[North Korea's Co-evolutionary Strategy Research Panel Report 5] A Study on North Korea's Co-evolutionary Strategy: Human Rights

Dr. Kim Soo-am, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Seoul National University and has served as a standing member of the National Unification Advisory Council and a policy advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. His research interests include North Korean human rights, aid to North Korea, and inter-Korean humanitarian issues. He has published numerous papers and research reports, with recent papers including “Aid to North Korea and Public Consensus,” “UN Human Rights Regime and North Korean Human Rights: Focusing on ‘Strategy’ and ‘Relationship’,” and “The Significance and Characteristics of the Helsinki Final Act: Focusing on the Human Rights Agenda.”

Abstract

This paper analyzes the implications of the human rights agenda for North Korea's survival strategy and proposes directions for the North Korean regime to formulate and successfully implement a survival and prosperity strategy suitable for the 21st-century international political arena, which emphasizes soft values such as knowledge, human rights, and the environment, beyond the 20th-century pursuit of national wealth and power. Currently, North Korea is subject to the special procedures of the UN, which adopts resolutions on human rights for countries with extremely poor human rights records. This acts as a factor of political and diplomatic pressure and affects the North Korean authorities' survival strategy. Therefore, North Korea needs a new strategy to ensure that human rights improvements and regime security are not negatively correlated. It should pursue policies that combine '선경' (advanced thinking/foresight) and '선민' (advanced people/enlightened populace) through a two-dimensional strategic shift that adjusts relations with the UN and individual countries, and a transformation of regime security strategy through the people who have embraced human rights. Furthermore, conditions should be created for a cooperative network in the field of human rights to expand between the UN and individual countries and North Korea, and for inter-Korean cooperation in human rights, as well as the formation of a regional multilateral human rights regime.

1. Introduction

In the 1990s, the North Korean authorities, unable to overcome the regime crisis caused by economic and food shortages on their own, requested assistance from the international community, including the UN. During this process, as dire situations persisted, including mass starvation, a stream of North Korean residents risked punishment and fled to China for survival. Through these North Korean defectors, the dire human rights situation within North Korea, which had been veiled in secrecy, became known to the international community.

North Korea is subject to the special procedures of the UN, which adopts resolutions on human rights for countries with extremely poor human rights records. The North Korean human rights resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly is a political decision reflecting the consensus of UN member states. Although it lacks legal binding force unlike UN Security Council resolutions, the continuous adoption of North Korean human rights resolutions exerts political and diplomatic pressure on the North Korean authorities. The North Korean authorities perceive the international public discourse on North Korean human rights issues as a political conspiracy aimed at negatively impacting regime security. Despite the North Korean authorities' strategy of rejection, the human rights agenda is acting as a factor influencing the North Korean authorities' survival strategy.

In this context, the survival strategy of building a "strong and prosperous nation" under a supreme leader-centered monolithic ruling system can be considered an anachronistic strategy—a 19th-century approach to national wealth and power, or a 20th-century development strategy—in light of current international political realities. The 21st-century international political arena is transforming into a complex stage where soft values such as knowledge, human rights, and the environment are emphasized, going beyond national wealth and power. For instance, recent international development cooperation processes have moved beyond a simple perception of poverty as a lack of goods to focus on the complex and multifaceted nature of poverty, including deprivation and injustice. In light of these new discussions on the causes of poverty, North Korea's development strategy also needs to be re-examined.

How can the North Korean authorities formulate and successfully implement a survival and prosperity strategy suitable for the complex 21st-century stage? To fundamentally readjust the development strategy itself and successfully promote a prosperity strategy through international cooperation, a paradigm shift in understanding the human rights agenda, which the international community regards as a crucial value, is necessary. If the North Korean authorities maintain a fundamentally rejectionist strategy from the perspective of regime security towards the international community's raising of North Korean human rights issues, and only tactically permit it to a limited extent as a means of evading pressure, they will inevitably find it difficult to receive international support.

Going forward, the North Korean authorities will inevitably have to seriously consider strategies that allow for reform and openness without the human rights agenda negatively impacting regime security and survival strategies, by calmly observing the qualitative changes in 21st-century international politics. They must seriously consider whether they can truly survive in the 21st century if they maintain a rigid stance on the human rights agenda from the perspective of regime security. In the medium to long term, the North Korean authorities must seek a path to genuinely guarantee regime security by embracing human rights and pursuing a survival strategy consistent with the 21st century through cooperation with the international community. With this understanding, this chapter aims to analyze the implications of the human rights agenda for North Korea's survival strategy and to propose directions for how the human rights agenda should be handled for the success of North Korea's prosperity strategy.

2. North Korea's Human Rights Perception and Strategy in the Military-First Era: Content and Evaluation

(1) Perception of Human Rights Issues from the Perspective of Regime Security

North Korea's perception of human rights issues in the 1990s and the Military-First era is established based on its perception of external threats. First, the North Korean authorities' assessment of the factors behind the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialist countries influences the establishment of their human rights perception in the Military-First era. As the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialist countries collapsed in the 1990s, North Korea faced a severe security threat. The North Korean authorities perceive the spread of freedom and human rights and large-scale defections as the primary factors behind the collapse of these socialist countries. They have been particularly wary of strategies that induce internal societal changes through the influx of information from the West. Based on this perception, the North Korean authorities respond to the international community's raising of North Korean human rights issues from a security perspective of regime change. In particular, citing the fact that the United States used democracy and human rights as justifications for the invasion of Iraq, they link the raising of human rights issues to the rationale for regime change.

The North Korean authorities perceive the strategy of attempting to change socialist systems and regimes under the pretext of human rights as an immutable attribute of international politics. North Korea defines the world order as a confrontation between imperialism and self-reliant forces and approaches human rights issues from this confrontational perspective. In particular, they characterize the international community's demands for human rights improvements as an "offensive of human rights" by imperialists seeking to dominate the world. According to North Korea, the imperialists' ambition to dominate the world remains unchanged, only the methods of achieving it have changed. In the context of changing international realities, human rights are being utilized as one of the means for imperialists to achieve world domination.

The North Korean authorities, in particular, define the "offensive of human rights" as a strategy to undermine socialist systems and link it to the logic of regime security. They argue that the international discourse on human rights, centered on the West, is merely a pretext for an internal subversion offensive aimed at dismantling the "ideological front of socialism." The North Korean authorities view the promotion of human rights to support anti-government forces as a key strategy for collapse, aimed at destroying the political and ideological unity and collectivist life within socialist societies. They believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialist countries occurred because they failed to recognize the insidious nature of the "offensive of human rights" and did not adequately respond to the strategy of internal subversion. Through these historical lessons, they argue that to defend the socialist system, a fierce ideological struggle must be waged against the "offensive of human rights" from the West. In other words, they approach human rights issues with a strategy of ideological struggle from the perspective of security threats. Thus, the North Korean authorities address human rights issues with a security logic of ideological "response" to "offensives"... (continued)

[Foreword] The Path to Advanced Korea in 2032: Building a Complex Network State

[No. 1] A Study on North Korea's Co-evolutionary Strategy: Politics

[No. 2] A Study on North Korea's Co-evolutionary Strategy: Diplomacy

[No. 3] A Study on North Korea's Co-evolutionary Strategy: Military Affairs

[No. 4] A Study on North Korea's Co-evolutionary Strategy: Economy

[No. 5] A Study on North Korea's Co-evolutionary Strategy: Human Rights