The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 12 | Issue 13 | Number 2 | Article ID 4100 | Mar 30 2014

1

War by Other Means The Violence of North Korean HumanRights 他の手段をもってする戦争　北朝鮮の人権を語る暴力性

Christine Hong

Abstract This essay offers a historicizedoverview of the consolidation of contemporaryhuman rights as the dominant lingua franca forsocial justice projects today and applies it tothe debate over human rights in North KoreaHighlighting what the rights frameworkrenders legible as well as what it consigns tounintelligibility it examines the antinomies ofcontemporary human rights as an ethico-political discourse that strives to reassert thedominance of the global North over the globalSouth Relentlessly presentist in its assignmentof blame and politically harnessed to a regime-change agenda the human rights framing ofNorth Korea has enabled human rightsadvocates typically ldquobeneficiaries of pastinjusticerdquo to assume a moralizing implicitlyv io l en t pos ture toward a ldquo reg imerdquocommonsensically understood to be ldquoevilrdquoCordoning off North Korearsquos alleged crimes fordiscrete consideration while turning a willfullyblind eye to the violence of sanctionsldquohumanitarianrdquo intervention and thew i t h h o l d i n g o f h u m a n i t a r i a n a n ddevelopmental aid the North Korean humanrights project has allowed a spectrum ofpolitical actorsmdashUS soft-power institutionsth in ly renovated Co ld War de fenseorganizations hawks of both neoconservativeand liberal varieties conservative evangelicalsanticommunist Koreans in South Korea and thediaspora and North Korean defectorsmdashto jointogether in common cause This thematic issueby contrast enables a range of criticalperspect ivesmdashfrom USndash and SouthKoreandashbased scholars policy analysts andsocial justice advocatesmdashto attend to what hashovered outside or been marginalized withinthe dominant human rights framing of North

Korea as a narrowly inculpatory normativestructure This article is adapted and revisedfrom the introduction to a two-part thematicissue of Critical Asian Studies on ldquoReframingNorth Korean Human Rightsrdquo (December 2013and March 2014)

I Victorsrsquo Justice

In February 2014 upon completing a several-month investigation into ldquohuman rights in theDemocratic Peoplersquos Republic of Korea [DPRKor North Korea]rdquomdashan investigation initiated inthe sixtieth anniversary year of the 1953Korean War Armistice Agreement that haltedcombat but did not end the warmdashthe three-member Commission of Inquiry (COI)established by the United Nations HumanRights Council (UNHRC) concluded that NorthKorea had committed crimes against humanitySuch ldquounspeakable atrocitiesrdquo in the framingaccount of Commission chair Michael Kirbyldquoreveal a totalitarian State [without] parallel inthe contemporary worldrdquo1 Analogies to theldquodark abyssrdquo of North Korea the Australianjurist maintained could be found only in thebrutality of the Third Reich South Africanapartheid and the Khmer Rouge regime2

Reproduced in news reports around the worldKirbyrsquos markedly ahistorical examples mayhave succeeded in inflaming global publicopinion yet they failed to contextualize theissue of North Korean human rights in a waythat might generate peaceful structuralresolution Indeed insofar as the 372-page COIreport singularly identified the North Koreagovernment as the problemmdashboth as ldquoaremaining and shameful scourge that afflictsthe world todayrdquo in Kirbyrsquos jingoistic phrase

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

2

and as the primary obstacle to peace inKoreamdashthe Commission gave new life to thevision of regime change that has animatedpost-911 North Korean human rightscampaigns By recommending that North Koreaand its high officials be brought up before theHague-based International Criminal Court(ICC) it continued the hostilities of theunresolved Korean War ldquoby means purportingto be judicialrdquo3 The urgent question of a long-deferred peace relative to the Koreanpeninsula which the Commission incoherentlyaddressed bedeviled its conclusions renderingits findings partial its recommendations insome instances uneasily one-sided and itspremise of impartiality suspect4 Moreover thatthe COI proceedings and report aligned theUnited Nations with the United States SouthKorea Japan and Great Britain while singlingout North Korea and to a far lesser degreeChina for blame performed an unsettlingrestaging of the Korean War on the agonisticterrain of human rights suggesting anencrypted ldquovictorrsquos justicerdquo with regard to anunending war that up to now has had no clearwinners5

By overlooking the roots of North Koreanmilitarism and underdevelopment in theunending Korean War by failing to offer aldquosystematic and widespreadrdquo account ofldquocrimes against humanityrdquo that criticallyassessed the impact of unresolved war on theentire peninsula and in the greater region andby assuming the neutrality of the UnitedNations the United States South Korea GreatBritain and Japan relative to North Korea theCommission thereby offered an inculpatoryaccount of North Korean human rights thatobscured rather than illuminated the complexconsequences of unresolved interventionistwar6 Indeed the footnote status accorded tothe Korean Warrsquos historical and ongoingviolence within todayrsquos dominant internationalhuman rights framework speaks to thelimitations of available ldquopost-Cold Warrdquostructures of recognition when it comes to the

unsettled in many cases active legacies of theasymmetrical wars waged by the United Statesand its allies throughout the Cold War Justicewith regard to the ongoing Korean War as KimDong-choon a former standing commissionerof South Korearsquos Truth and ReconciliationCommission (TRCK) has maintained cannot behad in the present Instead as he hassoberingly argued ldquodignity for allrdquo andmeaningful peace are conceivable ldquoonly afterthe unification of North and South Koreardquo7

Implicit in this future prospect for broadstructural reckoning is precisely what theTRCK (2005-2010) constrained in its mandateby the US-ROK ldquosecurityrdquo alliance could notcompel and what the ICC for reasons ofRealpolitik is similarly not empowered toaddress namely US accountability8

In this regard the Commissionrsquos principalrecommendation that North Korea be referredto the ICC for its perpetration of ldquocrimesagainst humanityrdquo should be criticallyevaluated against the attenuation in ourhistorical moment of ldquocrimes of aggressionrdquo orldquocrimes against peacerdquo Crucial here is notonly the legal limbo of the unresolved KoreanWar but also the repeated efforts by NorthKorea as well as scholars and activists in SouthKorea and the United States to emphasize theright to peace as the foremost priority on theKorean peninsula and to render the warrsquosconsequences visible within a human rightsframework To the extent that North Korearsquosgrievances with regard to the unending KoreanWar are referenced at all in the COI reportthey are framed as baseless propagandawielded by the North Korean state to justify itshuman rights violations against the NorthKorean people Riven by contestatory claimsunsettled truths about ldquoNorth Korean humanrightsrdquo as we thus can begin to see areinvariably entangled with competing truthsabout the Korean War More to the pointjustification for ldquointernationalrdquo interventionunder UN auspices on the Korean peninsula atmid-century functions as a necessary premise

