Separative Engagement

Separative Engagement

“The fact that the [North Korean leadership]...has for decades pursued policies involving crimes that shock the conscience of humanity raises questions about the inadequacy of the response of the international community” — United Nations Commission of Inquiry on human rights in the DPRK, 2014

Summary

First proposed by Jang Jin-sung at EAHRNK’s 2015 closed-door conference, “Improving Human Rights in North Korea”, Separative Engagement offers a new, principled, and fact-based approach to engaging the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea).

In its approach, the objective of separative engagement is very clear: For all engagement to be guided on the principle of North Korean people being given space to separate themselves, both psychologically and physically, from the North Korean state.

Separative engagement does not offer quick solutions to the North Korean human crisis. Rather, its framework and principles — which are based upon first-hand knowledge of how the DPRK state functions domestically and how it interacts with the international community — allows states to commit to a policy framework that is premised on respecting and restoring the human rights of the North Korean people.

This principle is fundamental to those who advocate for separative engagement. If engagement is to contribute to ending the unparalleled abuses of the North Korean people, the people must be conceptually and tangibly separated from the ideological and physical institutions that strengthen the regime’s control.

It is time for this principle to inform policy.

Download the full policy framework below.