nation 129
The right of man as a social being 134
The right to basic living standards 136
Citizens’ duties 139
Conclusion 142
6 ‘Our style’ of human rights 145
An overview of Kim Jong Il’s ‘our style’ of  human rights 145
Sovereignty and the right to national survival 150
Withering away of class-conscious Marxist rights 153
Subsistence rights 157
Duty-based language of human rights 162
New departures for human rights in the DPRK 164
Conclusion 175
Conclusion 178
References 192
Index 213


Illustrations
Figures
1.1 The evolution of North Korean rights thinking 3
4.1(a)–(c) North Korean ‘anti-US/anti-imperialist’ propaganda 
posters 98–99 4.2(a)–(f ) Mass games at the Arirang Festival in Pyongyang 110–112
4. 3(a)–(b) Images of ‘communist mothers’ 119
5. 1(a)–(d) Kim Il Sung’s ‘on-the-spot’ guidance 130–131
5.2(a)–(b) North Korean children with arm badges 140
Tables
3.1 R ights and duties in the 1936 USSR and the 1948 DPRK 
constitutions 83
6.1 North Korean border crossing by types of motivation 161
6.2 Constitutional changes of rights and duties in the DPRK 168



Acknowledgements

Turning a doctoral thesis into a book is a challenging but worthwhile project. I certainly could not have done it without others’ support. First of all, I would like to thank Dr Jim Hoare, Former British Chargé d’Affaires in Pyongyang, and Susan Pares, for sharing their extensive knowledge and true understanding of North Korea as well as for supporting for my publication. Academic subjects like mine, how North Korea understands internationally recognisable concepts and fundamental values such as human rights, have attracted little attention compared to nuclear issues while those working on North Korean human rights have focused on the actual condition rather than a discourse. Most observers of North Korean affairs have assumed there was no such concept as human rights in North Korea. Jim and Susan were among the very few in the small circle of Korean studies in the UK who showed genuine interest in my original research and were open to understanding why North Koreans think what they think. Jim, particularly, has given a positive and helpful review to support this book project. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to them.
 Words cannot express my sincere appreciation for Dr Paik Haksoon, Director of the Inter-Korean Relations Studies Programme at the Sejong Institute in South Korea, who sent this dreamy, and somewhat naïve, mathematician to Cambridge in the fi rst place. This book is dedicated to him. I also would like to thank Dr Robert Weatherley, my PhD supervisor, who spared tens of hours from his busy schedule as a full-time lawyer, part-time academic supervisor, author of three books and, most of all, father of three daughters, for reading and commenting on my chapters.
 Special thanks to the British Council and the Foreign and Commonwealth Offi ce, Selwyn College and the Centre of International Studies in Cambridge, Mr Kang Myung Deuk, Dr Lim Soon Hee, my parents, Song Jong Sub and Kim Nam Sook, and my sister Song Hee Young, for their fi nancial support during my research. I warmly thank Mr Koh Kyung Bin (Former Director of Hanawon of the Ministry of Unifi cation), Dr Kim Soo Am and Dr Lee Keum Soon (Fellows at the Korea Institute for National Unifi cation), Mrs. Katharina Peschke (formerly with the UN Offi ce of the High Commissioner for Human Rights), and those who kindly agreed to be interviewed but would like to remain anonymous, for their cooperation during my fi eldwork research in South Korea and Switzerland. I xii  Acknowledgements
thank Dr Mark Morris, Dr Kerry Brown and Mr Aidan Foster-Carter for their helpful comments on my manuscript. A special thank you goes to Dr Yu Liu who kindly offered a workspace for me to fi nalise this book. I also thank Avi Abrams and Luca Fontini who kindly gave me permission to use their photos of the Arirang mass games and North Korean posters. Limited but deeply focused friendships have always been my greatest asset and comfort zone. I would like to express my gratitude to Lorraine Macmillan, Rachel Hooper, Lee Hee Jin, Lee Jae Hyuk, the Rev. Lee Suk In, Aino Rinhaug, Kim Jung Rin, Kim Hae Young, and my ‘human rights sisters’ – Chang Young Ah, Paik Mi Soon, Paik In Ae, Kim Hwa Sook and Kang Min Suh – for their warm friendships, all in different shapes. My fi nal appreciation and deepest love goes to my better half, Dr Euan Graham, and our extended family, for their support, understanding and patience.
October 2010 Oxford, UK 