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

3

for todayrsquos interventionist human rightsposture toward North Korea Indeed in itsconclusions the COI report incomprehensiblyidentif ies the ldquoresponsibi l i tyrdquo of theldquointernational communityrdquo in delivering ldquoaneffective responserdquo to North Korearsquos humanrights violations ldquobecause of the unresolvedlegacy of the Korean Warrdquo9 It bears recallingif the stated rationale for US and UNintervention in Korea was that North Korea onJune 25 1950 aggressed the ldquoborderrdquo of the38th parallelmdasha demarcation line to be clearrather than an international boundary draftedby the United States in 1945 with zero Koreaninputmdashthis studiously reactive account of thewarrsquos origins fai ls to account for theindiscriminate aggression that followed Thebrutal US occupation of the North and itsmass ive aer ia l bombing campaignsperpetrated under the cover of the UnitedNations Command would generate a swath ofruin impossible to justify as self-defense on thepart of the United States When all was saidand done North Korearsquos major cities and townswould be reduced to rubble its civilianinfrastructure smashed and an estimatedtwelve to fifteen percent of its populationkilled As historian Bruce Cumings has pointedout ldquoWhy is it aggression when Koreans crossthe 38 t h parallel but imaginary whenAmericans do the same thingrdquo 1 0

As Cumingsrsquos critique begins to intimate thepersistent legal illegibility of aggressive war acrime ldquopredominately committed by thepolitical and military authorities of the majorpowersrdquo point less to a breakdown in a globalsystem of rule of law than they do to theworkings of an imperial model of globalgovernance that rescripts geopolitical terrainthrough superior military force and makesrecourse to legitimation from ldquoreactivepolitically unaccountable institutions (such ascourts of law)rdquo11 By definition legibus solutusor beyond the law imperial sovereignty tosome degree could be said to throw the systemof international law into ldquolegal incoherencerdquo12

As jurist Danilo Zolo has pointed outldquo[i]mperial power is incompatible both with thegeneral character of law and with the formalequality of subjects in the international legalorderrdquo13 It is revealing along these lines thatcrimes against peace which were prioritized asldquothe supreme international crimerdquo indeedplaced in seriousness above crimes againsthumanity and war crimes at the Nurembergand Tokyo Tribunals and enshrined as crimes ofaggression in the Rome Statute of the ICC arefunctionally little more than a dead letter ininternational law14

We might also think of what Walter Benjaminreferred to as the ldquolawmaking character ofviolencerdquo15 Effectively immune to prosecutionfor crimes of aggression the United States haswielded the lesser category of crimes againsthumanity a legal classification dormant for theduration of the Cold War against thesovereignty of small postcolonial states Sincethe fall of the socialist bloc we have beenrepeatedly witness to a spectacular dramaturgystaged around the vanquished that takes thesequence of US interventionist war followedby criminal proceedings under a highlyselective interpretation of jus in bello namelywar crimes crimes against humanity and thecrime of genocide In this era the internationalcriminal tribunal with its fractured and unevensystem of justice has served as a vitalmechanism for the consolidation of what NedaAtanasoski refers to as a ldquopostsocialistimperialistrdquo world order in which internationallegal mechanisms have been monopolized bythe United States and its allies and harnessedto a dubious ldquoglobal ethic of humanitarianismrdquowhich is itself inextricably linked to a regime ofUS perpetual warfare16

As an intended prelude to a juridical processwhether via the ICC (doubtful given thelikelihood of Chinarsquos and possibly Russiarsquos veto)or the establishment of an internationalcriminal tribunal along the lines of those set upfor the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda the COI

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

4

proceedings and report on North Koreanhuman rights thus must be understood withinthe context of ldquoa dual-standard system ofinternational criminal justicehellipin which ajustice lsquomade to measurersquo for the major worldpowers and their victorious leaders operatesalongside a separate justice for the defeatedand the downtroddenrdquo17 Indeed prior torecommending that North Korea be referred tothe ICC for its alleged commission of crimesagainst humanity the Commission in late2013 held a series of carefully orchestratedhearings in four sites namely Seoul TokyoLondon and Washington DC Again theunsettled past (and present) of the Korean Warserved as prologue That South Korea JapanGreat Britain and the United States not onlyequipped and financed the COI proceedings butalso were allied parties or participants in theKorean War hovered as illegible context for thework and mandate of the Commission even asthis unresolved structure of enmity everywhereinformed and one could argue contaminatedthe Commissionrsquos informational baseprocedures and findings18 Occasionallyreferenced but nowhere analyzed in the COIreport for its profound structural impact onhuman security both north and south of theDMZ the irresolution of the Korean War wasfor the most part topically confined to a shortperfunctory section in the report dedicated tohistorical and political context This glaringfailure to wrestle with the human costs of theunending Korean War and to prioritize theright to peace on the Korean peninsula hauntedthe Commissionrsquos one-sided findings withregard to chronic North Korean hungerseparated families and war abductees Farfrom tackling the consequences of unresolvedwar head-on the report displaced andminimized its significance

Insofar as the COI human rights reportrehearsed a narrative familiar to ldquothose whoknow North Korea wellrdquo as historian CharlesArmstrong stated to Vice News it therebyreified rather than challenged a structure of

enmity whose consequences must beunderstood as grave human rights mattersmeriting critical scrutiny in their own right19

Although the report in its synopsis of Koreanhistory offered a cursory overview of theKorean War that cited the research of ldquoBruceCummings [sic]rdquo and gestured toward ldquowoundsinflicted by the Korean War [which] were deepand are still felthellipon both sides of the border[sic]rdquo it nonetheless doggedly restricted itsinvestigation of state criminality to NorthKorea and in a few instances to Chinamdashanarrow nation-based investigation inadequateto the task of examining the structuralconsequences and human costs of unendingwar as itself a crime against humanity andeven more seriously a crime against peace20

When discussion of the warrsquos consequencessurfaced the latter were unintelligibly framedas human rights violations on the part of NorthKorea alone In its final recommendations forinstance the COI report singularly calls onNorth Korea to ldquo[a]llow separated families touniterdquo without addressing the root causes oftheir separation much less the UN role infomenting the state of division peacelessnessand human tragedy that prevails on the Koreanpeninsula21 With its focus on ldquowidespread andsystematic attack directed against any civilianpopulationrdquo the COI report conceivably couldand arguably should have offered somestructural reckoning with the profound humancosts of unabated war that extended across theDMZ and outward to the larger Asia-Pacificregion including the system of US and UNsanctions reaching back over six decades theongoing US military presence south of theD M Z ( a g a i n s t t h e 1 9 5 3 A r m i s t i c erecommendation) massive US joint andtrilateral military exercises with South Koreaand Japan some that simulate nuclear strikesagainst North Korea and practice the takeoverand occupation of North Korea regionalnuclear proliferation and ambitions SouthKorean National Intelligence Service (NIS)cyber-warfare against ldquoNorth Koreardquo that tilteddomestic election results the National Security

