Kim Jong Who?

Submitted by EAHRNK on Sat, 06/01/2013 - 19:57

On January 29 2002, in his State of the Union Address, George W. Bush first warned of an ‘Axis of Evil’ which threatened the very existence of world peace. This group of states were not only facilitating terrorism across the globe but also seeking weapons of mass destruction. They were common enemies of America in the ‘War on Terror’. Included within this select group were Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Bush described North Korea as ‘a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens’. More than a decade later, North Korea is still arming itself with weapons of mass destruction, and its citizens are still starving. However, whilst the world regularly condemns North Korea’s nuclear programme, the continued starvation and repression of the North Korean people is ignored.

In fact, aside from the occasional condemnation of North Korea’s nuclear programme, Western media seems fixated on the eccentricity of the North Korean leadership, and regularly pokes fun at this ‘Worker’s Paradise’, making discussion on the country largely a tabloid issue. Here is a collection of just some of the stories recently deemed newsworthy:

  • The North Korean government has recently downsized the number of people it follows on twitter to three, bizarrely including a 25 year old American.

  • The wife of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is rumoured to have had a baby.

  • Archaeologists in North Korea recently discovered a unicorn lair (although this turned out to be untrue and the result of a mistranslation).

As amusing as these stories may be (particularly the image of Kim Jong-un straddling a unicorn), they are responsible for obscuring what are arguably the worst human rights violations committed by a government against its people since the fall of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

For those who fall out of favour with the regime, a political prison camp awaits. It is estimated that these camps are home to approximately 200,000 ‘prisoners’ who face a life of  hard labour and little food. The North Korean leadership denies that these camps exist, yet they can be seen on Google Earth. The abuses which take place inside these camps is almost incomprehensible and could be avoided with the right pressure applied.

It is time for a new discussion on North Korea, where these human rights abuses are brought to the forefront. The current approach of reprimanding North Korea for its nuclear ambitions whilst poking fun at the regime is harming the North Korean people. It is time for the world to address the elephant in the room: amusement towards the regime is causing the media and the world to ignore the dire human rights situation.

However, in recent months there have been signs that the media is finally prepared to speak out against human rights abuses in North Korea. For example, on the American television programme 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper recently interviewed Shin Dong-hyuk to discuss his life in a political prison camp. In December 2012, The Guardian ran a series of stories focusing on the testimonies of North Korean defectors. Therefore, it seems that a new discussion on North Korea has already begun in the media. It is time that we all join in.

What can be done to address and improve the media’s reporting on North Korea? One option is to give the North Korean refugees a platform to discuss their experiences. It is this approach that the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea will take over the next few months. We will be extensively interviewing refugees to give a human face to the suffering of the North Korean people, and to work towards replacing reporting on the regime with reporting on those who matter: the North Korean general public.

This article is based on an article written by an EAHRNK member, Elliot Emery, for the University of Birmingham’s Amnesty International blog. It is the first in a series of articles on why the human rights situation in North Korea is so critical an issue. The next article will focus on the tragedy of refoulement of North Korean citizens.

The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of our organisation.

Links:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/10/kim-jong-il-one-year