In recent months, tensions have once again flared between Pyongyang and Seoul, calling into question the state of inter-Korean and U.S.-Korea relations. As the future of denuclearization talks with North Korea remains uncertain and the United States looks towards the November 2020 presidential election, APARC gathered experts on Korea and international security to provide analysis of where we stand with the DPRK and what considerations future Korea policies should involve.
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Gi-Wook Shin, APARC’s director and the director of the Korea Program, moderates the APARC-led discussion hosted by the Freeman Spogli Institute. Robert Carlin, a longtime analyst of North Korea and frequent visitor to the DPRK, joins the panel from the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). Leading North Korea and international affairs expert Victor Cha provides insight into the public statements and apparent policy goals of North Korea's leadership, while fellow Georgetown scholar and imminent APARC center fellow Oriana Mastro offers commentary on the ongoing need for military stability in the area. Siegfried Hecker, an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security, adds his expertise in nuclear nonproliferation and arms control to the discussion.
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Koret Conference Convenes Virtually to Discuss Human Rights Crisis in North Korea
Amid escalating inter-Korean tension and increasing economic and social strain on North Koreans in the era of COVID-19, the importance of keeping international attention on the DRPK’s human rights violations is more urgent than ever.
Led by APARC, a panel of scholars hosted by the Freeman Spogli Institute weighs in on the implications of recent events on the Korean peninsula and the ongoing uncertainties in charting a future course with the DPRK.
**See our dedicated book page for more information about the book, including praise, reviews, and author commentary.**
In 2010, while working on a PhD in South Korea, Andray Abrahamian visited the other Korea, a country he had studied for years but never seen. He returned determined to find a way to work closely with North Koreans. Ten years and more than thirty visits later, Being in North Korea tells the story of his experiences helping set up and run Choson Exchange, a non-profit that teaches North Koreans about entrepreneurship and economic policy.
Abrahamian was provided a unique vantage into life in North Korea that belies stereotypes rampant in the media, revealing instead North Koreans as individuals ranging from true believers in the system to cynics wishing the Stalinist experiment would just end; from introverts to bubbly chatterboxes, optimists to pessimists. He sees a North Korea that is changing, invalidating some assumptions held in the West, but perhaps reinforcing others.
Amid his stories of coping with the North Korean system, of the foreigners who frequent Pyongyang, and of everyday relationships, Abrahamian explores the challenges of teaching the inherently political subject of economics in a system where everyone must self-regulate their own minds; he looks at the role of women in the North Korean economy, and their exclusion from leadership; and he discusses how information is restricted, propaganda is distributed and internalized, and even how Pyongyang’s nominally illicit property market functions. Along with these stories, he interweaves the historical events that have led to today’s North Korea.
Drawing on the breadth of the author’s in-country experience, Being in North Korea combines the intellectual rigor of a scholar with a writing style that will appeal to a general audience. Through the personal elements of a memoir that provide insights into North Korean society, readers will come away with a more realistic picture of the country and its people, and a better idea of what the future may hold for the nation.
This book is part of APARC's in-house series, distributed by Stanford University Press. Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.
About the Author
Andray Abrahamian is a non-resident fellow at the Korea Economic Institute, a visiting scholar at George Mason University Korea, and a senior adjunct fellow at Pacific Forum. During the 2018-19 academic year, he was the Koret Fellow in Korean Studies at Stanford University’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.
Andray was heavily involved in Choson Exchange, a nonprofit organization that trains North Koreans in economic policy and entrepreneurship, where he previously served as executive director and research director. That work, along with sporting exchanges and a TB project, has taken him to the DPRK over 30 times. He has also lived in Myanmar, where he taught at Yangon University and consulted for a risk management company. His research comparing the two countries resulted in the publication of North Korea and Myanmar: Divergent Paths (McFarland, 2018). His expert commentary on Korea and Myanmar has appeared in numerous outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and Reuters.