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

5

Law and redbaiting in South Korea theundemocratic militarization of Jeju OkinawaGuam and Hawailsquoi under the resurgent sign ofa US military pivot to Asia and the Pacific inresponse to a ldquoNorth Korean threatrdquo and soforth

Incongruously the Commission closes its 372-page report with a recommendation impossibleto square with its reiteration of near-singularNorth Korean culpability ldquothe United Nationsand the states that were parties to the KoreanWar should take steps to convene a high-levelpolitical conferencehellipand if agreed ratify afinal peaceful settlement of the war thatcommits all parties to the principles of theCharter of the United Nations includingrespect for human rights and fundamentalfreedomsrdquo22 If recalling the 1953 ArmisticeAgreementrsquos recommendation that a ldquopoliticalconference of a higher level of both sides [theUnited States and North KoreaChina] be heldby representatives appointed respectively tosettle through negotiation the questions of thewithdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea[and] the peaceful settlement of the Koreanquestionrdquo the COI report in all other respectsfailed to locate the issue of North Koreanhuman rights within a structure of persistentenmity that has adversely impacted the humanrights of the peoples of not only North Koreabut also South Korea and the larger Asia-Pacific region23

Instead the COI report identified NorthKorearsquos ldquoinstrumentalrdquo use of the ldquofear ofinvasion and inf i l trat ionrdquomdashwhat theCommission held to be North Korearsquos cynicalorchestration of a ldquostate of emergencyrdquo(apparently not to be conflated with theindisputable fact that the war is far fromover)mdashto explain how the North Korean statehas justified and carried out its ldquoharshgovernmental rule and its accompanyinghuman rights violationsrdquo24 Although the reportelsewhere makes brief mention of the fact thatthe United States has tied food aid to nuclear

concessions it described food shortages inNorth Korea as being irrationally ldquoblamed on ahostile outside worldrdquo by North Koreanauthorities25 Here we would do well to takestock of analysis of the root causes of NorthKorearsquos persistent food insecurity by DavidAustin head of Mercy Corpsrsquo humanitarian aidprogram to North Koreamdasha perspective onewould hope not facilely dismissible as thepropagandistic construction of the NorthKorean government

The food security situation is as y m p t o m o f t h e g r e a t e rproblemhellipwhich is technically thatthe US is still at war with NorthKorea And so there are sanctionson North Korea They are notallowed to get fuel therersquos nofertilizer And so the greaterp o l i t i c a l s i t u a t i o n h a s atremendous effect on the lives ofthe ordinary people who are notprivileged to be a part of thatbroader solution Theyrsquore ordinaryfarmers and theyrsquore suffering theconsequences of the non-solutionto the political questions hellip[U]ntilthere is engagement therersquos notgoing to be greater solutions26

On the conspicuous narrowness of COIrsquos dataculture particularly with regard to thecomplexity of North Korearsquos food securityissues Hazel Smith observes ldquoWhat is moststriking about the [UNHRC] reporting on theDPRK is the almost complete absence ofreference to relevant data from other UNagenc ies donor governments andnongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to theextent that thehellipreporting seems unaware ofthe existence of reports on the DPRK fromwithin the UN system itselfrdquo27 Instead theCommission appears to have relied heavily onan extremely dated account from MeacutedecinsSans Frontiegraveres from 1998 and the testimony of

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

6

former USAID administrator and current co-chairman of the conservative US Committeefor Human Rights in North Korea AndrewNatsios despite the wealth of much morediscerning rigorous scholarship and firsthandknowledge of North Korearsquos food situation thathas emerged in the past decade In this regardthe Commissionrsquos ascription of blame to theDPRK for food violations as Smith furtherargues ldquodemonstrates a securitization ofevidence and analysis through a heavy relianceon assumptions [about North Korean state-levelculpability for food-related human rightsviolations] and a filtering of informationthrough those assumptionsrdquo even as ldquotheweight of [other] UN agency reportingcontradictsrdquo those very premises28

The COI report it should be noted concedesthe political bias of the data culture on which itbased its findings and recommendations ldquoTheCommission is conscious of the fact that mostvictims and witnesses cooperating with theCommission had an overall unfavourableopinion of the DPRKrsquos authoritiesrdquo29 This wasuncomfortably apparent in a peculiar exchangebetween Commission chair Kirby and a NorthKorean defector residing in the United StatesDuring the October 30 2013 public hearing inWashington DC Kirby repeatedly pressed JoJin-hye to comment upon North Korearsquos hostilestance toward the COI investigation ldquoNow areyou aware that the government of North Koreasays that the type of testimony that you havegiven to the Commission of Inquiry today isfalse and that you are a defector and a personwho should not be believed because you aredefaming North Koreardquo30 The leading nature ofthis question notwithstanding Jo offered up aresponse that symptomatically attested to thestructure of enmity and the geopolitics ofunresolved war underpinningmdashand to no smalldegree compromisingmdashthe proceedings ldquoI amwell aware I know who my enemy and myfriend arerdquo31

Although the Commission conducted roughly

240 confidential interviews and held four setsof public hearings the solicited testimony ofseasoned political actors long at the helm of awell-funded transnational ldquoNorth Koreanhuman rightsrdquo industry aimed at North Koreanregime-change or regime-collapse loomed largewithin the 372-page COI report In particularthe report relied heavily for its framing ontestimony from prominent North Koreandefectors like Kang Chol-hwan Ahn Myong-chol Shin Dong-hyuk Kim Hyuk and KimYoung-soon and the ldquoexpertiserdquo of unabashedlyright-wing South Korean American andJapanese ldquoNorth Korean human rightsrdquoadvocates like Kim Young-hwan AndrewNatsios Victor Cha and Ishimaru Jiro Theinsight of this cadre of ldquowitnesses and expertsrdquointo North Korea appears frequently in the COIreport furnishing its narrative contours Inother words despite the Commissionrsquosassertion that all testimonies were carefullyvetted for reliability and Kirbyrsquos strainedassurances that such testimonies representldquoauthentic voicesrdquo the 372-page COI reporttroublingly allocates outsized representationalvalue to the words and views of ultimately onlya handful of institutionalized actors whoserelationship to US and South Koreanintelligence US soft-power institutions thinlyrenovated Cold War defense organizationshawks of neoconservative and liberal varietiesconservative evangelicals and anticommunistKoreans in South Korea and the diaspora goescompletely unquestioned32 It treats theirtestimony moreover as primary dataascribing a false positivism to sources thatldquodivulge their secrets at some distance in timeand space from the ongoing developmentsinside the target they are reporting onrdquo33

Although the COI report offers a perfunctoryaccount o f i t s own methodo log ica lunderpinnings we should remark what goesunsaid namely the interoperability of thetechnologies of North Korean human rightsnamely defector testimony and satelliteimagery and the technologies of war Indeed

