CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY?

Abstract

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Commission of Inquiry, established in 2013 to investigate human rights violations in North Korea, identified food rights violations, among other abuses, as potentially constituting crimes against humanity. A contradiction arises in that UNHRC claims of food rights violations in the DPRK are not congruent with the statistical indicators emanating from the UN humanitarian and development agencies that have worked in the DPRK since the mid 1990s and that have engaged in and published substantial research on food, nutrition, and health. The author of this article contends that North Korea has an oppressive government and argues that the lack of transparency makes the many things that are unknown about North Korea, especially its opaque penal system, of legitimate ethical and political concern. Reasonably good data on issues pertaining to social and economic rights do exist, however, as this article shows. The inconsistency between the received wisdom on food and nutrition is of concern because the potential consequences of a state being judged as committing crimes against humanity include military intervention and consequent threats to life for millions. This article reconsiders how and why the received wisdom becomes unchallenged and unchallengeable in scholarly, policy, and media discourse. Inconsistency and misrepresentation is not primarily due to conscious bias but much more because of the unconscious adoption of a securitized perspective through which knowledge about North Korea is filtered. The article argues for reframing North Korean human rights issues on the basis that North Korean society is neither unique nor unknowable.

Acknowledgments: This article draws on material in Hazel Smith, “Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea?” Changbi Quarterly 161: 490-515 (in Korean).

Notes

¹Smith 2000, 2005.

²Part 1: Critical Asian Studies 45 (4): December 2013; part 2: Critical Asian Studies 46 (1): March 2014.

³For a useful introduction see Ladyman 2002 and the excellent Malcolm Williams (2000).

⁴Mills 1959.

⁵Kuhn 1962.

⁶Song and Hong 2014.

⁷Moon 2014.

⁸Hong 2013.

⁹Ibid., 565.

¹⁰Kwon and Chung 2012.

¹¹Bae and Moon 2014.

¹²UNICEF/WHO 2012, 90-91.

¹³Shin and Choi 2013.

¹⁴See, for example, UNICEF 1999; CBS/UNICEF 2010; IFAD 2008. See also the almost twice yearly FAO/WFP food and crop assessment mission reports since 1995, for example, FAO/WFP 2012. The WFP webpage on the DPRK hosts a number of extensive reports, including the 2012 national nutrition survey, which the WFP records as “the result of a joint collaboration between DPRK Government, involving the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), the Child Nutrition Institute, the Ministry of Public Health and the National Coordination Committee as well as WHO, WFP and UNICEF.” Available at http://www.wfp.org/node/3498/4564/402630# (accessed 26 July 2013).

¹⁵See reliefweb.int/country/prk (accessed 5 November 2013).

¹⁶Kim (Chang Su) 2009.

¹⁷Human Rights Council 2013.

¹⁸Ibid., 13-16.

¹⁹Ibid., 15.

²⁰This is a commonplace accusation from human rights organizations as well as the global media. See Amnesty International 2010; Sharwood 2013; Hawkins 2013.

²¹Human Rights Council 2013, 13.

²²Ibid., 13-16.

²³Ibid., 14.

²⁴Ibid., 15.

²⁵The 2013 “Report of the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea” (ibid.) has an impressive 147 footnotes. All of these are to UN General Assembly resolutions and reports and UN Human Rights Council resolutions and reports. None refer to the scholarship on the DPRK or to the thousands of reports by UN agencies such as WHO, UNICEF, WFP, UNIFEM, or UNDP, all ofwhich have been working in the DPRK for over two decades.

²⁶Human Rights Council 2013, 3, 5. The report uses the same wording as reports by the previous Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Vitit Muntarbhorn. See United Nations General Assembly 2009, 19.

²⁷Smith 2002; Smith 2005.

²⁸WFP/FAO/UNICEF 2011, 27.

²⁹Central Bureau of Statistics 2012, quotes on, respectively, 2 and 44. Emphasis added.

³⁰Central Bureau of Statistics 2005, 43; Central Bureau of Statistics, 2012.

³¹Central Bureau of Statistics 2012.

³²WFP/FAO/UNICEF 2011, 10.

³³Central Bureau of Statistics 2012. See also UNICEF 2013, 104-7. The UNICEF report is based on data generally as of August 2012. Ibid., 94.

³⁴Central Bureau of Statistics 2012. See also UNICEF 2013, 104-7.

³⁵Central Bureau of Statistics 2012. See also UNICEF 2013, 104-7.

³⁶UNICEF 2013,104-7. UNICEF records a figure of 32 percent for stunting in North Korea in its 2013 annual report on the state of the world's children compared to the National Nutrition

Survey figure of 28 percent. This is explained because the UNICEF database only includes information available prior to August 2012. The 2012 nutrition survey took place in October 2012. Either figure reinforces the point made in the text. Central Bureau of Statistics 2012, 4. For the 32 percent figure, see UNICEF 2013, 104.

³⁷UNICEF 2013, 104-7. Central Bureau of Statistics 2012, 4. For the 32 percent figure, see UNICEF 2013, 104.

³⁸UNICEF 2013.

³⁹Ibid., 128-31.

⁴⁰Ibid., 129.

⁴¹Ibid., 128.

⁴²Ibid., 128-31.

⁴³Kagan, Oh, and Weissbrodt 1988.

⁴⁴Ibid.

⁴⁵A representative claim is that Medécins Sans Frontières (MSF) and “other NGOs … found evidence that provision of aid within these institutions was systematically conditioned on the political status of the parents.” See Haggard and Noland 2007,118. The MSF reports in fact do not make this claim. SeePecchio 1998; Action contre la Faim (ACF) 1999. BothACF and MSF argued that there were problems in monitoring and evaluation of children's health and nutritional status and both considered they were not receiving satisfactory responses from the government. These factors caused ill will and mistrust, but they did not amount to evidential support for political discrimination.

⁴⁶For details on the occupation-based food rationing system prior to the breakdown of the system in the 1990s see Nathanail 1996.

⁴⁷Human Rights Watch 2012.

⁴⁸Tower 1987.

⁴⁹Senate (U.S.) Select Committee on Intelligence 2008.

⁵⁰Central Bureau of Statistics 2009.

⁵¹Ibid.

⁵²Kim (Haeyoung) 2014, 91.

⁵³Bae and Moon 2014.