Engagement, the Regime and the International Community

In spite of the vast body of documentation of grave and systematic human rights abuses in North Korea, there have been constant attempts by the international community to engage with the regime. From the mid-90s when a steady flow of information started emanating from North Korea about the serious violations of human rights and potential crimes against humanity occurring, the international response has been one of engagement. Why have we attempted to engage with the regime when in other significant cases we have isolated?

For almost half a century, the international community showed its repulsion at apartheid-era South Africa by boycotting sporting events, boycotting South African-made goods, and by implementing wide ranging trade sanctions. Violations of human rights in South Africa were widespread at the time, but the scale of these is incomparable with the situation in North Korea.

Over the past couple of years, we have seen an explosion of fights for democracy throughout the Middle East. The international community reached out to the people of those countries and helped supply them with some of the means to overthrow their respective dictatorships. Crucially the international community did this largely without actively focusing on engaging these regimes during the recent struggles. It goes without saying that a similar approach is currently entirely unworkable within North Korea. There are several ways of engaging indirectly with the North Korean people, but, aside from cursory spending on grants for radio broadcasting, no serious discussion has taken place on how we can engage with the people rather than the regime as has happened in the Middle East. Our targets in North Korea for engagement have continued to be the regime as seen by the trade and economic sanctions levied against North Korea in the last few years.

With the recent stand-off on the Korean peninsula, the international community responded by targeting the regime with sanctions. Unfortunately, these sanctions do little but hurt civilians because there is not a concerted effort to provide for citizens at the same time as introducing sanctions. As is so often the case, the economic sanctioning of Middle Eastern countries, like those in North Korea, were ineffective and hurt only the public. The only way to truly hurt regimes like this is by providing their citizens with access to information and access to a more comfortable lifestyle.

The U.S., in particular, has been a big supporter of sanctions throughout the Middle East, but they have recently also offered support by giving funding and offering arms to opponents of regimes throughout the region. Rightfully, a similar approach in North Korea has never been suggested by the U.S. and other countries. However, we must attempt some of this kind of approach. The direction of the international community's policy to North Korea must be to work towards placating the regime to ensure stability, but also to provide the means for citizens in the country to develop understanding of the outside world, as well as provide sustenance for them.

Another point of concern with North Korea is that there has not been the same public uproar at engaging with the authorities and the general human rights situation as we have seen previously in South Africa and the Middle East. The public’s response has largely been muted due to the lack of publication of the human rights situation in North Korea – a situation that is, with the possible exception of Eritrea, the worst in the world. For real engagement with North Korean citizens to take place, the public must be educated by their respective governments and media on human rights in North Korea. In instances where that is not possible, the international community must work together to awaken consciousness of human rights abuses in North Korea within that country. This is particularly true of China which has an important role in the region. We keep reading about Syrian and Egyptian citizens, but North Korea has been strangely absent from these talks because there is not a similar approach to relations with the regime and North Korean citizens.

The policy of engagement stems largely from the belief that the North Korean regime can be coaxed out of using or developing nuclear weapons. This policy has continued to fail and, even worse, has continued to move the diplomatic conversation away from the violations of human rights. This must be addressed as soon as possible. The shift towards engagement with citizens in North Korea with a focus on their human rights must happen forthwith.

This is part two of a three-part series on engagement with North Korea.
This article was written for EAHRNK. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of our organisation.