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

7

North Korean human rights testimony ismorphologically indistinguishable from whatthe CIA and military intelligence agencies callldquohuman intelligencerdquo (Humint) As former CIAInspector General Frederick Hitz points outldquoWhere it has no physical presence the [CIA]has historically relied for humint primarily ondefectors detainees legal travelers oppositiongroups and foreign government liaisonservicesrdquo That the COI report gives extensivespace to defector testimony without weighingthe perils of an over-reliance on this sort ofinformational base raises the question of theempirical nature of the North Korean humanrights project Donald MacIntyre former Seoulbureau chief for Time magazine observes

North Koreans who have left theircountry have provided some of thebest information that we have Butyou canrsquot go to North Korea andcheck what they tell you Anexample arose in 2004 when theBBC ran a documentary allegingthat North Korea was usingpolitical prisoners as guinea pigs inchemical weapons tests The issueis now part of the human rightsagenda on North Korea hellipTheproblem has become worsehellipas aresult of the Japanese and Koreanmediarsquos pract ice of payingdefectors for interviews Paying forinterviews creates an incentive topad or create stories that willboost your own market valuehellipBad news about evil North Koreasells34

In his memoir The Aquariums of Pyongyang(2001) co-authored with the French anti-communist Pierre Rigoulot Kang Chol-hwan amajor COI witness states that Japanese andSouth Korean media paid him so handsomelyldquofor opening [his] mouthrdquo about North Koreathat he ldquooccasionally felt [he] was trading [his]

experience for a storyhellipno longer entirely [his]ownrdquo35

Yet the question today goes beyond whetherldquoauthentic voicesrdquo like Kangrsquos represent thetruth of North Korea Rather in light of the factthat approximately 26000 North Koreansresettled in South Korea both during and afterthe 1990srsquo North Korean famine we mightmore pointedly ask whether the testimony ofNorth Korean defectors and migrants featuredin the COI report bears a suff icientlyrepresentative relationship to the diversity ofviews and experiences of this significantminority population On this point in a SouthKorean civil society organizational response tothe COI findings Peoplersquos Solidarity forParticipatory Democracy (PSPD) highlights oneof the reportrsquos major shortcomings ldquoNorthKorean human rights issues should not belimited to the situation inside the DPRK [butshould] cover human rights concerns of allNorth Korean people their separated familiesand relativesrdquo including ldquoDPRK defectorsliving in the ROKrdquo36 It is above all thecomplexity of allegiance and nuance ofperspective within this demographic that meritcareful regard Not only does this post-faminewave of migrants constitute a critical newphase in the separated-family phenomenonwith phone calls and remittances flowing oftenin circuitous ways across the DMZ but alsot h e S o u t h K o r e a n s t a t e rsquo s p a s tinstrumentalization of North Korean defectorstoward anti-communist Cold War endsplausible when they were few and far betweenis no longer a broadly applicable strategyMoreover that North Korean migrants facecrippling labor and educational discriminationsocial stigma and diminished life chances inSouth Korea complicates a human rightsnarrative that assigns all blame to NorthKoreamdashindeed calls for other interpretiveapproaches which possess more explanatorypower37

Ultimately little in the COI findings departs

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

8

from a well-honed human rights narrativeabout North Korea an account of neo-Orientalist sadism depravity and inhumanitythat took shape after the collapse of thesocialist bloc but crystallized in the wake ofGeorge W Bushrsquos infamous designation ofNorth Korea as part of an ldquoaxis of evilrdquo Even asthe COI report in its details offers informationthat lends itself to multiple interpretations theCommissionrsquos findings in keeping with afamiliar ldquodemonization scriptrdquo toward NorthKorea rehearse the standard postulates ofNorth Korean human rights campaigns38 Theseare worth restating insofar as they form thecontours of a globally dominant narrative aboutNorth Korea to wi t North Korea i sunsurpassingly ldquoevilrdquo The defector is the voiceand representative of the North Korean peopleSatellite images reveal the truth about NorthKorea ldquoNorth Korean human rightsrdquo singularlydenotes those abuses violations and crimesperpetrated by the North Korean state (and in afew instances China) It does not compassthose abuses violations and crimes committedby other states or organizations against theNorth Korean people Relative to North Koreahuman rights and humanitarianism are by andlarge separate non-intersecting tracks39 Thepoliticized withholding of food aid by donornations even if it adversely impacts to thepoint of death the North Korean people is notitself a human rights violation40 Six decades ofUS and UN sanctions and of unending war aresimply business as usual and not themselveshuman rights violations any argument to thecontrary is the stuff of North Koreanpropaganda The breach of the right to peaceand the commission of the crime of aggressionare the least consequential of human rights inthe international human rights abuses TheKorean War is a mere footnote

II Shadow Archive of North KoreanHuman Rights

In December 1951 the Civil Rights Congresspresented a petition titled We Charge Genocide

to the United Nations Submitted as the KoreanWar was raging this document as with otherblack radical human rights petitions addressedto the United Nations during the Cold Wartested the interpretive limits of the legalinstruments of the emergent internationalhuman rights regime Specifically the petitioninsisted that the US ldquorecord of mass slayingson the basis of race of lives deliberatelywarped and distorted by the willful creation ofconditions making for premature deathpoverty and diseaserdquo be recognized as aviolation of the 1948 Genocide Conventionmdashaconvention that had entered into force earlierthat year but that the United States wouldratify only in 1988 long after its brutal hot warcounterinsurgencies in Asia had cooled41

Principally aimed at making Jim Crow legible asa crime within the supranational framework ofhuman rights this petition posited the two-f r o n t n a t u r e o f U S g e n o c i d a lviolencemdashviolence instrumentally motivated athome and abroad by a desire for ldquoeconomicprofit and political controlrdquo42 Linking massviolence perpetrated with impunity in theimperial center to that furiously unleashed onmillions in the peripherymdashhere implying ahomology between police brutality in theUnited States and the US ldquopolice actionrdquo inKoreamdashWe Charge Genocide maintained thatthe roots of the devastating US war in Koreacould be found in the racist logic of Americancapitalism Salvaged from historyrsquos dustbinthis account of US aggression in Korea has aplace within a shadow archive of North Koreanhuman rightsmdashan archive whose unredressedgrievances lurk uneasily below the smoothsurface of dominant North Korean humanrights narratives today43

Attempting to indict US criminality on theworld stage the Civil Rights Congress petitionsought to place both Jim Crow and the US warin Korea squarely under the innovative legalrubric of genocide and in so doing to indictracist and imperialist violence within theframework of universal human rights law

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

9

We Negro petitioners whosecommunities have been laid wastewhose homes have been burnedand looted whose children havebeen killed whose women havebeen raped have noted withpeculiar horror that the genocidaldoctrines and actions of theAmerican white supremacists havealready been exported to thecolored people of As ia Wesolemnly warn that a nation whichpractices genocide against its ownnat iona l s may no t be l ongdeterred if it has the power fromgenocide elsewhere44

Paul Robeson and members of the Civil RightsCongress submitting We Charge Genocide to theUnited Nations Secretariat New York December 171951 Daily WorkerDaily World PhotographsCollection Tamiment Library New York University