Andray holds a PhD in international relations from the University of Ulsan, South Korea, and an MA from the University of Sussex, where he studied media discourse on North Korea and the U.S.-ROK alliance. He speaks Korean, sometimes with a Pyongyang accent.
Few nations have maintained the level of isolation and control the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has orchestrated for decades. The advent of COVID-19 has seen even more stringent restrictions put in place along the DPRK’s borders and a dire increase in economic and social strain on North Koreans living throughout the peninsula.
Tomás Ojea Quintana, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the DPRK, reports in a June 9, 2020 statement that the closure of the border between the DPRK and China has “exacerbated the food crisis, devastating cross-border trade and sapping income from merchants.” In Seoul, the South Korean Unification Ministry roused ire when it announced plans to prosecute groups of North Korean defectors for distributing anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border. The action followed the DPRK’s abrupt shutoff of communication with South Korea over the leaflets and threats of unrest along the border.
This dramatic escalation of tensions highlights the need for international attention to the ongoing humanitarian violations in the DPRK and for proactive, collective action to address the problem. This is the focus of the 2020 Koret Conference, which opens today, June 16. Each year, APARC’s Korea Program hosts the conference in partnership with the Koret Foundation. Held virtually this year due to COVID-19, the conference sessions aim to reestablish the human rights crisis in North Korea as an international priority.
Speaking to the importance of this topic in his welcome remarks, APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin states that, “human rights in North Korea have become a matter rivaling the nuclear issue in seriousness.” Michael Kirby, former chair of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights, echoes this view and warns that “the continuation of the present blindfolded approach [to human rights violations in North Korea] is perilous.”
The conference brings together international experts to discuss the intersections of multiple issues in addressing the North Korean human rights problem, such as inter-Korean relations, denuclearization, information flows to the DPRK, and international cooperation. Participants will discuss presentations released earlier this year and the conference proceedings will be collected into a forthcoming publication.
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The Role of Human Rights in Policy Toward North Korea
Amid escalating inter-Korean tension and increasing economic and social strain on North Koreans in the era of COVID-19, the importance of keeping international attention on the DRPK’s human rights violations is more urgent than ever.
This twelfth annual Koret Workshop had originally been scheduled to be held on March 13, 2020, but had to be cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic. Now the workshop participants are able to convene virtually to discuss North Korea human rights issues in relation to policy toward North Korea. The conference will cover the following topics:
Day 1: The Role of U.N. in Generating Changes in North Korea
Day 2: Freedom of Information — How Access to Information is Changing North Korea
Day 3: Human Rights and Denuclearization of North Korea — Help or Hinderance?
Despite the coronavirus pandemic, North Korea continues to carry out weapons testing and to declare that not a single COVID-19 patient has emerged in the country. Analysts and medical experts, however, are highly skeptical of Pyongyang’s claims. A coronavirus outbreak would overwhelm the North’s weak healthcare system and would be devastating to its people, who suffer from relatively high levels of malnutrition and have no access to information about the pandemic.
North Korea is one of the worst human rights violators in modern history. In February 2014, the United Nations Human Rights Council published the landmark Report of the Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a comprehensive account of human rights abuses committed by the authoritarian country’s leadership against its people. It was seen as a major milestone in the effort to shine a light on the gravity and scope of the problem and to hold the perpetrators accountable by bringing them before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
Over the past three years, however, the momentum for action on the report’s recommendations has faded and the human rights issue has been largely viewed as less serious a concern than the regional and global security threat posed by the North Korean nuclear program and long-range missiles.
Coinciding with the sixth anniversary of the COI report, it was the goal of the Korea Program’s twelfth annual Koret Workshop to regenerate awareness of the role of human rights in policy toward North Korea by gathering experts at Stanford to discuss the topic and generate concrete recommendations for action. In this post, we share highlights from select presentations prepared for this workshop that was canceled due to the COVID-19 crisis.
As the Trump administration shifted from a “war of words” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to prioritizing summit diplomacy, the focus on the human rights problem receded and many stakeholders, both within and outside the administration, preferred to play it down so as not to jeopardize the negotiation over a denuclearization agreement.
