North Korea: ‘popular masses enjoy genuine human rights’

Pyongyang issues 50,000 word report hitting back at international criticism of its human rights record, accusing the west of ‘false and reactionary’ agenda to interfere with state sovereignty.

By , The Guardian.

North Korea has published a 50,000-word report hitting back at international criticism of restrictions on freedoms in the country and insisting that that its citizens “enjoy genuine human rights”.

In contrast to a United Nations publication issued earlier this year detailing grave atrocities in the country, Pyongyang painted a positive picture of its rights situation, saying the “popular masses” are free from slavery, torture and have the right to enjoy a free trial. A spokesperson said human rights was of utmost importance to the government, enshrined in the country’s foundations.

Pyongyang had previously said it would prove that the future is “bright and rosy” for citizens living in one of the world’s most closed societies, consistently listed among the worst human rights offenders. The report accuses the UN of acting as a US puppet, and pursuing an agenda designed to interfere with its internal affairs.

Pyongyang insists it has made efforts towards international cooperation but that state sovereignty is one of the core principles of its approach to human rights and must be upheld. The Korean Central News Agency, a state body, said the finished product: “lays bare the false and reactionary nature of the reckless anti-North Korean human rights racket.”

The report, written by the DPRK Association for Human Rights, said NGOs, academics and human rights experts in the country had contributed to its findings, which detail the “characteristics of the socialist system”, the DPRK’s policies and its “actual human rights performance.”

It also touches on social and cultural rights, including education, health and the “right to participate in scientific and cultural activities,” as well as the rights of women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities.

It repeatedly takes aim at the US and its allies, which it accuses of being “steeped in repugnancy toward the DPRK”.

The UN report published in February detailed the findings of a year-long investigation which found systemic human rights abuses suffered at the hands of the regime.

The dossier describes executions, rapes and torture of up to 120,00 prisoners held up in the secret prison system, known as kwanliso. The prison camps, which also appear to be have been identified by Google Earth, were not mentioned in the DPRK’s report.

The UN conclusion was that a number of the abuses were very likely to be crimes against humanity, and the chair of inquiry Michael Kirby wrote to North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un to say he, along with his government, could face trial at The Hague, though Kirby has admitted that it’s unlikely he’ll be appearing any time soon.

North Korea calls the UN report a “dead document” based on speculation and hostility. The report’s authors are labelled as “despicable human rights abusers” and puppets for the US, and it describes the 300 defectors who testified to the UN to tell of the abuses they had witnessed as “human scum who betrayed their homeland and people”.

The report comes a few weeks before the UN General assembly where US secretary of state John Kerry is expected to meet South Korean foreign minister Yun Byung-se to discuss rights in the North.