In highlighting the devaluation of nonwhitelifemdashlife subjected to collateralization underUS sovereigntymdashthis 1951 petition offeredanalysis along critical human rights lines thatneither peddled in a politics of pity and rescuenor reinscribed the inequality of the world

system Instead it gestured toward ahumanism that had yet to assert its fullestpolitical possibilitymdashwhat Aimeacute Ceacutesaire wouldin 1955 call ldquoa humanism made to the measureof the worldrdquo45 During a juncture in which theUnited States was waging an ldquoappallinglydirtyrdquo war in Korea that would leave roughly 4million dead this petition strove to expose theinhumanity of US capitalist democracy46

Arguing that ldquo[w]hite supremacy at homemakes for colored massacres abroadrdquo insofar asboth evince ldquocontempt for human life in acolored skinrdquo We Charge Genocide contestedthe immunity enjoyed by the lyncher and thebomber ldquoJellied gasoline in Korea and thelynchersrsquo faggot at homerdquo the petition statedldquoare connected in more ways than that bothresult in death by fire The lyncherhellipcannotmurder unpunished and unrebuked without soencouraging the [bomber] that the peace of thewor ld and the l i ves o f m i l l i ons a reendangeredrdquo47 That the Civil Rights Congresswhich openly opposed the US war againstNorth Korea would be labeled subversive bythe US federal government hounded by theHouse un-American Activities Committee(HUAC) audited by the IRS infiltrated by theFBI and mercilessly red-baited until itsremaining members voted to disband in the mid1950s only partly suffices to explain why itscharge of two-front genocide was andcontinues to be unintelligible as a humanrights claim48 Rather detectable in its struggleto make the charge of genocide stick to thegreatest mil itary power in the globalcommunitymdashand to criminalize US wars ofaggression and its asymmetrical wars in aconsequential waymdashwas a hint of theldquosomething rottenrdquo at the heart of theemergent international human rights regime

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

3

for todayrsquos interventionist human rightsposture toward North Korea Indeed in itsconclusions the COI report incomprehensiblyidentif ies the ldquoresponsibi l i tyrdquo of theldquointernational communityrdquo in delivering ldquoaneffective responserdquo to North Korearsquos humanrights violations ldquobecause of the unresolvedlegacy of the Korean Warrdquo9 It bears recallingif the stated rationale for US and UNintervention in Korea was that North Korea onJune 25 1950 aggressed the ldquoborderrdquo of the38th parallelmdasha demarcation line to be clearrather than an international boundary draftedby the United States in 1945 with zero Koreaninputmdashthis studiously reactive account of thewarrsquos origins fai ls to account for theindiscriminate aggression that followed Thebrutal US occupation of the North and itsmass ive aer ia l bombing campaignsperpetrated under the cover of the UnitedNations Command would generate a swath ofruin impossible to justify as self-defense on thepart of the United States When all was saidand done North Korearsquos major cities and townswould be reduced to rubble its civilianinfrastructure smashed and an estimatedtwelve to fifteen percent of its populationkilled As historian Bruce Cumings has pointedout ldquoWhy is it aggression when Koreans crossthe 38 t h parallel but imaginary whenAmericans do the same thingrdquo 1 0

As Cumingsrsquos critique begins to intimate thepersistent legal illegibility of aggressive war acrime ldquopredominately committed by thepolitical and military authorities of the majorpowersrdquo point less to a breakdown in a globalsystem of rule of law than they do to theworkings of an imperial model of globalgovernance that rescripts geopolitical terrainthrough superior military force and makesrecourse to legitimation from ldquoreactivepolitically unaccountable institutions (such ascourts of law)rdquo11 By definition legibus solutusor beyond the law imperial sovereignty tosome degree could be said to throw the systemof international law into ldquolegal incoherencerdquo12

As jurist Danilo Zolo has pointed outldquo[i]mperial power is incompatible both with thegeneral character of law and with the formalequality of subjects in the international legalorderrdquo13 It is revealing along these lines thatcrimes against peace which were prioritized asldquothe supreme international crimerdquo indeedplaced in seriousness above crimes againsthumanity and war crimes at the Nurembergand Tokyo Tribunals and enshrined as crimes ofaggression in the Rome Statute of the ICC arefunctionally little more than a dead letter ininternational law14

We might also think of what Walter Benjaminreferred to as the ldquolawmaking character ofviolencerdquo15 Effectively immune to prosecutionfor crimes of aggression the United States haswielded the lesser category of crimes againsthumanity a legal classification dormant for theduration of the Cold War against thesovereignty of small postcolonial states Sincethe fall of the socialist bloc we have beenrepeatedly witness to a spectacular dramaturgystaged around the vanquished that takes thesequence of US interventionist war followedby criminal proceedings under a highlyselective interpretation of jus in bello namelywar crimes crimes against humanity and thecrime of genocide In this era the internationalcriminal tribunal with its fractured and unevensystem of justice has served as a vitalmechanism for the consolidation of what NedaAtanasoski refers to as a ldquopostsocialistimperialistrdquo world order in which internationallegal mechanisms have been monopolized bythe United States and its allies and harnessedto a dubious ldquoglobal ethic of humanitarianismrdquowhich is itself inextricably linked to a regime ofUS perpetual warfare16

As an intended prelude to a juridical processwhether via the ICC (doubtful given thelikelihood of Chinarsquos and possibly Russiarsquos veto)or the establishment of an internationalcriminal tribunal along the lines of those set upfor the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda the COI

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

4

proceedings and report on North Koreanhuman rights thus must be understood withinthe context of ldquoa dual-standard system ofinternational criminal justicehellipin which ajustice lsquomade to measurersquo for the major worldpowers and their victorious leaders operatesalongside a separate justice for the defeatedand the downtroddenrdquo17 Indeed prior torecommending that North Korea be referred tothe ICC for its alleged commission of crimesagainst humanity the Commission in late2013 held a series of carefully orchestratedhearings in four sites namely Seoul TokyoLondon and Washington DC Again theunsettled past (and present) of the Korean Warserved as prologue That South Korea JapanGreat Britain and the United States not onlyequipped and financed the COI proceedings butalso were allied parties or participants in theKorean War hovered as illegible context for thework and mandate of the Commission even asthis unresolved structure of enmity everywhereinformed and one could argue contaminatedthe Commissionrsquos informational baseprocedures and findings18 Occasionallyreferenced but nowhere analyzed in the COIreport for its profound structural impact onhuman security both north and south of theDMZ the irresolution of the Korean War wasfor the most part topically confined to a shortperfunctory section in the report dedicated tohistorical and political context This glaringfailure to wrestle with the human costs of theunending Korean War and to prioritize theright to peace on the Korean peninsula hauntedthe Commissionrsquos one-sided findings withregard to chronic North Korean hungerseparated families and war abductees Farfrom tackling the consequences of unresolvedwar head-on the report displaced andminimized its significance