Yet the irony, argues Asian affairs and security expert Victor Cha, is that the denuclearization and human rights agendas are inextricably intertwined. “Human rights is an integral and unavoidable component of a comprehensive North Korea strategy,” he says. Cha, professor of government and holder of the D.S. Song-KF Chair in Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University, joined APARC as the Koret Fellow in Korean Studies for the winter quarter of 2020.
Cha notes that revenues gained from forced labor exports and other human rights abuses help the Kim regime finance its proliferation activities. Furthermore, improvements in the country’s human rights condition would reflect the leadership’s commitment to reform and make a denuclearization commitment by the DPRK more credible. The United States, claims Cha, must take actionable steps to include the human rights issue in bilateral relations with Pyongyang: establish a rights-first approach in future negotiations, resume humanitarian assistance, and fill the position of a Special Envoy for Human Rights as mandated by the Congress.
Watch Professor Cha discuss these issues in our recent virtual Q&A:
Tae-Ung Baik, professor of Law and director of the Center for Korean Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, calls for a step-by-step approach, advancing small, concrete changes that will have a cumulative effect toward better protection of the rights of the people of North Korea. For example, cooperation and consultation on human rights protection should be exerted to promote reform in specific areas such as the North Korean judicial and criminal justice systems.
Ambassador Robert King, who served as a special envoy for North Korean human rights issues at the U.S. Department of State in the Obama administration, also stresses that addressing the human rights problem is essential to making progress toward denuclearization and security goals. King argues that North Korea must accept international norms and standards for denuclearization, but its acceptance of international human rights standards is necessary if it is to win international legitimacy.
Listen to highlights from King’s talk at the Korea Program’s seminar, which he delivered in the fall quarter of 2019 while being affiliated with APARC as the Koret Fellow in Korean Studies:
Freedom of Information
Although the human rights condition in North Korea has not improved, the information landscape in the country has changed significantly over the past quarter-century. Nat Kretchun, deputy director of the Open Technology Fund, describes the transformation as “trending up from an extremely low base toward greater openness and access before, more recently, retrenching.”
In the years following the famine of the mid-1990s, information flowed into the country like never before, exposing North Korean citizens to a range of new content via an array of non-networked technologies, including information from China, South Korean entertainment media, radio broadcasts from NGOs, and outside broadcasts by Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. As they regained some measure of economic stability, however, the North Korean authorities began to reestablish control over information flows. The recent available data demonstrates that access to information is falling off and the era of more socially normalized consumption of outside information is over, says Kretchun. “The government has begun implementing a far more technologically savvy information control strategy than it previously had the capacity to do […in an] effort to move communications and media consumption onto state-controlled networks via state-controlled devices.”
Indeed, Martyn Williams, a veteran watcher of North Korea’s information technology sector, shows that, while the digitization of media was the catalyst that led to the mass spread of foreign content across the country, so too has the same technology been employed to help the government combat it. For example, every Android tablet and smartphone in North Korea logs every page a person visits with the web browser and randomly takes screenshots during his/her use of the device. Users are allowed to see this database of collected screenshots but cannot delete them. “The system is sinister in its simplicity. It reminds users that everything they do on the device can be recorded and later viewed by officials […] it insidiously forces North Koreans to self-censor in fear of a device check that might never happen.”
Furthermore, the security software pre-loaded onto North Korean phones and computers cannot be replaced and the state’s digital certificate system makes mobile devices little more than consumption tools for state propaganda and personal memories. “While digital technology has created new pathways for foreign content, the increased networking of products could work against information freedom and eventually lead to the creation of an even more Orwellian society,” concludes Williams.
Minjung Kim, director of the South Korean NGO Save North Korea, emphasizes that a key to addressing the human rights problem in the country lies in discrediting the regime’s ideology in the minds of the North Korean people. It is, therefore, necessary to further produce and deliver content that educates citizens on how the regime shapes and manipulates ideology.
