Prioritizing Action after the Update to the Commission of Inquiry on North Korean Human Rights

Introduction

On April 4, 2024, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed Resolution 55/21 and committed to producing an update to the UN’s Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The council passed this resolution just over 10 years after the publication of the original commission of inquiry (COI) report.

The COI report was pivotal to global efforts to hold Kim Jong Un’s regime accountable for its ongoing crimes against humanity. Political leaders could no longer deny the gravity, scope, and scale of the regime’s historic oppression of the North Korean people. The update could have a similar impact by raising international attention and reinvigorating action on this critical issue.

The update seeks to take stock of changes in the human rights conditions in the country since the initial report.¹ It is an opportunity to remind policymakers of the severity of human rights conditions in the country, explore crimes committed since the last report’s release, and galvanize political momentum to inspire action.

The update to the COI should direct its attention to three issues in particular: (1) whether the regime is committing other atrocity crimes, including genocide, (2) the pandemic’s impact on the North Korean people’s human rights, and (3) conditions in both political and ordinary prison camps.

Ahead of the report’s release, new administrations in Washington and Seoul should consider strengthening their tools to respond to North Korean human rights violations. Areas of consideration include (1) issuing an atrocity determination for North Korea, (2) strengthening congressional support for North Korean human rights, and (3) improving allied efforts to hold the Kim regime accountable, support North Korean refugees, strengthen responses to human rights violations like forced labor, and improve information access in the country.

Trends to Watch

The UN has approximately 18 months to compile a comprehensive update to the COI report, more time than the COI had for the original. The update will likely go beyond the original’s scope as it looks at trends that emerged over the past decade.

The report should cover a broad range of subjects that deepen international understanding of the regime’s atrocities. But there are a few trends that merit special attention:

Determining whether the regime was or is committing atrocity crimes in addition to crimes against humanity, including genocide.

It should be a given that the update to the COI will reaffirm the original COI’s finding that the Kim regime has committed and continues to commit crimes against humanity. The crimes observed in the original COI continue to occur at a similar or worse level. To issue a finding that does not acknowledge historical and ongoing crimes against humanity would not only fail to reflect reality; it would also be a loss for the North Korean people. But the update should also explore whether the regime is committing additional atrocity crimes, including some the 2014 COI evaluated but ultimately dismissed because of concerns about definitions and the scope of the commissioners’ mandate.

One such crime is genocide. The definition created by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide includes the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a group on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.² A group only needs to be subject to one facet of the definition to qualify. Michael Kirby, one of the original COI members, noted that the definition does not include discrimination on the basis of politics.

Since the release of the original COI, several groups have raised concerns over whether certain groups within North Korea are vulnerable to or facing genocide. A report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea in the United Kingdom’s House of Commons asserts that Christians, members of the lower classes in North Korea’s songbun caste system, and half-Chinese children may face genocide, for example.

My research for Hudson Institute found that the Kim regime’s treatment of Christians may meet the definition of genocide. Christians clearly face many of the acts the UN definition of genocide describes, specifically death or serious bodily or mental harm, and a determination of genocide for Christians would not require modifications to the convention’s original definition of genocide.

• Death. North Korean Christians are killed for their faith, and many endure indefinite detention in political prison camps. Unlike ordinary prison camps, these so-called political reeducation camps are effectively a death sentence. Additionally, the Kim regime commonly executes North Korean Christians, including elite officials, for their faith. As recently as 2022, the US State Department documented an incident in which officials executed a member of the Korean Workers’ Party in front of 3,000 people for possessing a Bible. And news sources report that the regime has conducted mass executions for this same crime.
• Serious bodily or mental harm. According to Open Doors USA, North Korea is the most dangerous place for Christians in the world. There are an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 Christians in North Korea, though the number is unclear as Christians in the country must practice their faith discreetly. Researchers estimate that North Korea has imprisoned 50,000 to 70,000 Christians for their faith. One report highlights an instance in which the Kim regime sentenced an entire family, including a two-year-old, to life in the camps because the parents had a Bible and practiced Christianity. North Korean Christians face torture and beating, forced labor, and sexual violence in these camps.

A year after the 2014 report’s release, Kirby said the severity of persecution that Christians faced was one of the most overlooked findings from the COI report. He was surprised by how little attention their plight received. Ten years later, the US should investigate the crimes North Korean Christians face and craft policy solutions to alleviate their suffering.