Insofar as the COI human rights reportrehearsed a narrative familiar to ldquothose whoknow North Korea wellrdquo as historian CharlesArmstrong stated to Vice News it therebyreified rather than challenged a structure of

enmity whose consequences must beunderstood as grave human rights mattersmeriting critical scrutiny in their own right19

Although the report in its synopsis of Koreanhistory offered a cursory overview of theKorean War that cited the research of ldquoBruceCummings [sic]rdquo and gestured toward ldquowoundsinflicted by the Korean War [which] were deepand are still felthellipon both sides of the border[sic]rdquo it nonetheless doggedly restricted itsinvestigation of state criminality to NorthKorea and in a few instances to Chinamdashanarrow nation-based investigation inadequateto the task of examining the structuralconsequences and human costs of unendingwar as itself a crime against humanity andeven more seriously a crime against peace20

When discussion of the warrsquos consequencessurfaced the latter were unintelligibly framedas human rights violations on the part of NorthKorea alone In its final recommendations forinstance the COI report singularly calls onNorth Korea to ldquo[a]llow separated families touniterdquo without addressing the root causes oftheir separation much less the UN role infomenting the state of division peacelessnessand human tragedy that prevails on the Koreanpeninsula21 With its focus on ldquowidespread andsystematic attack directed against any civilianpopulationrdquo the COI report conceivably couldand arguably should have offered somestructural reckoning with the profound humancosts of unabated war that extended across theDMZ and outward to the larger Asia-Pacificregion including the system of US and UNsanctions reaching back over six decades theongoing US military presence south of theD M Z ( a g a i n s t t h e 1 9 5 3 A r m i s t i c erecommendation) massive US joint andtrilateral military exercises with South Koreaand Japan some that simulate nuclear strikesagainst North Korea and practice the takeoverand occupation of North Korea regionalnuclear proliferation and ambitions SouthKorean National Intelligence Service (NIS)cyber-warfare against ldquoNorth Koreardquo that tilteddomestic election results the National Security

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

5

Law and redbaiting in South Korea theundemocratic militarization of Jeju OkinawaGuam and Hawailsquoi under the resurgent sign ofa US military pivot to Asia and the Pacific inresponse to a ldquoNorth Korean threatrdquo and soforth

Incongruously the Commission closes its 372-page report with a recommendation impossibleto square with its reiteration of near-singularNorth Korean culpability ldquothe United Nationsand the states that were parties to the KoreanWar should take steps to convene a high-levelpolitical conferencehellipand if agreed ratify afinal peaceful settlement of the war thatcommits all parties to the principles of theCharter of the United Nations includingrespect for human rights and fundamentalfreedomsrdquo22 If recalling the 1953 ArmisticeAgreementrsquos recommendation that a ldquopoliticalconference of a higher level of both sides [theUnited States and North KoreaChina] be heldby representatives appointed respectively tosettle through negotiation the questions of thewithdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea[and] the peaceful settlement of the Koreanquestionrdquo the COI report in all other respectsfailed to locate the issue of North Koreanhuman rights within a structure of persistentenmity that has adversely impacted the humanrights of the peoples of not only North Koreabut also South Korea and the larger Asia-Pacific region23

Instead the COI report identified NorthKorearsquos ldquoinstrumentalrdquo use of the ldquofear ofinvasion and inf i l trat ionrdquomdashwhat theCommission held to be North Korearsquos cynicalorchestration of a ldquostate of emergencyrdquo(apparently not to be conflated with theindisputable fact that the war is far fromover)mdashto explain how the North Korean statehas justified and carried out its ldquoharshgovernmental rule and its accompanyinghuman rights violationsrdquo24 Although the reportelsewhere makes brief mention of the fact thatthe United States has tied food aid to nuclear

concessions it described food shortages inNorth Korea as being irrationally ldquoblamed on ahostile outside worldrdquo by North Koreanauthorities25 Here we would do well to takestock of analysis of the root causes of NorthKorearsquos persistent food insecurity by DavidAustin head of Mercy Corpsrsquo humanitarian aidprogram to North Koreamdasha perspective onewould hope not facilely dismissible as thepropagandistic construction of the NorthKorean government

The food security situation is as y m p t o m o f t h e g r e a t e rproblemhellipwhich is technically thatthe US is still at war with NorthKorea And so there are sanctionson North Korea They are notallowed to get fuel therersquos nofertilizer And so the greaterp o l i t i c a l s i t u a t i o n h a s atremendous effect on the lives ofthe ordinary people who are notprivileged to be a part of thatbroader solution Theyrsquore ordinaryfarmers and theyrsquore suffering theconsequences of the non-solutionto the political questions hellip[U]ntilthere is engagement therersquos notgoing to be greater solutions26

On the conspicuous narrowness of COIrsquos dataculture particularly with regard to thecomplexity of North Korearsquos food securityissues Hazel Smith observes ldquoWhat is moststriking about the [UNHRC] reporting on theDPRK is the almost complete absence ofreference to relevant data from other UNagenc ies donor governments andnongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to theextent that thehellipreporting seems unaware ofthe existence of reports on the DPRK fromwithin the UN system itselfrdquo27 Instead theCommission appears to have relied heavily onan extremely dated account from MeacutedecinsSans Frontiegraveres from 1998 and the testimony of

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

6

former USAID administrator and current co-chairman of the conservative US Committeefor Human Rights in North Korea AndrewNatsios despite the wealth of much morediscerning rigorous scholarship and firsthandknowledge of North Korearsquos food situation thathas emerged in the past decade In this regardthe Commissionrsquos ascription of blame to theDPRK for food violations as Smith furtherargues ldquodemonstrates a securitization ofevidence and analysis through a heavy relianceon assumptions [about North Korean state-levelculpability for food-related human rightsviolations] and a filtering of informationthrough those assumptionsrdquo even as ldquotheweight of [other] UN agency reportingcontradictsrdquo those very premises28

The COI report it should be noted concedesthe political bias of the data culture on which itbased its findings and recommendations ldquoTheCommission is conscious of the fact that mostvictims and witnesses cooperating with theCommission had an overall unfavourableopinion of the DPRKrsquos authoritiesrdquo29 This wasuncomfortably apparent in a peculiar exchangebetween Commission chair Kirby and a NorthKorean defector residing in the United StatesDuring the October 30 2013 public hearing inWashington DC Kirby repeatedly pressed JoJin-hye to comment upon North Korearsquos hostilestance toward the COI investigation ldquoNow areyou aware that the government of North Koreasays that the type of testimony that you havegiven to the Commission of Inquiry today isfalse and that you are a defector and a personwho should not be believed because you aredefaming North Koreardquo30 The leading nature ofthis question notwithstanding Jo offered up aresponse that symptomatically attested to thestructure of enmity and the geopolitics ofunresolved war underpinningmdashand to no smalldegree compromisingmdashthe proceedings ldquoI amwell aware I know who my enemy and myfriend arerdquo31