The Role of the United Nations
The Kim Jong Un regime responded to the 2014 COI report with outrage and denunciation, and Pyongyang has continued to refuse to cooperate with UN Special Rapporteurs.
For three consecutive years following the publication of the report, the UN Security Council returned to consider the North Korean human rights record. Since 2018, however, the issue has not been placed back on the Security Council agenda, while the U.S.-DPRK summit denuclearization diplomacy has not included a single statement regarding improving the lives of North Korea’s people.
The North Korean human rights problem has long been subject to political debates. Still, claims Joon Oh, former ambassador of South Korea to the UN and former president of the UN Economic and Social Council, future efforts can focus on helping the North Korean people realize economic and social rights, as these do not necessitate political reforms that threaten the regime. The challenge here, though, Oh recognizes, is that such efforts require technical cooperation and humanitarian assistance, which, in turn, have been narrowed down since the UN security council imposed sanctions on North Korea in 2017 for its nuclear and ballistic missile development.
Former Justice of the High Court of Australia Michael Kirby, the chair of the COI report, who has argued that there will never be peace on the Korean peninsula as long as there are grave human rights abuses occurring in North Korea, claims that “When a state is unwilling or unable to halt or avert [mass atrocity crimes], the wider international community has a collective responsibility to take whatever action is necessary. […] It is not acceptable simply to wring our hands and cry ‘never again.’ Action must be taken, however difficult and even dangerous is the path of pursuing such action can sometimes be.”
Granted, the international community must urgently reduce and eliminate the dangers posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles. However, says Kirby, turning a blind eye to human rights crimes because their mention will upset those who are alleged to have committed them or permitted them to be committed in their name is neither a rational nor a just response.
Kirby urges the international community to engage the large population of North Korean refugees within South Korea and to learn from their experience about the needs of the North Korean people. "Imagination and new strategies are sorely needed," he concludes. "But releasing the pressure of sanctions without assured dividends in the observance of human rights, dismantling of weaponry and achievement of security is not the way to go."
About the Koret Workshop
The Koret Workshop, hosted annually by Shorenstein APARC’s Korea Program at Stanford, gathers each year an international cohort of experts to discuss pressing challenges in contemporary Korean affairs and U.S.-Korean relations, with the broader aim of fostering greater understanding and closer ties between the two countries. The workshop and the Koret Fellowship in Korean Studies are made possible thanks to generous support from the Koret Foundation. The twelfth annual Koret workshop, which was scheduled for March 2020 and canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, may be rescheduled to a later time.
In this talk, Dr. Kenneth Dekleva presents a comparative leadership/political psychology analysis of North Korea's rulers since the country's founding — Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Il-sung. It is one of the first times that such a comparative analysis is offered in an academic setting. Dr. Dekleva will discuss how it can be of use to academic scholars, policymakers, and the national security community.
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Dr. Kenneth Dekleva is McKenzie Foundation Chair in Psychiatry I, Director of Psychiatry-Medicine Integration, and Associate Professor in the Dept. of Psychiatry, Peter J. O’Donnell Brain Institute, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, TX. Dr. Dekleva received his BA in History at UC Berkeley, and later undertook post-baccalaureate pre-medical studies at Columbia University, NY; he subsequently received his MD at UT Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, TX, and also completed post-graduate/residency training in psychiatry therein. After working in a variety of academic, clinical and forensic psychiatric settings in the DFW area, he served as a Regional Medical Officer/Psychiatrist and senior US diplomat during 2002-2016, largely overseas (Moscow; Vienna; London; New Delhi; Mexico City), except for a 2-year assignment as Director of Mental Health Services, US Dept. of State, Washington, DC during 2013-2015. He retired from the US Dept. of State in 2016 with the rank of Minister-Counselor. Dr. Dekleva has published and presented (at local, regional, national, and international conferences as well as US government settings) political psychology/leadership profiles of various world leaders since the mid-90s, including Radovan Karadzic, the late Slobodan Milosevic, the late Kim Jong Il, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un. His work has been published in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatryand the Law, The Hill, 38 North, The Diplomat, and the Cipher Brief; he has also given interviews to media outlets such as NPR, Background Briefing, Smerconish/Sirius XM, and CNN.
