United Nations humanitarian agencies report that more than 40 per cent of the population of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea continues to remain food insecure or suffer from malnutrition. The government’s public distribution system has not been functioning since the early 1990s.
Various efforts by a range of member states continue to be made in order to seek a permanent and durable peace on the Korean Peninsula. While efforts for the peaceful resolution of the conflict on the Korean peninsula continue, there have been no substantial changes in the serious human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. As denuclearization has been at the forefront of the negotiations, human rights issues have so far not been part of this process, and the voices of the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, including women, have been absent.
Women and girls make up 51.1 percent of the total population of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The Constitution, Gender Equality Law and number of other laws provides for gender equality in many areas, however, women are still considered inferior to men due to the deep-rooted discriminatory stereotypes. Women are under-represented in leadership positions. The state reinforces cultural and social values ascribing a particular role to women as caregivers and subservient to men.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea maintains near complete control over all aspects of people’s lives, denying freedom of opinion, expression, association, thought, conscience and religion. State surveillance permeates all areas of life to suppress any criticism of the State, creating a climate of fear and mistrust within the community. Citizens have no access to information from independent sources, including from outside the country. The State dictates where people must live and work, with permission required to leave the assigned province.
Enforced disappearance is a serious crime that continues to be committed until the fate and whereabouts of every disappeared person has been clarified, and consequently the individual criminal responsibility also extends over those who currently have control of the crime. Enforced disappearances, including in the form of international abductions, remain a serious concern in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea with the whereabouts of thousands of individuals remaining unknown.
There are consistent and credible accounts of arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment in detention facilities in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Such acts may amount to violation of the Convention against torture and other international norms prohibiting torture in all its forms, but may also constitute the crimes against humanity of imprisonment, torture, enslavement, or “other inhumane acts of a similar character causing serious injury to body or to mental or physical health”.
In its 2014 report, the commission of inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea concluded that there were reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity had been committed and continued to be committed in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. It highlighted that the gravity, scale and nature of those violations revealed a State that did not have any parallel in the contemporary world.
