Amidst efforts to initiate regime change in
North Korea through strategies to change the country, it has been suggested
that there must be an emphasis on policies regarding human rights violations, believed by some to be “the Achilles heel of Kim Jong Un’s regime.”
By spreading policies pressuring the North
Korean regime to improve human rights, it is possible to not only spawn
incremental change in the government’s attitude towards human rights, but also
to awaken the population to the value of human rights, and stir positive change
within the country.
Because of this, North Korean experts and
defectors agree that it is key to break the spell of the ideology of an
‘absolute supreme leader’, which allows for the ongoing justification of the
suppression of human rights by the third dictator from the Kim family. As
one Daily NK defector-reporter put it, “Because of the
brainwashing that the North Korean government has done to the people–specifically, ‘The Supreme Leader is the brain, and the people are the hands and feet
that follow the brain’s orders’– it is easy for the people to not consider the
egregious human rights violations of the regime to be a problem.”
North Korean defectors have provided
testimony that the reign of absolutism is only made possible through the
suppression of information from the outside world. In reality, those who defect
after becoming conscious of the human rights problem in North Korea are
primarily: ▲ people who first encountered the ideas of freedom and human rights
by listening to radio broadcasts directed towards North Korea ▲ people who had
contact with foreign brokers through trade transactions, and ▲ people who viewed
South Korean dramas and movies. The moment these people came into contact with
the outside world, they realized that the ideology buttressing this absolute dictatorship was fiction.
Therefore experts have pointed out that in
order to instill a recognition of human rights in the North Korean people and
break the spell of the Supreme Leader, we must concentrate our efforts on
distributing outside information through radio and TV broadcasts aimed at the
country, flyers, USB drives, and so on.
Kim Young Hwan, a researcher at the Network
for North Korean Democracy (NKnet), told Daily NK on February 29, “Although the
regime is able to justify and excuse its missile and nuclear development in its
own way, it is fragile because it has no comeback when accused of human rights
violations. All it is able to do is evade the issue. We could call the issue of
North Korean human rights Kim Jong Un’s Achilles heel.”
Mr. Kim also explained that as the North
Korean population is generally unaware of the privileges that the full-scale
implementation of human rights implies, it is difficult for them to clearly
evaluate or understand how different their lives could be in this regard. “We
must work ceaselessly to communicate outside information to North Korea
regarding the value of human rights, whether through radio broadcasts, flyers,
USBs, or other methods,” he emphasized.
“While people say that despite ten years of South Korean radio broadcasts targeting North Korea there hasn’t been any
effect, this is because the majority of these broadcasts have only been able to be implemented
by private organizations with limited budgets.”
If one goes overseas, he noted, there is a
great deal of interest in the issue of North Korean human rights, but in South
Korea it took over 11 years to pass a North Korean Human Rights Act–described by Mr. Kim as “the least
possible action that could be taken.”
“We should take every action possible with the hopes that
North Koreans can enjoy one fifth or at least one tenth of the human rights
that we have,” he pointed out.
A former high-ranking North Korean
defector, who decided to flee the country after hearing radio broadcasts, say
that just clearly explaining to the North Korean people that North Korea is a
society that has lived under three generations of hereditary dictatorship would
be enough to awaken their consciousness in an instant. Those in the State
Security Department, the Ministry of Public Security, and others who spy on the
citizenry are, in the end, nothing more than ordinary citizens with families
themselves. They are living silently in this society so that they can survive,
but would likely want freedom as well.
The North Korean people regard the widespread famine of the mid-1990s as a temporary time of hardship resulting from the
overlap of Kim Il Sung’s death and abnormal weather patterns. However, if North
Korea experiences another hard time like that one, the people will know that it
is because of the autocratic system. “We must remember that the dictator is
only one person, but there are several tens of millions of citizens who can be
awakened,” he said.
Some have also contended that the power to
change the system and improve the human rights of North Koreans exists, but that it largely hinges on cooperation with the international community acting as a collective catalyst for this change. Policy options for improving human rights through the dictator include
disseminating the experiences of China or Russia, both of which endured
systemic change, or working with the international community to construct a
“Korean Peninsula Helsinki Process”. Either way, constructive North Korean
policies must be created and implemented.
Senior Researcher Son Gi Woong from Korea
Institute for National Unification , expressed his view that as far as
considering not just regime change in North Korea, but reunification,
neighboring countries in the region cannot remain bystanders with sharply
divided opinions, nor can they ignore the Cold War atmosphere of North and
South Korea. “In order to address the issue of human rights in North Korea,
which has its doors to the outside world locked tightly, Northeast Asia must
build a cooperative relationship with the international community,” asserted Mr.
Woong.
Mr. Woong continued, stating that in Europe
(which had Eastern European countries whose socialist systems collapsed), the
Helsinki Process was possible because of the ties formed over a period of 21
years between those European countries. “In order to implement policies that
will bring us closer to the people of North Korea, even as the regime persists,
we must begin by forming a cooperative Northeast Asian community,” he said.
