FIVE THINGS ON NORTH KOREAN HUMAN RIGHTS

1 CAMP TERRORS

Michael Kirby, chair of the UN commission of inquiry on human rights in North Korea, described in a landmark 2014 report four vast compounds where between 80,000 and 130,000 people — including multiple generations of families — are held incommunicado for life and subjected to brutalities comparable to those in the Nazi concentration camps. “The gravity, scale, duration and nature of the unspeakable atrocities committed in the country reveal a totalitarian state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world,” the report said.

2 CRIME ATROCITIES

An investigation by the International Bar Association led by three internationally respected jurists concluded Kim and other senior members of his regime could be prosecuted for 10 of the 11 crimes against humanity defined in the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), including extermination, enslavement, torture and sexual violence. The only one not applicable was apartheid.

3 INMATES PUNISHED

“Much of the inmate population,” the bar association reported in December, “has been gradually eliminated through deliberate starvation, forced labour, executions, torture, rape and the denial of reproductive rights enforced through punishment, forced abortion and infanticide.”

4 HORROR STORIES

The bar association chronicle of crimes makes stomachturning reading. One bullet point, “One witness described a torture chamber with blood and flesh on the walls and decaying corpses of past victims placed in the chamber in order to instill fear in the next prisoner.” And, “Rape of teenage girls and their subsequent attempts to commit suicide by jumping into the Daedonggang River were so common that prison guards were deployed to the river to thwart them.”

5 ICC PROSECUTION

“While past negotiations with the North may have privileged the security issues at the expense of human rights ... the two issues are today intimately tied,” concluded a 2016 study by Robert Gallucci, a former negotiator with Pyongyang, and Victor Cha, Trump’s first choice for ambassador to South Korea. The two pointed out practices such as forced labour and severe food rationing “favour the regime and its proliferation practices” by providing resources and suppressing dissent. Cha and Gallucci argued human rights could be a source of leverage over Kim. They say the leadership has been rattled by repeated calls for the referral of its crimes for ICC prosecution.