Introduction

The evolution of North Korean rights thinking The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (the DPRK or North Korea) is frequently described in the Western media as a communist country with the worst human rights records in the world. Therefore, it is widely assumed that the North Korean regime has not understood or used any concept of human rights offi cially, and, if it does in any case, the government employs the language of human rights only in a superfi cial manner without any genuine commitment. It is true that the ‘Western’ concepts of human rights are still new in North Korea and frequently met with hostility. However, if one understands the history of the Cold War in the Korean peninsula and the rivalry between the South and the North for political legitimacy, it becomes evident that, since 1945, the DPRK has been actively using the language of human rights in its public documents and trying to impose its own perceptions of human rights on domestic and international policies. Most DPRK ideas on human rights are not shared by Western liberals. Yet, this does not mean that the rights thinking of North Korea is completely at odds with the overall evolution of international human rights. Western society has constituted liberal ideas of human rights against absolute monarchism or authoritarian governments, having experienced mercantilism, republicanism, industrial revolution, labour movements, and women’s rights campaigns over the past several centuries. At the same time, Western classic conservatives such as Burke, Bentham, or Marx, as well as contemporary theorists like Ignatieff or Shapiro, have allowed space for contemporary critical theories and communitarianism against natural law or individual human rights, and focused on the socioeconomic conditions of people and citizens’ duties in return for governmental protection. The arguments of these critics of Western liberalism are analogous to the rights thinking of the DPRK. These collective, socio-economic, duty-based approaches to human rights have existed in North Korea for a long time, long before the introduction of Marxism. This book, therefore, shows the conceptual development of human rights in North Korea from historical, political, and cultural perspectives. In so doing, historical negligence and cultural insensitivity, which are the biggest factors blocking proper understanding about norm-violating countries, can be resolved. The book examines the evolution of North Korean rights thinking and analyses what has contributed to

the formation and transformation of human rights concepts in the DPRK. It investigates the main infl uential factors on the formation of rights thinking and analyses the key features of human rights in the DPRK. As you can see in Figure 1.1, various strands of thought have infl uenced North Korean rights thinking. Historically, the institutional establishment of human rights was the product of the post-colonial state-building process, following liberation from the 35 years of Japanese colonisation. The state-building process included a wide range of fundamental rights including freedom of press, publication, assembly, association, and religion, gender equality rights, and labour rights in its legal documents. Politically, these rights largely came from the Soviet Union since the North Korean government was set up as a post-revolutionary Marxist state. More than any other political system, Marxism still remains the closest ideological form of the DPRK. The DPRK has continued to employ Marxist metaphors and policies on human rights, emphasising collective interests, socio-economic rights, and citizens’ duties, as well as Marx’s own class-conscious approach to human rights. Culturally, however, all these rights elements of the DPRK pre-existed in Korean traditional thinking, which focused on the role of the benevolent ruler to protect people’s subsistence rights and security, the collective and harmonious unity, and citizens’ loyalty in return for the guarantee of food and security from their rulers. When it was fi rst established in 1955, the rights thinking of Juche (North Korea’s offi cial ideology) was composed of these historically post-colonial, politically Marxist, and culturally indigenous Korean factors, in addition to a divine religious aspect. As the concepts of rights and duties were being formulated within Juche, many aspects of Marxist rights were incorporated into indigenous Korean ideas of human rights. This is due to the fact that the latter already embraced collective interests over individual claims of human rights, the primacy of socio-economic rights over other rights, and demanded a share of citizens’ duties in return for their human rights. These traits are not incompatible with international human rights. Many Western critics share the emphasis on communitarian approaches to human rights, acknowledge the interrelatedness between socio-economic rights and political rights, and understand that citizens do owe certain duties to society. Kim Jong Il’s ‘our style’ of human rights inherits aspects from Juche’s rights thinking but also includes more complicated issues of food and national security while facing severe international criticism of its human rights records. The North Korean authority went back to a more feudalistic Confucian way of thinking, which it believed protected the country from foreign intervention. The series of nuclear and food crises that the country had to deal with in the mid 1990s has made the leadership switch to more conventional thinking in the sphere of international affairs, including human rights issues. The DPRK focuses on sovereignty, national survival, collective interests, and the unity of society. At the same time, however, the DPRK revives more traditionally indigenous Korean thinking such as Sirhak and Tonghak, both of which imposed pragmatic and practical approaches to enhance people’s subsistence. The combination of these features projects new departures for rights thinking in the DPRK.