Human Rights Violations in North Korea

Human Rights Violations in North Korea

Paola Paguaga

University of Florida, English Language Institute

Abstract

Most people do not know much about North Korea, but its history has been impacting not only the life of North Koreans but also the world. The access to information about North Korea is limited and sometimes people and the institutions are not sure about the accuracy of it. The issue of concern for the international community is the human rights violations. UN and US have tried to stop those crimes against the humanity; however the Great Leader and his ancestors formed a country of slaves who follow their orders and continue violating the rights of millions of people. Since the Korean Party took power, people have been victims of starvation, rape, restrictions on freedom expression, right to privacy, arrests, and detentions; some of them are even killed by the authorities and it is well known that the government does executions in public places to make the people fear the punishments that they will receive if they disobey their rules. The UN and US have been sanctioning North Korea, but those sanctions have just a short-term effect and are for solving the problems around army, nuclear industry and security.

Human Rights Violations in North Korea

The international community has many tasks; one of them is to prevent violations that put the life of the people around the world at risk. But how can they help the people when a country closes its borders and lives in isolation? This situation makes the task even harder to do. Korea was a unified country before the Second World War (WWII), however after this event that changed the world, the country was divided in two sides, those sides followed different ideologies. South Korea followed a democratic idea, receiving US influenced but North Korea chose a communist idea, obeying Russia ideologies. The man who took power when Korea was divided formed a political party that changed the whole country. The dynasty Kim has been leading and controlling the country since then. At the beginning, North Koreans believed in them, but then the oppression increased and every year they had fewer opportunities to express.

Millions of people have died in North Korea due to the poor life conditions. Starvation and murder are the first causes of this. The UN and US have shown their worry about the people who still live there and they are trying to put an end to the nuclear industry. Because of the conditions of human rights in North Korea are the worst and the violations are increasing year by year, the US and UN should act by force and try to protect the lives of innocents in order to improve poor human rights conditions and maintain the world peace.

Background

The Great Leaders

After the end of the WWII, the world was divided into two groups: Soviet and US. The Korean territory was part of the countries subject under the rule of Japan and the “new rule” was to divide all the countries between the winning group. However, the ideologies of these two countries weren’t the same and both wanted to have the power of the countries in the group of “the axis alliance” in this new world order. One of the consequences of this situation was the occupation of Korea’s territory in two parts: The Soviets occupied the northern and The US occupied the southern. By 1945, Kim Il-Sung returned to the northern area, a man trained with the Soviet army and fought against the Japanese. He and the emerging North Korean government subsequently established the Korean Workers’ Party that has ruled the country since 1994. According to the TV site Biography (2016) the party has followed the ideologies of the Communist Russia and introduced in the 60´s a policy of “burning loyalty” to the “Great leader”.

Since then, the political party has been developing many of the aspects and policies learned from Russia. Moreover, the control of the army, the defense industry and the electoral system were taken over by the government as a control measure. After the death of the head of the party, Kim Il-Sung, leadership passed to his son and designated successor, Kim Jong Il, who ruled the county until 2011. Since his earlier years, Kim Jong Il started to make new ways to control the society and the citizens. In his years of leadership, the government took full responsibility of the media and has influenced all artists. History, political ideology and movie-making have been altered to benefit the government. Movies and books are censored to extol the Great Leader in order to convince the citizens to adopt the ideologies of the political party (biography, 2014). In addition, Kim Jong Il was the one who took total control of the country and deleted the office of president; this helped him to gain the title of General Secretary of the Workers’ Party and Chairman of the National Defense Commission achieving the highest office of the state (Korean Friendship Association, 2011).