International engagement with North Korea: disability, human rights and humanitarian aid

Abstract

This article examines disability rights in North Korea as an area of shared interest between humanitarian workers (who operate inside, with the consent of North Korean authorities) and human rights actors (who work outside, in defiance of the regime). Disability issues represent a notable deviation from the usual separation evident between these actors when it comes to their work on North Korea, insofar as the issue is one that both groups agree represents a critical area for engagement. Drawing from a small but deep pool of expert interviews, this article argues that international practitioners across these approaches recognise evidence of improvements in the area of disabilities inside North Korea and perceive potential for further meaningful change in a country that can be difficult to understand and challenging to achieve progress within. It further argues that the human rights model of disability provides a conceptual framing rooted in the disability studies literature, which allows for a clearer articulation of the shared meanings embedded in the different approaches to disability in North Korea.

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Keywords:

• Human rights
• humanitarian aid
• North Korea
• DPRK
• disability
• authoritarianism

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Jasmine Barrett for providing invaluable research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethics

This project received ethics approval from Deakin University’s Human Research Ethics Committee with project ID HAE-19-234.

Notes

1 The situation of ongoing hostilities that pervade North Korea’s interactions with the international community requires actors to seek alternative pathways for collaboration with North Korea. This is not limited to human rights and/or humanitarian framings – for example, some success can be observed in environmental forestry cooperation projects (Song and Hastings 2020).

2 For a full discussion of the activities undertaken by human rights groups since the late 1990s, see Yeo and Chubb (2018).

3 Broadly, interviewees whose focus was activities in the country to improve the well-being of North Koreans were understood as humanitarian actors. Actors whose work focused on advocacy work outside the country were categorised as human rights actors.

4 See for example the 2019 report from the Seoul Office of the UN Human Rights Commission, The Price is Rights (United Nations 2019), which examines the failures of the North Korean state to provide an adequate living standard for its population, and specifically focuses on the right to food. See also He, Hundt, and Pan’s edited collection which examines other factors driving a shift in how to think about human rights in North Korea (He et al. 2021).

5 For a summary of NGO withdrawals, see Zadeh-Cummings (2018, 253–254). COVID-19 has presented a significant challenge to humanitarian engagement due to North Korea’s border closure. At the time of writing, no international UN or NGO aid staff have been in the country since March 2021 (O’Carroll 2021), even following the DPRK’s May 2022 COVID-19 outbreak. However, other signs (eg an August 2022 UNICEF shipment of children’s vaccines entering North Korea) suggest that humanitarian work will eventually resume.

6 For an account of North Korea’s response, see Fahy (2018), and for an analysis of the lack of participation at the UN level, see Goedde (2010, 2018).

7 The interviewee is here referring to the practice of using satellite imagery to gain new insights into North Korea. For a discussion of recent application of this technology to human rights research, see Son and Bell (2019). See Shim (2013, 91–117) for a critical analysis of this research technique.

8 See Article 56, which guarantees a ‘universal free medical service’ (available at: https://www.ncnk.org/resources/publications/dprk-constitution-2019.pdf/file_view)

9 These limitations speak directly to a common criticism of this model – that it fails to account for the subcultures in which people with disabilities live. See E. Kim (2011).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Korea Foundation’s Field Research Fellowship Grant No. 1023000-002424 and Deakin University’s POLIS Journal Article Fund.

Notes on contributors

Danielle Chubb

Danielle Chubb is Associate Professor in International Relations in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University and a founding member of the POLIS group in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University. Her research interests include the interplay of human rights, peace and security norms on the Korean peninsula, the role that transnational activists play in shaping normative and policy agendas and creating change, and Australian foreign policy and public opinion.

Nazanin Zadeh-Cummings

Nazanin Zadeh-Cummings is Associate Director of Research at the Centre for Humanitarian Leadership, a Deakin University/Save the Children Australia partnership, and Senior Lecturer in Humanitarian Studies in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University. Her research interests include international humanitarian engagement with the DPRK, and the role of training and education in the humanitarian sector.