There is no hierarchy of atrocity crimes. Legally, a finding of crimes against humanity is no better or worse than genocide. Nonetheless, if the Kim regime has committed genocide against Christians or other groups, the updated UN report should acknowledge both atrocity crimes.

The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on North Korean human rights.

The Kim regime’s COVID-19 response (and simultaneous denial of the virus’s existence) was disastrous for North Korean human rights. Border closures and other severe limitations on freedom of movement are just a few of the regime’s draconian measures.

The Kim regime’s airtight border closure, which lasted from 2020 to August 2023, was more effective than any US or international sanctions at isolating both the leadership in Pyongyang and the North Korean people from the outside world. Although Kim began loosening restrictions in August 2023, the country remains largely closed to outsiders. Among other offenses, border closures severely harmed freedom of movement, the informal economy, and access to humanitarian aid and relief.

• Freedom of movement. The regime allegedly implemented shoot-to-kill orders to prevent people from crossing the border. According to South Korean Ministry of Unification data, defections dropped from over 1,000 in 2019 to 229 in 2020, then to an all-time low of 63 in 2021. Although defections slightly increased in 2023, the number remains below 200. This not only means that fewer North Koreans have made it to freedom; it also restricts the outside world’s access to information about life in the country during and after the pandemic.
• The informal economy. The regime’s border policies also have implications for the informal economic activities that at one time flourished along the China–North Korea border. The informal economy once served as a critical lifeline for many North Koreans who struggled to subsist on the meager wages and rations distributed by the state and helped facilitate the flow of goods, information, and people. Since the pandemic, this activity has stalled.
• Humanitarian aid. Border closures were so restrictive that even international organizations and foreign embassy staff left the country, largely because essentials like food were scarce or unavailable. By March 2021, NK News reported that all foreign nongovernmental organization staff had left North Korea. The regime in Pyongyang still refuses humanitarian aid and assistance and has not reopened its border to humanitarian workers. The Swedish embassy is among the only foreign entities to regain access after the pandemic. This makes assessing the state of health indicators like food security even more difficult. Though data is scarce, the World Food Programme estimates that 10.7 million people, close to half of North Korea’s population, remain undernourished. The original COI covered food security issues fairly rigorously, but circumstances are different after the pandemic. Another close look at North Koreans’ access to food and nutrition and other necessities like medical care and vaccines is paramount.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies surveyed 100 North Koreans between November and December 2023 to measure the pandemic’s impact on North Korean lives. The report found that COVID-19 arrived in North Korea in 2020, despite the Kim regime’s claims to the contrary. It also found that most North Koreans weathered the pandemic largely on their own. The government did not provide them with masks and restricted access to vaccines until May 2022 (and even then, North Koreans were only permitted to take vaccines from China). The regime simultaneously denied the virus’s existence and implemented draconian quarantine policies to stop the virus’s spread. This incentivized citizens to conceal that they were sick for fear the regime would subject them to harsh lockdown procedures.

As the UN updates the COI, it should fill gaps in the public’s knowledge of the Kim regime’s pandemic response. It can also assess COVID-19 mortality rates and other human rights consequences of the regime’s pandemic policies.

The conditions in political and ordinary prison camps.

While the world has long known about the Kim regime’s political and ordinary prison camps, the original COI lent credible insight into the scope and scale of the regime’s historic and ongoing exploitation through the camp systems. The update to the COI has an opportunity to spotlight North Korea’s modern gulag system and provide new information about how it functions today. To that end, the update should provide a new estimate of the size of the political prison population, evaluate the number and size of political prison camps, and reexamine the conditions in the camps. It should then use this information to evaluate how the regime uses prisoners, and human rights violations more generally, to further its own national security interests.

