Top experts spoke of starvation, deportation and torture while detailing North Korea's severe human rights abuses in a desperate economy during the U.N. Security Council's first open briefing on the situation since 2017.
Ilhyeok Kim, who was born in 1995 at Saetbyeol, North Korea, during the nation's devastating famine, told the council about how he worked in unpaid forced labor from an early age but escaped with his family to South Korea in 2011.
Now, he said, North Koreans' lives are "harder than ever" in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, with repression and desperation increasingly common and areas of the country where people are starving. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un closed the borders of his country when the pandemic hit.
"We are also facing a reign of fear that isolates North Koreans and harshly punishes people just for accessing information," Ilhyeok Kim said.
"As we starve, the North Korean government has no plan to help us. The government turns our blood and sweat into a luxurious life for the leadership," he said. "We also think that the money spent on just one missile could feed us for three months. But the government doesn't care and is only concerned with maintaining their power."
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who chaired the council, and diplomats from Albania, Japan, and South Korea pushed for Thursday's briefing to examine human rights abuses – and the links to international peace and security – under Kim Jong Un's regime.
"We know the government’s human rights abuses and violations facilitate the advancement of its unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles program," Thomas-Greenfield said ahead of the meeting.
"The council must address the horrors, the abuses, and crimes being perpetrated daily by the Kim regime against its own citizens – and people from other member states," she said. "We must stand up for those who rightfully deserve to exercise their human rights and fundamental freedoms."
U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk and U.N. special rapporteur Elizabeth Salmón also briefed the council, providing evidence of a country where repression and severe economic hardship are causing many lives to spiral downward.
“People are becoming increasingly desperate as informal markets and other coping mechanisms are dismantled, while their fear of state surveillance, arrest, interrogation and detention has increased,” Türk told the council by videoconference.
Türk, who heads the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, said North Korea is as secretive and closed to the outside world as it has ever been, particularly since the pandemic.
But evidence shows, he said, that the nation suffers "increasing repression of the rights to freedom of expression, privacy and movement, the persistence of widespread forced labor practices, and a worsening situation of economic and social rights due to the closure of markets and other forms of income generation."
Anyone who accesses information from outside North Korea can be found guilty of sympathizing with “reactionary ideology and culture,” he said, resulting in charges that could bring as much as five to 15 years in prison – and those who provide that material could be imprisoned for life or put to death.
Worries about hunger and vulnerable populations
Salmón testified in the council's chambers that her mission was to "bring to your attention the pain" that is widespread among North Korea's population in its "unprecedented isolation" from the world, particularly since the pandemic began.
"The prolonged border shutdown which started early in 2020 has brought increased hardship. The informal markets in the country known in Korean as 'jangmadang' have been significantly repressed, depriving a vast number of people of their livelihoods and preventing many from buying food," Salmón said.
"Women have been particularly affected," she said. "Some people are starving. Others have died due to a combination of malnutrition, diseases and lack of access to health care. Access to food, medicine, and health care remains a priority concern."
North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Kim Son Gyong said beforehand that his nation opposed the council's "despicable" plans to hold the session as a political tool to advance the United States' "narrow-minded and hegemonic geopolitical" agenda.
The 15-nation council did not take any action, particulary since China and Russia, both long-time allies of North Korea, hold two of the council's five permanent veto-wielding seats, along with France, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Russia’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyansky described the council session as “a cynical and hypocritical effort to step up pressure on Pyongyang.”
After the session, however, Thomas-Greenfield read a statement on behalf of 52 nations saying that North Korea's government is commiting “acts of cruelty and repression” that are linked to its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and violate the council's resolutions.
In May 2022, China and Russia vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution to impose new sanctions on North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile launches. The council began imposing sanctions after North Korea first conducted a nuclear test in 2006.
The council has passed 10 resolutions attemping to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, but Kim Jong-Un recently ordered more missiles and other weapons. Last month, North Korea’s U.N. Ambassador Kim Song told the council that his nation has a legitimate right to self-defense.
Salmón told the council in March that human rights are integral to addressing peace and nuclear security issues. After her first official visit to North Korea last year she expressed alarm about a strong possibility of starvation among the most vulnerable populations, people’s access to health since the COVID-19 outbreak, and the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women and girls.
"Every institution, including women’s associations and schools, is given a quota to fulfill, which women and children have to contribute to by providing material and labor," she said. "Many children were suffering from malnutrition and stunted growth even before the COVID-19 pandemic."
This story has been updated with additional details.
