*UPDATE*
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wor ... etty-good/
‘North Korea wrote a 53,558-word report on its human rights record. The conclusion? It’s pretty good.’
When a bombshell United Nations report on North Korean human rights abuses came out in February and concluded that the country was committing human rights violations “without any parallel in the contemporary world," Pyongyang's initial reaction was anger.
First, one North Korean spokesperson said that the United States and its allies were running a "human rights racket." Then, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) published a commentary questioning how a gay man could lead an investigation into human rights. To top it all off, North Korea then published its own investigation into the United States' human rights violations. It concluded: "The U.S. is a living hell."
Now, North Korea has decided to take a different tact. This week, North Korea's Association for Human Rights Studies published a lengthy report that looked at the country's human rights situation. In a remarkable act of openness, the entire document (53,558 words including appendix) has been published, in English, on the KCNA Web site.
It's a grueling read. The report opens by explaining the geography and history of Korea. It goes on to try to define the very notion of human rights, while also explaining that state sovereignty is a form of human rights (something the report says Koreans learned while under Japanese rule, living a "miserable life worse than a dog of a family having funeral").
Later, it talks about how North Korean human rights developed. It proudly talks about 11-year compulsory education system, it's gender-equality legislation, and its labor regulation that saw the introduction of eight-hour days. The basic human rights inscribed in the North Korean constitution are listed:
The right to elect and be elected (Article 66)
The right to freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, demonstration and association. (Article 67)
The freedom of religious beliefs (Article 68)
The right of complaints and petitions (Article 69)
Inviolability of personal liberty and home and privacy of correspondence (Article 79)
The right of freedom of residence and travel (Article 75)
The right to protection of marriage and family (Article 78)
The socio-economic and cultural rights are as follows:
The right to work (Article 70)
The right to rest (Article 71)
The right to free medical care and social security (Article 72)
The right to education (Article 73)
The right to freedom in scientific, literary and artistic pursuits (Article 74)
The rights of specific groups are as follows:
The people who have made contributions to the country and people have the right to special care of the state and society (Article 76)
Equal social status and rights with men (Article 77, Paragraph 1)
The right of mothers and children to get special protection. (Article 77, Paragraph 2)
The DPRK shall grant the right of asylum to foreign nationals persecuted for struggling for peace and democracy, national independence and socialism or for the freedom of scientific and cultural pursuits. (Article 80)
In addition to these, the report later lists a number of "civil rights," including the right to fair trial, the right to not be subjected to slavery, and the right to not be tortured.
The report argues that North Koreans really do enjoy "genuine human rights," and lays the blame for international condemnation at the door of the United States, the European Union, Japan and South Korea. A statement that accompanied the release of the report said that North Korean citizens "feel proud of the world's most advantageous human rights system."
Anyone who read the U.N. report may disagree, however. There is no mention of allegations that North Korea conducts surveillance on its citizens, for example, or that the state will discriminate against them based on supposed ideological problems. On the reports that North Korea will imprison citizens in labor camps for their political beliefs and torture or even kill them, the report dismisses the evidence, saying the testimonies about the camps were made by "riffraffs," "fugitives" and "terrorists."
There is also no mention made of Matthew Miller, an American recently sentenced to six years of hard labor for “hostile acts,” after he reportedly ripped up his tourist visa upon arrival at the Pyongyang airport.
The report seems to know it won't convince anyone. In a coda, North Korea argues that what its report is the absolute truth, no matter what anyone thinks:
This Report just showed the glimpse of the reality. How to accept the truth here depends on the views of people. What’s clear here is that truth always remains as it is and it won’t lose its nature even though it is sometimes denied or fabricated.
tl;dr — a month after denouncing a UN human rights report on North Korea, they [the government] decided to make their own, complete with lies about their supposed "civil rights" and whatnot; not even mentioning the gulags which can be seen from Google Maps and many who have escaped described in-depth. Quite obviously another petty try at slandering the West and boasting about how supposedly awesome their nation is, even when numerous facts dissuade this illusion.