• Updated estimates on prison camp populations. One of the original COI’s most valuable contributions was its credible estimate that the Kim regime holds between 80,000 and 120,000 in political prison camps. This figure contextualizes the scope and scale of the regime’s abusive prison camp policies. But 10 years later, the international community needs an updated estimate of the population of political and ordinary prison camps. The COI should also attempt to provide a credible estimate of the number of people who have perished in the camps, especially because the regime has adjusted its policies for the release of political prisoners. Being sent to a political prison camp is now essentially a death sentence. Few prisoners, if any, are released from political prison camps.
• Estimates on the scope and scale of the political prison camp system. The UN should document the construction (or destruction) of political and ordinary prison camp facilities. It should seek to provide a concrete figure on the number of political prison camps currently operating, those that have been closed, and any plans the regime has to expand the prison camp system. These estimates should similarly be conducted for the ordinary prison camp system. The UN should consider using satellite imagery and open-source intelligence to make these assessments. It should augment this research by conducting interviews with recent survivors of the camps, North Korean elites, and former prison guards.
• Links between the regime’s security priorities and human rights, including in the camp context. As was the case in the original COI, the UN should thoroughly document the regime’s abuses in the camps. One area of special attention should be the regime’s use of forced labor in the camps. The UN should further explore links between forced labor in North Korean political prison camps and the regime’s nuclear weapons program. Discussions of forced labor should not be limited to the camp context, as credible reports since the release of the 2014 report suggest the regime may rely on forced labor, including the forced laborers the regime sends abroad, to facilitate its weapons program development. For example, the regime confiscates wages from forced laborers abroad, which may funnel directly into the regime’s private coffers or fund its weapons development. Some reports suggest an even more intimate connection between the regime’s weapons programs and its political prison camps: that political prison camp populations or other vulnerable people in North Korea may be test subjects for the regime’s chemical or biological weapons. Drawing clearer parallels between the regime’s weapons of mass destruction and its human rights violations increases the likelihood the international community will respond to the regime’s exploitation of its people. Therefore, the UN should give these themes serious consideration and attention in the update.

The original COI stopped short of exploring critical linkages between the threat the regime poses to global security and the human rights violations it perpetrates. A failure to explore these connections more thoroughly leaves critical diplomatic leverage on the table and fails to recognize how essential the violation of human rights is to the regime’s maintenance of power.

This is not an exhaustive list of subjects the update to the COI report should cover. But these three themes point to critical areas where the UN report can most effectively inspire a response from the international community.

Prioritizing North Korean Human Rights after the COI Update

Along with providing an update on conditions inside North Korea, the 2025 report should evaluate the effectiveness of steps taken since 2014 to ameliorate the North Korean people’s suffering. Seoul and Washington should take this opportunity to decide how each country’s policies will evolve to address human rights conditions inside the country. Both nations should also continue to examine how human rights advocacy fits into broader alliance frameworks and how this work can help mitigate the threat posed by the Kim regime.

The 2014 COI had an incredible impact. Within a year of its release, the Obama administration issued the first US sanctions against Kim Jong Un and Korean Workers’ Party cadres on human rights grounds. Meanwhile, Congress passed the North Korean Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act, the first legislation to make North Korean sanctions relief contingent on the country’s denuclearization and human rights progress. It also passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which created a rebuttable presumption that all goods produced with North Korean labor were presumed to be produced with forced labor and therefore prohibited from entering the US. The Republic of Korea (ROK) followed suit, passing its own North Korean Human Rights Act (NKHRA), modeled after Washington’s legislation of the same name, and establishing a South Korean ambassador for international cooperation on North Korean human rights.

Recommendations

In recent years action and attention on North Korea have waned. But it is possible the spotlight will return to Pyongyang. The US and South Korea will be amid transitions in leadership as the report is released. President Donald Trump prioritized North Korea in his first term and may do so again. Whether South Koreans elect a progressive or conservative government will also affect US-ROK coordination on North Korea. Nevertheless, the update should prompt action from Washington and Seoul. Meanwhile, civil society should be prepared to prioritize North Korean human rights work to ensure governments are similarly prepared to respond.

Washington and Seoul should consider the following actions:

1. Press the UN high commissioner on human rights to engage with civil society in compiling the update to the COI. Prior to the release of the update, the US and ROK should encourage the UN high commissioner for human rights and the UN office in Seoul to take full advantage of explicit requests in the mandate of UN Resolution 55/21 to “continue to organize a series of consultations and outreach activities with victims, affected communities and other relevant stakeholders with a view to ensuring a victim-centered approach to accountability and to including their views in avenues for accountability.”
2. Issue an atrocity determination saying whether the North Korean people face ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity. The US secretary of state can issue an atrocity determination at his or her discretion at any point in time (with or without a detailed report). Congressional action has sometimes been necessary—as was the case with the Obama administration’s atrocity determination against the Islamic State (ISIS). Both routes are acceptable, but a determination by the administration without congressional prodding would demonstrate the US executive branch’s renewed commitment to alleviating human rights abuses in North Korea. Seoul should also consider issuing an atrocity determination. This would send a strong signal that the South Korean people care deeply for the North Korean people and want to remedy their suffering. Cooperation between the US and South Korea would demonstrate their shared commitment to solving the security threat and addressing human rights concerns. 

