Chasing Justice: Victim Engagement with Accountability for Human Rights Abuses in North Korea

ABSTRACT

This article considers the question of accountability for human rights abuses alleged to have been committed in North Korea, via a possible future process of transitional justice. It focusses on the efforts of South Korean nongovernmental organisations that have worked for more than two decades to document reported abuses and, more recently, to consider how perpetrators of those abuses may be held accountable. While noting the significance of this work, the article draws on research focussed on the efficacy of transitional justice from the victim perspective, to learn more about how those who may identify as victims of the North Korean regime perceive the possible methods for redress and both individual and collective recovery from abuses. The article engages with some preliminary research done with self-identifying victims of the North Korean regime and assesses some of the weaknesses in current South Korean civil society practice involving North Korean escapees. It highlights challenges to pursuing an alternative approach that places victims at the centre and provides some recommendations for how NGOs might develop and pilot new approaches to planning for and implementing a transitional justice process in North Korea if the opportunity arises.

KEYWORDS:

• North Korea
• South Korea
• victims
• transitional justice
• escapees
• accountability
• human rights
• crimes against humanity
• witnesses

Notes

1. The number of North Korean escapees who have come to South Korea currently stands at 32,150 (Ministry of Unification, 2019). North Korean escapees are also known by other terms in English, including defectors, refugees and migrants.

2. The views expressed in this article are my own and are not intended to represent the views of the Transitional Justice Working Group, where the survey and interviews were conducted.

3. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was mandated to investigate incidents regarding human rights abuses, violence and massacres that occurred from the period of Japanese colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula (1910–1945) to the time of South Korea’s authoritarian regimes, the last of which ended in the late 1980s.

4. The International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) has led efforts to consult with local populations and the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience has published a guide for practitioners (Robins, 2009, p. 320; Tsai & Robins, 2018).

5. All monetary totals refer to US$ unless otherwise specified.

6. Interviews were conducted by the author (non-ethnic-Korean), with the assistance of a female South Korean researcher, in Korean.

7. Survey participants were paid $45 for their participation in completing the questionnaire prior to participating in an interview for a separate project. The in-depth interview participants (2018) were selected to ensure variation in gender, occupation while in North Korea, length of time since escape, and experience of violence while in North Korea. Interviewees came from the pool of questionnaire respondents and received an additional $45 for attending the interview.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the UniKorea Foundation.