The North Korean regime's crimes against humanity rank among history’s worst atrocities and the United States and international community must take action against it, activists said on Monday.
The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea released a 400-page report last month detailing gross and systemic human rights violations by the Kim dynasty in North Korea. Public hearings and private interviews with more than 300 witnesses documented the abuses, including arbitrary detention and torture, executions, and the disappearance of dissidents to political prison camps.
North Korea’s political prison camp system holds about 120,000 people. The report offered examples of macabre conditions at the camps, such as a mother being forced to drown her newborn and corpses eaten by dogs.
North Korea’s regime has also been accused of abducting dozens of citizens from Japan, South Korea, and other countries.
Activists said the world must no longer remain silent about North Korea at a Capitol Hill briefing hosted by the Foreign Policy Initiative and the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.
"These egregious human rights violations and crimes against humanity committed in North Korea are not an unfortunate side effect to the operations of the Kim regime," said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the committee. "They are at the very core of the modus operandi of the Kim regime in North Korea."
Scarlatoiu urged U.S. lawmakers to support passage of the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act, which directs President Barack Obama to impose sanctions against any entities or foreign governments found to trade nuclear and other weapons with North Korea or facilitate censorship and human rights abuses there.
At the international level, some observers are calling for the U.N. Security Council to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court. However, China would likely use its membership on the council to veto such a resolution.
China’s U.N. representative criticized the report last week, calling it "divorced from reality" and "highly politicized." China has been a staunch ally of North Korea since backing it in the Korean War in the 1950s.
China faulted the commission for not cooperating with North Korea on the report but did not mention that the Kim regime denied access to investigators. China has also been sharply condemned by activists for forcibly repatriating North Korean escapees, who often end up in the prison camps or are sentenced to death following their repatriation.
Roberta Cohen, co-chairwoman of the committee and fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the international community should support a moratorium on China’s repatriation of North Korean defectors.
China needs to know that "their own officials involved in carrying out these crimes and their own security agents could be held accountable in time," she said.
Both Cohen and Scarlatoiu said the issue of human rights should be elevated to the same importance as efforts to curb North Korea’s nuclear program.
Hyeonseo Lee, a North Korean defector, also spoke at the briefing about her experiences under the Kim regime. Lee escaped to China in 1997 and eventually came to Seoul, South Korea.
Lee said she was fed propaganda from the moment she was born and recounted school textbooks with math problems involving dead Americans. She witnessed her first public execution at age seven, a tool she said the Kim regime uses to instill fear and obedience. Spies frequently report citizens who say anything critical of the regime.
"They live in an environment of fear—an environment they either attempt to escape or silently endure," she said.
Life is also difficult for North Korean women who successfully escape, Lee said. Some are sold as brides in rural China or sex slaves in Thailand, while others face stigmatization and a lack of job opportunities in South Korea.
Repression has increased under current leader Kim Jong-un, decreasing the number of defectors, Lee said. Defectors are shot on sight and homes near North Korea’s border with China have been demolished.
Lee called for more international support of defectors who are struggling to cope with life in new countries. Defectors are increasingly able to smuggle cell phones to their families in North Korea, providing their relatives with information about the outside world and coordinating escape routes.
Lee said the plight of North Koreans often elicits prominent media coverage for a week and then is buried under other news such as Russian aggression in Ukraine.
"In the past people didn’t really care about the North Korean issue, they didn’t learn about that," she said. "All I want is to raise awareness."