Crimes against humanity alone warrant an atrocity determination. But if Washington and Seoul determine there is sufficient evidence that the Kim regime is also perpetrating genocide, Seoul and Washington should not hesitate to acknowledge both atrocity crimes in their determinations.

1. Sanction all human rights offenders. Washington should pursue financial and visa sanctions against individuals and entities that the COI finds have perpetrated human rights violations. The US should make full use of Global Magnitsky sanctions authorities and the North Korean Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act, as well as visa ban authorities under Section 3071(c). The US should also consider sanctioning foreign individuals or entities that aid and abet the North Korean regime’s abuses. For example, China and Russia use North Korean forced labor, and China forcibly repatriates North Korean refugees. Washington should therefore issue secondary sanctions against the responsible actors aiding and abetting in the regime’s crimes.
2. Regularize cooperation on North Korean human rights. Washington and Seoul should institute regularized, at least biannual, meetings on this issue. These meetings should cover joint advocacy and responses at the UN, promoting information access for North Koreans, supporting North Korean refugees, pursuing accountability for atrocity crimes, and coordinating humanitarian contingency planning, among other subjects. Increased cooperation should include strengthening the trilateral commitments Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo made at Camp David to solidify joint efforts to support North Korean human rights and hold the regime in Pyongyang accountable.
3. Reprioritize North Korean human rights. Congress passed the NKHRA in 2004, but the act has since lapsed. It represented US commitments to fight for North Koreans’ rights by, among other things, prioritizing support for promoting information access in the country and supporting the resettlement of North Korean refugees in the US. South Korea later passed its own NKHRA, modeled in part on America’s. Congress should renew its support for the North Korean people by taking another look at the NKHRA. The legislature should also find new ways to support the North Korean people against the Kim regime’s oppression.
4. Strengthen allied support for North Korean refugees, including through increased resettlement of North Koreans in the US. Washington and Seoul should consider forming an allied contact group with civil society and government leaders that will pursue resettlement of North Korean refugees. The group can also collaborate on best practices to resettle and assimilate refugees into US and South Korean societies. Though the NKHRA allows US officials to resettle North Koreans stateside, just 200 North Koreans have been resettled in the US since 2004, compared to over 30,000 in South Korea. The US should look for additional ways to resettle North Koreans more quickly, including by extending them Priority 2 (P-2) refugee status.
5. Enforce UN provisions to end North Korean forced labor. The update to the COI will no doubt include new information on the continued exploitation of North Korean workers both domestically and abroad. The US should consider how it can hold countries accountable for hiring North Korean forced laborers through sanctions, secondary sanctions, or otherwise. The US already has a rebuttable presumption in place (through the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act), but other countries do not. US diplomats should convince other countries to adopt similar measures to curtail the Kim regime’s ability to profit from forced labor. Furthermore, the US and the UN have done little to enforce the UN’s December 2019 deadline for the return of North Korean laborers. During President Trump’s first term, the US undertook substantial diplomatic efforts to convince countries to discontinue their practice of hiring North Korean forced laborers so Pyongyang would not continue to profit from their exploitation. Washington should resume those diplomatic efforts.
6. Improve information access efforts. Empowering the North Korean people is critical to addressing the country’s problems. From the NKHRA to the Otto Warmbier Countering North Korean Censorship and Surveillance Act, the US has new tools to promote information access in North Korea. Last year’s National Defense Authorization Act authorized an additional $40 million for Voice of America and Radio Free Asia to expand broadcasts and other efforts into North Korea. Washington should still use older tools like radio while harnessing the power of more sophisticated tools. Information access efforts can give the North Korean people the knowledge they need to decide whether to flee the regime or facilitate change from within.

The author extends special thanks to Korea Foundation for providing the funding and support for this report and the roundtable hosted at Hudson Institute with experts in Washington, DC, on North Korean human rights and national security issues in preparation for the publication of this report.