*sigh*
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/world ... .html?_r=0
‘North Korea Agrees to Weigh Steps on Human Rights’
GENEVA — More than half a year after a landmark report by a United Nations commission of inquiry pinned responsibility for crimes against humanity on North Korea’s leadership, the North’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva said Friday that the North had accepted a wide range of recommendations for improving its human rights record.
North Korea’s declaration falls far short of a commitment to follow through with any action, but the contrast with its blanket refusal to even consider similar recommendations in the past could be seen as a willingness to engage on some issues.
“There obviously has been some decision that this is the way the rest of the world relates, and the decision seems to be that North Korea should do it as well,” said Robert R. King, the United States’ special envoy for human rights in North Korea.
Sounding a note of caution, though, Mr. King added, “We ought to be careful about assuming this means a great deal in terms of what they do.”
But, in what is seen as a further sign of North Korea’s growing attention to international criticism, the North’s government is sending its foreign minister to participate in the United Nations General Assembly for the first time in 15 years, Mr. King said.
The 268 recommendations were made under a review process that all member states of the United Nations undergo every four years. The North’s ambassador, So Se-pyong, speaking before the Human Rights Council, signaled that the North’s leadership was now willing to consider suggestions about, among other things, freedom of thought, “free and unimpeded access to all populations in need” for humanitarian agencies and freedom for them to monitor distribution of their aid. The prevention of human rights violations and punishment for violators were also on the list.
But Mr. So said the North had rejected some recommendations that were “based on distorted information provided by hostile forces which aimed to dismantle the country’s social system,” including calls for unfettered access to detainees for the International Committee of the Red Cross, disclosure of the extent and methods of capital punishment, and the end of restrictions on movement and expression.
North Korea has made some progress on disability issues, Mr. King told the council. But laying out the breadth of international concerns, he added that it also needed to “acknowledge the existence of political prison camps, to dismantle all such camps, to release all political prisoners, and to abandon the use of torture, arbitrary detention, summary execution, forced abortion and other forms of sexual violence.”
Last week, North Korea released its own report on the state of human rights in the country that portrayed accusations of abuses as politically motivated. The report did not mention the prison gulags, which defectors have described in detail, and instead claimed that North Koreans enjoyed a wide range of freedoms. It also blamed the United States for blocking a dialogue on human rights with what it called anti-North Korean policies.
Still, the attention to recommendations of other countries in the United Nations review process was a shift from the North’s outright rejection of such suggestions in a previous review. It follows growing attention by North Korea to international human rights concerns since the release of the United Nations commission of inquiry report in February.
“I think the North Koreans are feeling some pressure,” Mr. King said in an interview, noting the practical costs of the outrage stirred by the commission of inquiry. “Contributions to aid groups have declined because North Korea’s reputation has declined. I think growing concerns about human rights conditions in North Korea make it much more difficult to raise money from foreign governments” and private sources.
Secretary of State John Kerry is to host a landmark meeting on human rights in North Korea on Tuesday, just before the General Assembly opens.
Calls for action on North Korea have continued to gather momentum since the appearance of the United Nations report. A strongly worded resolution adopted by the Human Rights Council in March urged North Korea’s referral to the International Criminal Court. A similar motion will be presented to the General Assembly next month.
The North’s decision to send its foreign minister to New York for the General Assembly session is a sign of the leadership’s concerns, Mr. King said. “I think there’s a certain recognition on the part of the North Koreans that if you’re going to play with the big boys you’ve got to participate, and I think that’s a positive sign,” he said.
Those signs of engagement dispel what was once a common assumption that the North’s leadership was immune to foreign criticism on issues of human rights, said Param-Preet Singh, senior counsel with Human Rights Watch’s international justice program.
“However sincere or insincere it may be, it’s a reflection it does care what the international community thinks and the international community does have leverage to push for change in North Korea,” Ms. Singh said.
tl;dr — now they're saying they're going to "consider" improving their human rights, which might or might not be a lie. I guess we can only see. Neutral on this one.