1 Comment on "North Korea: ‘popular masses enjoy genuine human rights’"

  1. “N. Korea says it has ‘world’s most advantageous human rights system’”, so like the title of the book* by Barbara Demick explains, and a line in the song that all North Koreans in grade school are taught to sing, North Koreans have *”NOTHING TO ENVY”.
    Well I guess that changes everything; it’s official. Why didn’t the NK-regime say so earlier?
    If you’re pressed for time, by all means, jump down to the link where you can read the entire NK-regime’s 53,000 word report, but I’ll bet you both my lunch and my supper that this set of comments is much more credible, so your time would be better spent reading the rest of this first! In fact I’m so sure of myself, I’ll state my conclusion here near the beginning:
    NK’s Human-Rights policy-record is precisely summed as a 1-word idea – VIOLATION
    I guess all of the other previous press, people, reports, documentaries and books were simply lying and complaining; –the work of unfulfilled, disgruntled, decadent-bourgeoisie-sensationalized capitalists. False alarm people! It was all baloney; until just now!
    NK has single-handedly determined that despite all proof otherwise, NK itself has the “most advantageous human rights system” on earth, simply because they choose to claim so as their sovereign entitlement to say whatever they please about themselves.
    Thank God the NK-regime cleared up all that misunderstanding; huh? The report is probably the work of Kim Jongun himself adding to the volumes of wisdom in the books his granddaddy supposedly wrote on ‘Juche* ideology’ (*the practice of selfish attainment of any and all things desired at any cost so long as it’s at someone else’s expense). Had we read all the volumes on Juche written by Hwang Jang Yop, I mean Kim Ilsung along with all the other NK propaganda, we’d never have been so fooled to begin with! Well, what can we expect from ourselves when we’re so selfishly preoccupied re-legalizing marijuana use? Toke, in fact bogart a few while reading the rest of this; it’s absolutely astounding!!!
    I’m surprised the 53-thousand word NK report didn’t clarify that the NK-regime professes that the world is actually shaped like an equilateral-triangular pyramid, with Mt. Paektu as the peak, and it doesn’t rotate because NK is so stable, rather the universe rotates around it; the surfaces of the 4-equal-sided obelisk floating in space represent the tenant dimensions of Juche-Scientific-Ideology (Forfeiture, Enslavement, Torture, and Death).
    Another thing the report omitted from mention is the idea that the population in the NK gulags is there entirely on a voluntary basis. You see, it’s a very little known fact that the NK gulag system is a welcome occasional vacation from perpetual Utopian paradise; consequently the population growth in adjacent SK seems stagnant only because there are so many defectors from SK sneaking up to NK to live in Utopia (thus they never write back), and the NK border guards actually serve ONLY to keep the bad elements out!
    Likewise, opening up the internet between NK and the rest of the world would only corrupt the complete true knowledge of the universe already contained within the pure NK infrastructure, the core of the universe.
    Another few things the report didn’t mention is that the 3.5 million reported deaths during the Korean war is completely false; –they’re all alive and well, thriving in NK along side the Japanese abductees, as are the 2 million NK citizens falsely reported to have starved to death in the ’90s, and even the oldest ones still have the vitality of 20-year olds to this very day.
    With Juche, a human-being can live happily on merely a single glass of even polluted water and only 1 grain of NK-rice a week, in fact that’s enough to feed a small family of 29 people for one meal; just one of the exemplary benefits of Juche ideological application;–much safer than genetically modified organisms produced in the inferior nations around the world.
    As a matter of fact, NK-rice is so nutritious, that’s the only reason the NK-regime was confiscating rice-aid from foreign countries; to contain the Ebola-Virus-like spread of it and subsequent disease infestation–after all if it wasn’t NK rice, it was probably only as nutritious as concrete-cement and if it wasn’t for the conspiracy of the foreign aid workers forcefully interfering to screw up the normal distribution of NK-rice, the deliberately deficient foreign rice wouldn’t have been mistakenly stored and then used as concrete–just recently found to be the cause of the brand-newly constructed apartment buildings crumbling in Pyongyang.
    And the NK regime acted only in the name of charity, compassion and self-preservation by prohibiting the travel to SK and thus exposure of 350 members of their most delicately refined population of cheerleaders into diseased SK. The NK-regime was simply protecting them from acute constipation, while protecting the posterity of NK for generations to come. It’s no wonder they hate us!
    What could those of us from the lowest songbun caste of humanity possibly understand about North Korea if we aren’t told the right story to begin with anyway? So for your own good, you need to read that report right away, and start letting only the NK-regime do all your thinking for you!
    This link: http://kcna.kp/kcna.user.home….
    This title: Report of the DPRK Association for Human Rights Studies
    (but don’t blame me if you get a virus on your computer or get put on the international-travel-restriction or terrorist-watch-lists for going there)
    If you’ve gotten this far in reading and have any understanding of the NK-regime, you’ve probably already figured out that it’s really not necessary to read any of NK’s 53,000 words on their Human-Rights policy, nor any of mine^ (^that are best suited for bathroom reading for those who really need five solid minutes to soothe and relax their inflamed hemorrhoid agitation to facilitate a healthy ‘sit-down’ or more comfortable ‘moment of fecal excrement release’), because the undeniable fact of the matter and ‘Bottom Line’ is:
    NK’s Human-Rights policy-record is precisely summed as a 1-word idea – VIOLATION

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