Although the Commission conducted roughly

240 confidential interviews and held four setsof public hearings the solicited testimony ofseasoned political actors long at the helm of awell-funded transnational ldquoNorth Koreanhuman rightsrdquo industry aimed at North Koreanregime-change or regime-collapse loomed largewithin the 372-page COI report In particularthe report relied heavily for its framing ontestimony from prominent North Koreandefectors like Kang Chol-hwan Ahn Myong-chol Shin Dong-hyuk Kim Hyuk and KimYoung-soon and the ldquoexpertiserdquo of unabashedlyright-wing South Korean American andJapanese ldquoNorth Korean human rightsrdquoadvocates like Kim Young-hwan AndrewNatsios Victor Cha and Ishimaru Jiro Theinsight of this cadre of ldquowitnesses and expertsrdquointo North Korea appears frequently in the COIreport furnishing its narrative contours Inother words despite the Commissionrsquosassertion that all testimonies were carefullyvetted for reliability and Kirbyrsquos strainedassurances that such testimonies representldquoauthentic voicesrdquo the 372-page COI reporttroublingly allocates outsized representationalvalue to the words and views of ultimately onlya handful of institutionalized actors whoserelationship to US and South Koreanintelligence US soft-power institutions thinlyrenovated Cold War defense organizationshawks of neoconservative and liberal varietiesconservative evangelicals and anticommunistKoreans in South Korea and the diaspora goescompletely unquestioned32 It treats theirtestimony moreover as primary dataascribing a false positivism to sources thatldquodivulge their secrets at some distance in timeand space from the ongoing developmentsinside the target they are reporting onrdquo33

Although the COI report offers a perfunctoryaccount o f i t s own methodo log ica lunderpinnings we should remark what goesunsaid namely the interoperability of thetechnologies of North Korean human rightsnamely defector testimony and satelliteimagery and the technologies of war Indeed

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

7

North Korean human rights testimony ismorphologically indistinguishable from whatthe CIA and military intelligence agencies callldquohuman intelligencerdquo (Humint) As former CIAInspector General Frederick Hitz points outldquoWhere it has no physical presence the [CIA]has historically relied for humint primarily ondefectors detainees legal travelers oppositiongroups and foreign government liaisonservicesrdquo That the COI report gives extensivespace to defector testimony without weighingthe perils of an over-reliance on this sort ofinformational base raises the question of theempirical nature of the North Korean humanrights project Donald MacIntyre former Seoulbureau chief for Time magazine observes

North Koreans who have left theircountry have provided some of thebest information that we have Butyou canrsquot go to North Korea andcheck what they tell you Anexample arose in 2004 when theBBC ran a documentary allegingthat North Korea was usingpolitical prisoners as guinea pigs inchemical weapons tests The issueis now part of the human rightsagenda on North Korea hellipTheproblem has become worsehellipas aresult of the Japanese and Koreanmediarsquos pract ice of payingdefectors for interviews Paying forinterviews creates an incentive topad or create stories that willboost your own market valuehellipBad news about evil North Koreasells34

In his memoir The Aquariums of Pyongyang(2001) co-authored with the French anti-communist Pierre Rigoulot Kang Chol-hwan amajor COI witness states that Japanese andSouth Korean media paid him so handsomelyldquofor opening [his] mouthrdquo about North Koreathat he ldquooccasionally felt [he] was trading [his]

experience for a storyhellipno longer entirely [his]ownrdquo35

Yet the question today goes beyond whetherldquoauthentic voicesrdquo like Kangrsquos represent thetruth of North Korea Rather in light of the factthat approximately 26000 North Koreansresettled in South Korea both during and afterthe 1990srsquo North Korean famine we mightmore pointedly ask whether the testimony ofNorth Korean defectors and migrants featuredin the COI report bears a suff icientlyrepresentative relationship to the diversity ofviews and experiences of this significantminority population On this point in a SouthKorean civil society organizational response tothe COI findings Peoplersquos Solidarity forParticipatory Democracy (PSPD) highlights oneof the reportrsquos major shortcomings ldquoNorthKorean human rights issues should not belimited to the situation inside the DPRK [butshould] cover human rights concerns of allNorth Korean people their separated familiesand relativesrdquo including ldquoDPRK defectorsliving in the ROKrdquo36 It is above all thecomplexity of allegiance and nuance ofperspective within this demographic that meritcareful regard Not only does this post-faminewave of migrants constitute a critical newphase in the separated-family phenomenonwith phone calls and remittances flowing oftenin circuitous ways across the DMZ but alsot h e S o u t h K o r e a n s t a t e rsquo s p a s tinstrumentalization of North Korean defectorstoward anti-communist Cold War endsplausible when they were few and far betweenis no longer a broadly applicable strategyMoreover that North Korean migrants facecrippling labor and educational discriminationsocial stigma and diminished life chances inSouth Korea complicates a human rightsnarrative that assigns all blame to NorthKoreamdashindeed calls for other interpretiveapproaches which possess more explanatorypower37

Ultimately little in the COI findings departs

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

8

from a well-honed human rights narrativeabout North Korea an account of neo-Orientalist sadism depravity and inhumanitythat took shape after the collapse of thesocialist bloc but crystallized in the wake ofGeorge W Bushrsquos infamous designation ofNorth Korea as part of an ldquoaxis of evilrdquo Even asthe COI report in its details offers informationthat lends itself to multiple interpretations theCommissionrsquos findings in keeping with afamiliar ldquodemonization scriptrdquo toward NorthKorea rehearse the standard postulates ofNorth Korean human rights campaigns38 Theseare worth restating insofar as they form thecontours of a globally dominant narrative aboutNorth Korea to wi t North Korea i sunsurpassingly ldquoevilrdquo The defector is the voiceand representative of the North Korean peopleSatellite images reveal the truth about NorthKorea ldquoNorth Korean human rightsrdquo singularlydenotes those abuses violations and crimesperpetrated by the North Korean state (and in afew instances China) It does not compassthose abuses violations and crimes committedby other states or organizations against theNorth Korean people Relative to North Koreahuman rights and humanitarianism are by andlarge separate non-intersecting tracks39 Thepoliticized withholding of food aid by donornations even if it adversely impacts to thepoint of death the North Korean people is notitself a human rights violation40 Six decades ofUS and UN sanctions and of unending war aresimply business as usual and not themselveshuman rights violations any argument to thecontrary is the stuff of North Koreanpropaganda The breach of the right to peaceand the commission of the crime of aggressionare the least consequential of human rights inthe international human rights abuses TheKorean War is a mere footnote