Foreword

There is no study anything like this as far as I am aware, and this book is thus a real contribution to knowledge. It is well written, with little use of jargon, which makes it readily accessible. The author has achieved what she set out to do, which is to show that, while the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK – North Korea) has its own characteristic approach to human rights, it is not outside the broad fi eld of international human rights.
 The DPRK is frequently in the news but remains relatively little known to the rest of the world. In general, it appears not to be felt necessary to have visited to study the country in order to pronounce on it. There are few attempts to understand how and why the DPRK behaves as it does, or to delve deeper into what lies behind the often opaque statements that issue from its media. Most academic work concentrates on security and especially the issue of nuclear weapons. Outside the academic world, North Korea is usually seen as a very hostile ‘other’, and is described in cliché-ridden terms designed to strike a chill in the hearts of the ordinary reader, again with no attempt at understanding.
 In recent years, the issue of human rights in the DPRK has attracted international attention after being long ignored, except in the Republic of Korea (ROK – South Korea), the North’s alter ego. In the South, accounts of human rights abuses in the North often derived from the small number of defectors from the regime, largely served propaganda purposes or as a useful diversion of attention away from its own record in the fi eld. With a general worldwide increase in interest in human rights, and with most countries now having established diplomatic relations with the DPRK, states such as Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands and organisations such as the European Union began to raise the issue of human rights directly with the DPRK. The United States was also more active on this front, although with a clear political agenda alongside its human rights concerns. For a time, the DPRK seemed to be willing to meet at least some of the United Nations’ reporting requirements on human rights. Little came of these developments, especially as the DPRK increasingly regarded outside interest as a means of bringing pressure on it over other matters, including its nuclear programme. At the same time, the DPRK responded to attacks on its human rights’ record during this period by insisting that it had its own approach to such issues, which was as valid as those of the West. This approach was not just concerned with classic Western human rights such as freedom of assembly or of the press, but involved a much broader spectrum including the right to work and to be fed and housed. Little international attention was paid to such collectivist claims, which were seen as similar to those put forward by other Marxist states in the past. Since 2002, these discussions on human rights issues have fallen by the way, a victim of the nuclear crisis that began in October of that year and which has continued ever since.
 This book breaks new ground. Avoiding the polemical or propaganda approach that has hitherto passed for scholarly research in this fi eld, Dr Song has gone back to the origins of DPRK thinking on such issues. After examining the development of international concepts of human rights, the bulk of the work is made up of a study of the various strands of thinking that Dr Song believes have gone in to the DPRK approach to human rights. These include Confucianism and sirhak (late eighteenth-century ‘western’ learning derived to some extent from Chinese thinking), and the practices and beliefs of the followers of Tonghak (‘eastern’ learning – a syncretic nineteenth-century Korean religious and political movement, which survives, as Ch’ondogyo, in both North and South Korea). Both these focused on abolishing social inequality, a stand that has appealed to the DPRK leadership. As she indicates, the current DPRK attitude, especially towards Confucianism, is that it has no part to play in modern North Korean society. Indeed, alleged adherence to Confucian practices or habits has been used as a weapon against opponents by the leadership in the past. However, the reality is different, and many aspects of Confucian thinking, such as respect for hierarchy and the elevated status of the ruler, are clearly present in the DPRK.
 These subjects take up slightly under half of the whole work. I think that there is much new information and analysis, especially in the section on traditional Korea, but the meat of the work lies in the second part, where she examines how the ideas, beliefs, and practices she has outlined in the fi rst part of the book have been used in the DPRK since the division of Korea in 1945. She notes the early tendency to draw on the Soviet experience, but also makes it clear that from an early stage, the leadership modifi ed what they had learned from the Soviet system and began to draw on Korean traditions. This was not always a conscious approach, but it was perhaps inevitable. Kim Il Sung and his fellow guerrilla fi ghters did not spend much time studying Marxist–Leninist legal traditions, despite later claims to the contrary. They had been engaged in a vicious and diffi cult confl ict in Korea and in North East China for much of the 1930s, and while they may have acquired more Marxist theory during their time in the Soviet Union from 1941 onwards, the main tradition that they drew upon was what they knew of Korea. They were also reacting against Japanese colonialism and so tended to see the ‘right’ to be Korean as just as important as individual rights, an attitude that tended to support the collectivist approach. Dr Song shows that the DPRK approach to human rights issues is not merely a response to outside pressure but a real attempt to deal with the problem of balancing the needs of the collective with those of the individual, and the need to preserve the revolutionary gains in the face of hostile elements both outside and inside the country. Of course, abstract concepts often hide personal issues, and she draws out the differences between theory and practice.
 Inevitably in a work that covers such a wide range, there are a few gaps. It would have been helpful to look at what happened in the colonial period in which Kim Il Sung and his colleagues grew up. The Japanese colonial (1905/1910–1945) legal system clearly had an affect on both Koreas. This was not just by negative example. Because pre-colonial Korea did not have a highly developed modern legal system, the Japanese introduced their own recently acquired one, mainly based on German law – which links back to Marx. This apparently still survives in some areas of ROK law, though disguised as ‘customary law’, and it would have been useful to see to what extent and under what cover it survives in the DPRK. I suspect that some at least of what passes as part of both the Confucian and the Marxist tradition is in fact Japanese law heavily disguised. It would also have been useful to look at South Korea’s legal development, since the two states draw heavily on their common past. And I am inclined to be more sceptical than Dr Song at North Korean myths, which have Kim Il Sung founding the ‘Down with Imperialism Union’ aged 14, or establishing the juche idea in 1955. But these are small points that do not detract from the book’s overall importance in increasing our understanding of North Korea.
Jim Hoare Former Chargé d'affaires to North Korea, British Embassy 

