By Greg Scarlatoiu
President and CEO, Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK)
The North Korean human rights movement no longer stands on the high ground it once held. Global interest in North Korean human rights has subsided. Why?
From an international relations theory perspective, the world is now dominated by realism, relying on the sheer projection of power. The reasons are multiple and can’t be confined only to the United States. One reason behind this development could be that President Donald J. Trump’s had a cordial relationship with the late and great Henry Kissinger, the quintessential practitioner of realpolitik, realism in modern American foreign policy. Kissinger thought that President Trump would represent a unique “foreign policy opportunity” as an “unconventional president.” Due to this rise of realism, other approaches to international relations have subsided: liberalism, focused on change from within, through interventions including human rights action; institutionalism, based on cooperation through the UN and other international organizations; and constructivism, relying on values shared with like-minded democracies, including human rights. This has resulted in the decline of attention and support granted to human rights globally. The North Korean human rights movement has surely suffered because of his trend.
The North Korean human rights situation continues to be abysmal. Around 200,000 people are imprisoned at the kwan-li-so political prison camps. Men, women, and children. Young and old. Due to North Korea’s feudal-inspired yeon-jwa-jae system of guilt by association. Up to three generations of the same family are punished, tortured, imprisoned, killed for the perceived wrongdoings of one individual. Perceived wrong-thinking, wrong-association, disloyalty to the Kim family regime are punished harshly. People of faith, Christians in particular, are viewed as enemies of the state. Christianity provides an alternative to the Kim family cult. Underground Christianity provides a venue for free exchange of ideas. Once known as “the Jerusalem of the East,” Pyongyang has become the epicenter of religious persecution in Northeast Asia and beyond. Countless political prisoners, including refugees, mostly women, forcibly repatriated by China, are imprisoned at other detention facilities, especially the kyo-hwa-so reeducation through labor camps. Women have taken the brunt of human rights abuse in North Korea. They are the ones subjected to forced abortions, they are the ones who have to witness the infanticide of their babies if they became pregnant with Chinese men while in China. All because the extreme ethno-nationalist Kim family regime preaches “racial purity.” Women have assumed responsibility for the survival of their families through informal and black market activities. They are the ones who are arrested, abused, and imprisoned for perceived wrongdoing at North Korea’s informal markets.
There is no civil society in North Korea. This is a unique case where human rights advocacy has been conducted by groups and individuals outside the country, including some of the 34,600 escapees in South Korea and those residing in other countries. NGOs run by human rights defenders from South Korea, the United States, Japan, the EU, Canada, Argentina and other countries have also stood on the frontlines of the fight for human rights, freedom, democracy, and prosperity for North Koreans.
The February 2014 report of the UN Commission of Inquiry on North Korean human rights created great momentum. The three COI commissioners, Australia’s Michael Kirby, Indonesia’s Marzuki Darusman and Serbia’s Sonja Biserko continued to promote the findings and recommendations of the report, cooperating with civil society worldwide, and highlighting that the Kim family regime was committing crimes against humanity.
Following the UN COI report, a dedicated and effective international North Korean human rights defenders’ “triumvirate” provided intellectual leadership and boosted the morale of human rights defenders. This comprised UN Special Rapporteur on North Korean Human Rights Issues Marzuki Darusman, South Korean Ambassador-at-Large for North Korean Human Rights Issues Lee Jung-hoon, and U.S. Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues Robert King. After they completed their mission and after many tribulations, the “triumvirate” was reconstituted by Peru’s UN Special Rapporteur Elizabeth Salmón, South Korean Ambassador-at-Large Lee Shin-wha, and U.S. Special Envoy Julie Turner.
Currently, the “triumvirate” no longer exists. Under the government of President Lee Jae-myung, South Korea will surely not appoint an ambassador-at-large. This was the case with previous progressive administration. Of course, there is nothing “progressive” about human rights denial. Quite the contrary. Under the current administration, the United States has not appointed a special envoy. While fully within her scope of work and expertise as a distinguished international law professor, Dr. Salmón’s condemnation of “U.S. aggression against Venezuela” makes it unlikely that the U.S. government will cooperate with her in the near future. The disappearance of the North Korean human rights “triumvirate” has resulted in a decline in leadership and interest in the North Korean human rights issue.
The North Korean human rights movement has always faced the challenge of being outcompeted by political, military, and security issues. Things are worse today. For good reasons, world attention has focused on Ukraine, Iran, and Venezuela. As to North Korea, world attention focuses on North Korea’s test launching and exportation of ballistic missiles, small arms, weapons of mass destruction, and tunneling technology to Iran and its terrorist proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. World attention focuses on North Korea’s exportation of artillery munitions, ballistic missiles, and even special forces soldiers, for deployment to the Russian front. While the North Korean exportation of instability and violence has become a global threat and it deserves full attention, the egregious human rights situation of North Koreans living inside the country has been lost in translation.
North Korean human rights has always faced competition from other human rights crises. That continues to be the case today, with world attention focused on the human rights and humanitarian crises in Gaza, Ukraine, and Cuba or issues pertaining to refugees, immigration and deportation elsewhere. While the slow-motion North Korean refugee crisis continues, it no longer makes the headlines.
For a quarter century, U.S., South Korean and international media reported on the North Korean human rights issue. The role of South Korean correspondents in Washington, D.C. is critical. In South Korea, their reports carry weight because they come from the U.S. capital. And, in turn, international media pick up South Korean reports and thus they propagate through information channels worldwide. Under conservative administrations, South Korean media outlets report on North Korean human rights. Under left-leaning administrations, reporting on North Korean human rights is close to zero. The current situation is no exception.
Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) played a stellar role in raising awareness of North Korean human rights violations. Their reporting increased international attention to the issue. They were dramatically downsized in early 2025. That resulted in a catastrophic loss of media coverage. Employees who were fired had to leave their workstations with no prior notice. Information on sources developed over years, if not decades, saved on their work computers, was no longer available. Access to sources and human intelligence networks was severed. Although they are slowly being brought back, the scale of operations is smaller, and many previous employees who were retrenched and then brought back are still working as contractors. Restoring previous networks will be difficult.
Funding is the ultimate challenge. South Korean left-leaning governments detest North Korean human rights NGOs. And yet, under the previous administrations of the late presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, the South Korean government continued to quietly and discreetly fund North Korean human rights NGOs. Under presidents Moon Jae-in and Lee Jae-myung, they were not only defunded. They were obliterated. Many of the North Korean human rights NGOs based in South Korea have gone away. Many of them face extinction. North Korean human rights defenders appointed by the previous government to high positions, including former North Koreans, have been removed. Lines of support and communication have been severed.
In the United States, after navigating through rough waters, the Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) are back. In the case of DRL, procurement is now thematic, rather than country-specific, reflecting a new approach to the human rights issue. While there is nothing wrong with the thematic approach, competition is stiffer, and their chances of winning slimmer. That said, there is still hope that country-specific support for North Korean human rights organizations will return, as North Korea has turned into a global serial proliferator of instability and violence. And that proliferation is fueled by human rights violations, by the exploitation of North Korean people at home and abroad.
Global NGOs sporadically report on North Korean human rights. But their interest lies elsewhere. It is, naturally, donor driven. Focus areas include diversity, inequality, inclusion, immigration, deportation, enforced disappearances, Gaza, strong anti-Israeli bias, strong anti-Trump administration bias, and Ukraine. Some of them good missions, some of them controversial, to say the least. That’s where the money is.
Under the current South Korean government, ministries, government think-tanks, and think-tanks relying on government funding have given up on North Korean human rights. South Korea’s charitable culture is different from the United States. Individual donors primarily give to educational causes, especially to institutions of high status, that are likely to enhance their own prestige. Not to human rights organizations. And especially not to North Korean human rights organizations. Corporate donors that donated to North Korean human rights groups got burned, audited, punished under left-leaning administrations. So they no longer give. In the absence of corporate and individual donations, most South Korean NGOs have to rely on South Korean or U.S. government funding. Once that funding evaporates, they go extinct.
Unification is surely key to resolving the Korean peninsula conundrum, comprising North Korean human rights violations, military provocations, ballistic missiles, nuclear weapons and other WMDs. Regrettably, the Ministry of Unification under the current government has practically acquiesced to Kim Jong-un’s “two Koreas thought.” Perhaps the ministry should be renamed “Ministry of Division” before it succumbs during the mandate of the current government.
The South Korean government has outlawed the sending of information into North Korea via balloons, plastic bottles tossed into the West Sea current, or Micro SD cards smuggled into the country. North Korean escapees who used to run these operations are defunded, proscribed, marginalized, and depressed.
North Korean human rights are again, being sacrificed on the altar of “engagement.” The same vinyl record that we’ve heard for almost three decades is playing. Why would Kim Jong-un engage with South Korea? Why would he engage with the United States? To trade his nuclear weapons for economic assistance? He has been making tens of billions of dollars out of exporting instability and violence to Iran, Russia, and terrorist groups. As has been the case for decades, ignoring human rights makes no sense.
Should we sing a requiem for the North Korean human rights movement? Or shall we await in humble and blessed hope for its resurrection?
North Korean human rights is more than just a moral, ethical, and political imperative. There is a human rights-security nexus. To survive, the North Korean regime needs cold hard cash to build its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, to sustain its military, and to keep its elites happy through access to hard currency and luxury goods from the outside world, imported despite applicable UN, U.S., and other international sanctions. To procure the resources it needs to survive, the North Korean regime oppresses and exploits its own people, at home and abroad. According to the U.S. Department of State, prior to COVID, North Korea dispatched 100,000 workers to 40 countries. Most of them were sent to Russia, China, and the Middle East. Most of them worked as construction workers, loggers, workers in seafood processing plants, restaurant workers, sailors, or fishermen. They were subjected to severe labor rights violations, with up to 90 percent of their salaries being confiscated. Most North Korean people, including children, are subjected to forced labor through public mobilization campaigns. Prison camp labor is used in the extractive industry and other sectors. And now hundreds, if not thousands of North Korean men have died fighting for Russia, in a war that only enriches their leadership.
The Kim family regime is no longer just a Korean peninsula or regional threat. It has become a global threat, through the exportation of instability and violence to conflict areas. That exportation relies on the exploitation of the people of North Korea. Human rights are key to bringing freedom, human rights, prosperity, and eventual unification to the people of North Korea. No requiem. The human rights movement shall rise again.
Greg Scarlatoiu is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on North Korean human rights and currently serves as President and CEO of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK). From 2011 to 2024, he served as HRNK’s Executive Director, investigating North Korea’s political prison camps and human rights abuses and bringing related research to the attention of the international community.
He studied International Relations at Seoul National University and earned a master’s degree in International Relations from The Fletcher School at Tufts University. Originally from Romania, he lived in South Korea for more than a decade and was named an Honorary Citizen of Seoul in 1999. For more than 20 years, he has served as a columnist for Radio Free Asia’s Korean-language service and has provided commentary on North Korea and Korean Peninsula issues to the U.S. Congress and major international media outlets.