Kenneth B. Dekleva, MD
Associate Professor and Director of Psychiatry-Medicine Integration
Associate Professor, Dept. of Psychiatry, UTSW Peter J. O’Donnell Brain Institute
North Korea continues to declare that it has not had a single case of COVID-19, but health experts find it inconceivable that the infectious disease would not be in the country given its proximity to China and South Korea, two early victims of the pandemic. A coronavirus outbreak in the North could be devastating, says Asian affairs and security expert Victor Cha, as it would act on an extremely vulnerable population with already-compromised immune systems and outdated health care infrastructure.
Cha, professor of government and holder of the D.S. Song-KF Chair in Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University, has joined Shorenstein APARC as the Koret Fellow in Korean Studies for the winter quarter of 2020. He spoke with APARC via videoconferencing about the threat of COVID-19 to North Korea, the deadlock in the diplomacy of denuclearization, and the North Korean human rights problem.
COVID-19 or not, the Kim regime has recently stepped up again its weapons testing. The North typically resorts to missile tests, notes Cha, in periods of non-dialogue with the United States, and the data also shows that North Korea will bolster weapons testing before and after U.S. presidential elections.
What is to be done about engagement with the North? Cha believes that any new U.S. administration should prioritize three areas: first, focus not only on North Korea’s nuclear program but also on its ballistic missile delivery capability; second, enable the flow of humanitarian assistance into the country; and third, genuinely work with our allies and partners in the region, “who have tended to be neglected lately and seen in largely transactional terms.”
While at Stanford, Cha has been researching a project that he calls “Binary Choices” and that examines how U.S. allies and partners in Asia react when they are forced to choose between the United States and China over various issues. Regardless of how one feels about the U.S.-China trade war, Cha concludes, the question is if we are “calculating the other externalities, in terms of how our allies make choices, into our net assessment of whether a policy towards China is working or not.”
Over the last three years, the United States has done an about-face in terms of engaging North Korea on human rights. Some have argued that if we are to make progress on denuclearization with North Korea, we cannot press Pyongyang on human rights issues because we must develop a cooperative relationship. Raising human rights abuses will only make it more difficult to deal with security issues they argue. On the other hand, Ambassador King believes that human rights are not an issue that we raise after we have achieved our security goals. It is not just the right thing to do, it is an important and critical part of achieving real progress with North Korea on security issues and it is key to a better relationship between Washington and Pyongyang. Internal pressure from the North Korean elites and the public is necessary for positive change on security issues by the North, and this will only come about if there is progress on human rights. Furthermore, North Korea, like all UN member states, has agreed to observe UN human rights obligations. If the North fails to carry out its commitments on human rights, what assurance do we have that it will fulfill security obligations it accepts?
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Ambassador Robert King is former Special Envoy for North Korean human rights issues at the Department of State (2009-2017). Since leaving that position, he has been senior advisor to the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a senior fellow at the Korea Economic Institute (KEI), and a board member of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) in Washington, D.C. Previously, Ambassador King served for 25 years on Capitol Hill (1983-2008) as chief of staff to Congressman Tom Lantos (D-California), and staff director of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (2001-2008). Most recently, he was a 2019-20 Koret Fellow for the fall quarter at Stanford University.
The event is made possible through the generous support of the Koret Foundation.
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Robert R. King
Former Special Envoy for North Korean Human Right Issues
Mira Yoo joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as a visiting scholar for the winter and spring quarters of 2020 from the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Korea, where she serves as rapporteur judge, as well as director of the Basic Rights Research Team at the Constitutional Court's Research Institute. At APARC, she will be conducting research on Korea's domestic and international political relations, particularly with North Korea, through the lens of Korea's legislation and constitutional adjudication.
