China and Russia are demanding that the United States agree to lift U.N. economic sanctions against North Korea, which were put in place in 2006 to stop its nuclear weapons programs.
Just last month, Pyongyang fired a newly developed ballistic missile from a submarine in its fifth round of recent weapons tests, violating the sanctions anew. Kim Jong-un’s two trading partners don’t address these serious threats to American interests, but argue that North Korea’s 25.6 million people will face certain famine this winter.
The administration should keep the sanctions and devise a plan to ensure that food aid reaches the needy civilians. Transparency and monitoring any aid program in North Korea will be a challenge, given Kim’s pathological secrecy and singular priority of regime survival. What we can be sure of is that North Korea is one of the world’s most closed societies, with rights and freedoms repressed across the board.
The State Department’s own human rights report asserts that capital punishment is the penalty for “providing information regarding economic, social, and political developments routinely published elsewhere,” which North Korea calls an “anti-state” crime. Independent media is banned, and the internet is available to only a select few in Pyongyang. All print and broadcast media, publishing, and online media is controlled through the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Korea Workers’ Party.The Washington-based Committee on Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) found that “all citizens are required to participate in monitored political meetings and regular self-criticism sessions to demonstrate their loyalty to the Kim family, and that failure to participate enthusiastically may be punished, including through forced labor, internal exile, detention, or denial of food and medical attention.” Furthermore, “the government installed monitoring programs on every smartphone and tablet that log every webpage visited and randomly take undeletable screenshots.”
Though Christianity’s vibrancy before the communist takeover in 1948 earned Pyongyang the name, “Jerusalem of the East,” most of the Christians there now are reported to have been recently converted while temporarily in China. A few house churches are known to exist, including one of 16 members all of whom, including its leader, were baptized in China.
Severe punishment awaits those accused of praying in community or possessing religious objects. One 50-year-old woman is reported by an eyewitness to have been beaten for having a Bible. Life sentences in a prison camp is the fate of three generations of another Christian family, including a two-year-old child, revealed Korea Future.
Due process and evidence are not needed to convict believers. Korea Future reported that Christians and Shamans are tortured with low tech methods, deliberate food poisoning, forced squat jumps, position torture, rape, beatings with logs and fists, and sleep deprivation. A former detainee observed Christians who huddled for prayer in the corner of their cell to avoid surveillance cameras. One time they were caught and beaten every morning thereafter for 20 days.
These reports give a window into Kim’s extremely despotic and secretive regime. Aid distribution must never be left to it or any North Korean subject to its control. According to HRNK, “food supplies are known to be withheld from those that need it most and provided to those who are categorized as loyal or useful to the regime.” Nor can the United Nations be counted on to ensure international aid won’t be diverted. U.N. agencies routinely sub-contract locals, who, in the Middle East, have been shown to discriminate against disfavored minorities. There is simply no civic society group within North Korea able to take on this effort.
The Biden administration should prepare for the worst case scenario in North Korea this winter by insisting that private American and Western aid groups, including religious ones, be allowed free passage to distribute clearly marked American packages of U.S. aid. Safeguards must be put in place to closely monitor this process. Anything less would only strengthen Kim’s military first policies.