The evidence is clear – mass killing is underway in North Korea, argues Robert Park. The international community can no longer stand idly by.
Has North Korea violated the international norm known as the Responsibility to Protect to the point that intervention is warranted? I would argue the answer is an unequivocal “yes.”
Certainly, North Korea is believed to have committed acts that many would consider genocide, including executions and state-sanctioned murders, the systematic use of torture, state-induced mass starvation in political prison camps (and arguably elsewhere), forcible abortions and infanticide, and the forcible transfer and enslavement of children.
In 2007, Christian Solidarity Worldwide published a report based on seven years of research, and written by international lawyers, which concluded that there are indications of genocide taking place against religious groups in North Korea, specifically against Christians. Indeed, Christian watchdogs such as Open Doors and Release International rate North Korea as the world’s most egregious violator of religious rights. But North Korea’s policy towards its indigenous religious population extends far beyond “persecution” – religious believers and their families are being exterminated.
Before the rise of the Kim Il-sung, an estimated 25 percent to 30 percent of Pyongyang’s population was Christian. Today, all traces of this once-flourishing religious community and culture have been obliterated. Recognizing the inherent threat posed by faith to totalitarian rule and the Kim cult of personality, the North Korean regime has since its inception committed genocide against religious believers and their families.
There are many indications of the specific intent to destroy religious groups in North Korea. Harsh punishment is meted out to repatriated North Korean refugees who have had contact with missionaries and churches in China. Refugees, after being forcibly returned, are tortured and interrogated to discern whether they had any contact with religious groups. Those that confess to, or are suspected of, having met with missionaries in China or converting to Christianity are either killed or banished to concentration camps for life along with their entire families, including children, to three generations. Open Doors estimates between 50,000 and 70,000 Christians are imprisoned in North Korea’s concentration camps today.
These Christian human rights organizations believe that North Korean Christians who haven’t been publicly executed or killed through beatings or starvation in the prison camps have even in some instances been used as guinea pigs in chemical and biological weapon experiments – an allegation which is by no means new.
North Korean refugees, including former prison camp guards who played a role in these atrocities, have been speaking out in an attempt to get the international community to pay attention for over a decade, but to no avail. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have been forced to flee to China in order to survive famine and oppression. The majority of these refugees are women, many of whom have become victims of sex-trafficking or have been sold into forced marriages.
North Korea also continues to systematically brutalize women and children through infanticide and forced abortions. The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has acknowledged officially North Korea’s “continued violation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of women, in particular the trafficking of women for prostitution or forced marriage, ethnically motivated forced abortions, including by labor inducing injection or natural delivery, as well as infanticide of children of repatriated mothers, including in police detention centers and labor training camps.”
Multiple reports over the last ten years have indicated that infanticide and forced abortions on ethnic grounds is taking place systematically in North Korea’s prisons. This practice corresponds with the country’s obsession with racial purity, and the intent to destroy racially “mixed” babies on ethnic grounds is clear and incontestable.
Photo Credit: U.S. Navy
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friend in san francisco
Hi Robert, I am so very happy to see you are being used to spread the truth of what is taking place in North Korea. To read of the atrocities is terrible and heartbreaking. May it prompt the global community to speak out so that the waves of change begin to roll.
I haven’t heard from you in some time, but I am always your sister here in SF.
Godspeed and love you and the North Korean people!!
Suijen
What Mr. Park fails to include is a solution as to how the International Community should act. Sanctions? Military intervention? Engagement?
Bluedog
The last time western forces intervened in Korea, the Chinese promptly sent millions of troops, and the Soviets armed them.
With both above mentioned Nations wielding veto rights at the security council (see most recently the shameless veto by both nations regards Syria, a resolution put together and put forward by the Arab League),intervention apart from providing aid is wishful thinking.
North Korean people have only one choice really, but that choice will no doubt come with a heavy price. How many lives must be lost before the world collectively decides to end a violent, repressive dictatorship? Obviously not 6000 Syrians.
Khurram Mansoor
Whats so different here thats not happening in Palestine at the hand of the Israel and we the whole international community is watching it and keeping numb. Where as we are just listening stories from some one from some where.
All the evidence of systematic genocide, murder, starvation, denial to proper health care and sanitation, including forecful eviction is evident in Palestinian at the hands of consecutive Israeli regimes. Still we are unable to take any action.
ashleyhk
However cruel and barbaric the NK regime , it is not “genocidal”. They are not attempting to destroy the Korean race.
Genocide is used as a term of abuse far too frequently and is losing its meaning.
ben
@ashleyhk
From Wikipedia (which complies with the UN definition):
‘Genocide is defined as “the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group”‘
Note that it doesn’t have to be an ethnic group (“race”), it can be a religious group.
Anna D
It is considered genocide, as they are trying to exterminate up to three generations of family members if even suspected of saying the name of God. The Genocide Watch has proof that genocide has been committed and mass killing is still underway in North Korea.
It doesn’t matter what nationality or religious group they belong to, no one should ever be treated in the manner that these innocent people are treated. I am an American and I am not offended at all with anyone’s nationality. Bigotry should have gone out when slavery was abolished.
Politics are not even a matter of concern with this issue, it is concerning human lives. People are brutally being murdered for no reason, up to three generations.
TMLutas
The systematic killing of mixed Korean/half Chinese babies would be an ethnic group based genocide. I’ve no evidence one way or the other of what is happening there but to dismiss the genocide charge because the government is not systematically killing the majority ethnicity is just not right.
Robert
Park is a Korean name. This guy, if Korean is very offensive to the American people.
Alex David
You think the president here in the USA cares one whit about your country?
Koreans here in the USA are mostly Republican Conservatives. Sorry Charlie, you are on the wrong side. If you counted for votes here, he would help, but your lives don’t mean squat if they cannot translate into votes…..Good Luck!