Transliteration
For this book, I apply the McCune-Reischauer system for Korean romanisation. There are some exceptions for already widely used personal names or ideological terminology such as Syngman Rhee, Kim Il Sung, or Juche, instead of Yi Sŭng-man, Kim Il-sǒng, or Juch’e, respectively. Personal or geographical names follow regional rules, in other words, North Korean rules for North Korean names and South Korean for South Korean names. For Chinese romanisation, I follow the pinyin system. 

Abbreviations
CCP Chinese Communist Party
CEDAW International Convention on All Forms of Discrimination against 
Women
CRC Convention on the Rights of the Child
DPRK Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
ICCPR International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
ICESCR International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
KCP Korean Communist Party
KINU Korea Institute for National Unifi cation
KMT Guomindang (National Party)
KPA Korean People’s Army
KWP Korean Workers’ Party
MSD Minsaengdan (People’s Livelihood Corps)
NAM Non-Alignment Movement
NCKIL North China Korean Independence League
NGOs Non-governmental organisations
NHRC National Human Rights Commission
OHCHR Offi ce of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
PRC People’s Republic of China
ROK Republic of Korea
SR Special Rapporteur
UDHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights
UN United Nations
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics



Introduction

The evolution of North Korean rights thinking

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (the DPRK or North Korea) is frequently described in the Western media as a communist country with the worst human rights records in the world. Therefore, it is widely assumed that the North Korean regime has not understood or used any concept of human rights offi cially, and, if it does in any case, the government employs the language of human rights only in a superfi cial manner without any genuine commitment. It is true that the ‘Western’ concepts of human rights are still new in North Korea and frequently met with hostility. However, if one understands the history of the Cold War in the Korean peninsula and the rivalry between the South and the North for political legitimacy, it becomes evident that, since 1945, the DPRK has been actively using the language of human rights in its public documents and trying to impose its own perceptions of human rights on domestic and international policies.
 Most DPRK ideas on human rights are not shared by Western liberals. Yet, this does not mean that the rights thinking of North Korea is completely at odds with the overall evolution of international human rights. Western society has constituted liberal ideas of human rights against absolute monarchism or authoritarian governments, having experienced mercantilism, republicanism, industrial revolution, labour movements, and women’s rights campaigns over the past several centuries. At the same time, Western classic conservatives such as Burke, Bentham, or Marx, as well as contemporary theorists like Ignatieff or Shapiro, have allowed space for contemporary critical theories and communitarianism against natural law or individual human rights, and focused on the socioeconomic conditions of people and citizens’ duties in return for governmental protection. The arguments of these critics of Western liberalism are analogous to the rights thinking of the DPRK.
 These collective, socio-economic, duty-based approaches to human rights have existed in North Korea for a long time, long before the introduction of Marxism. This book, therefore, shows the conceptual development of human rights in North Korea from historical, political, and cultural perspectives. In so doing, historical negligence and cultural insensitivity, which are the biggest factors blocking proper understanding about norm-violating countries, can be resolved. The book examines the evolution of North Korean rights thinking and analyses what has contributed to