II Shadow Archive of North KoreanHuman Rights

In December 1951 the Civil Rights Congresspresented a petition titled We Charge Genocide

to the United Nations Submitted as the KoreanWar was raging this document as with otherblack radical human rights petitions addressedto the United Nations during the Cold Wartested the interpretive limits of the legalinstruments of the emergent internationalhuman rights regime Specifically the petitioninsisted that the US ldquorecord of mass slayingson the basis of race of lives deliberatelywarped and distorted by the willful creation ofconditions making for premature deathpoverty and diseaserdquo be recognized as aviolation of the 1948 Genocide Conventionmdashaconvention that had entered into force earlierthat year but that the United States wouldratify only in 1988 long after its brutal hot warcounterinsurgencies in Asia had cooled41

Principally aimed at making Jim Crow legible asa crime within the supranational framework ofhuman rights this petition posited the two-f r o n t n a t u r e o f U S g e n o c i d a lviolencemdashviolence instrumentally motivated athome and abroad by a desire for ldquoeconomicprofit and political controlrdquo42 Linking massviolence perpetrated with impunity in theimperial center to that furiously unleashed onmillions in the peripherymdashhere implying ahomology between police brutality in theUnited States and the US ldquopolice actionrdquo inKoreamdashWe Charge Genocide maintained thatthe roots of the devastating US war in Koreacould be found in the racist logic of Americancapitalism Salvaged from historyrsquos dustbinthis account of US aggression in Korea has aplace within a shadow archive of North Koreanhuman rightsmdashan archive whose unredressedgrievances lurk uneasily below the smoothsurface of dominant North Korean humanrights narratives today43

Attempting to indict US criminality on theworld stage the Civil Rights Congress petitionsought to place both Jim Crow and the US warin Korea squarely under the innovative legalrubric of genocide and in so doing to indictracist and imperialist violence within theframework of universal human rights law

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

9

We Negro petitioners whosecommunities have been laid wastewhose homes have been burnedand looted whose children havebeen killed whose women havebeen raped have noted withpeculiar horror that the genocidaldoctrines and actions of theAmerican white supremacists havealready been exported to thecolored people of As ia Wesolemnly warn that a nation whichpractices genocide against its ownnat iona l s may no t be l ongdeterred if it has the power fromgenocide elsewhere44

Paul Robeson and members of the Civil RightsCongress submitting We Charge Genocide to theUnited Nations Secretariat New York December 171951 Daily WorkerDaily World PhotographsCollection Tamiment Library New York University

In highlighting the devaluation of nonwhitelifemdashlife subjected to collateralization underUS sovereigntymdashthis 1951 petition offeredanalysis along critical human rights lines thatneither peddled in a politics of pity and rescuenor reinscribed the inequality of the world

system Instead it gestured toward ahumanism that had yet to assert its fullestpolitical possibilitymdashwhat Aimeacute Ceacutesaire wouldin 1955 call ldquoa humanism made to the measureof the worldrdquo45 During a juncture in which theUnited States was waging an ldquoappallinglydirtyrdquo war in Korea that would leave roughly 4million dead this petition strove to expose theinhumanity of US capitalist democracy46

Arguing that ldquo[w]hite supremacy at homemakes for colored massacres abroadrdquo insofar asboth evince ldquocontempt for human life in acolored skinrdquo We Charge Genocide contestedthe immunity enjoyed by the lyncher and thebomber ldquoJellied gasoline in Korea and thelynchersrsquo faggot at homerdquo the petition statedldquoare connected in more ways than that bothresult in death by fire The lyncherhellipcannotmurder unpunished and unrebuked without soencouraging the [bomber] that the peace of thewor ld and the l i ves o f m i l l i ons a reendangeredrdquo47 That the Civil Rights Congresswhich openly opposed the US war againstNorth Korea would be labeled subversive bythe US federal government hounded by theHouse un-American Activities Committee(HUAC) audited by the IRS infiltrated by theFBI and mercilessly red-baited until itsremaining members voted to disband in the mid1950s only partly suffices to explain why itscharge of two-front genocide was andcontinues to be unintelligible as a humanrights claim48 Rather detectable in its struggleto make the charge of genocide stick to thegreatest mil itary power in the globalcommunitymdashand to criminalize US wars ofaggression and its asymmetrical wars in aconsequential waymdashwas a hint of theldquosomething rottenrdquo at the heart of theemergent international human rights regime

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

4

proceedings and report on North Koreanhuman rights thus must be understood withinthe context of ldquoa dual-standard system ofinternational criminal justicehellipin which ajustice lsquomade to measurersquo for the major worldpowers and their victorious leaders operatesalongside a separate justice for the defeatedand the downtroddenrdquo17 Indeed prior torecommending that North Korea be referred tothe ICC for its alleged commission of crimesagainst humanity the Commission in late2013 held a series of carefully orchestratedhearings in four sites namely Seoul TokyoLondon and Washington DC Again theunsettled past (and present) of the Korean Warserved as prologue That South Korea JapanGreat Britain and the United States not onlyequipped and financed the COI proceedings butalso were allied parties or participants in theKorean War hovered as illegible context for thework and mandate of the Commission even asthis unresolved structure of enmity everywhereinformed and one could argue contaminatedthe Commissionrsquos informational baseprocedures and findings18 Occasionallyreferenced but nowhere analyzed in the COIreport for its profound structural impact onhuman security both north and south of theDMZ the irresolution of the Korean War wasfor the most part topically confined to a shortperfunctory section in the report dedicated tohistorical and political context This glaringfailure to wrestle with the human costs of theunending Korean War and to prioritize theright to peace on the Korean peninsula hauntedthe Commissionrsquos one-sided findings withregard to chronic North Korean hungerseparated families and war abductees Farfrom tackling the consequences of unresolvedwar head-on the report displaced andminimized its significance

Insofar as the COI human rights reportrehearsed a narrative familiar to ldquothose whoknow North Korea wellrdquo as historian CharlesArmstrong stated to Vice News it therebyreified rather than challenged a structure of

enmity whose consequences must beunderstood as grave human rights mattersmeriting critical scrutiny in their own right19

Although the report in its synopsis of Koreanhistory offered a cursory overview of theKorean War that cited the research of ldquoBruceCummings [sic]rdquo and gestured toward ldquowoundsinflicted by the Korean War [which] were deepand are still felthellipon both sides of the border[sic]rdquo it nonetheless doggedly restricted itsinvestigation of state criminality to NorthKorea and in a few instances to Chinamdashanarrow nation-based investigation inadequateto the task of examining the structuralconsequences and human costs of unendingwar as itself a crime against humanity andeven more seriously a crime against peace20

When discussion of the warrsquos consequencessurfaced the latter were unintelligibly framedas human rights violations on the part of NorthKorea alone In its final recommendations forinstance the COI report singularly calls onNorth Korea to ldquo[a]llow separated families touniterdquo without addressing the root causes oftheir separation much less the UN role infomenting the state of division peacelessnessand human tragedy that prevails on the Koreanpeninsula21 With its focus on ldquowidespread andsystematic attack directed against any civilianpopulationrdquo the COI report conceivably couldand arguably should have offered somestructural reckoning with the profound humancosts of unabated war that extended across theDMZ and outward to the larger Asia-Pacificregion including the system of US and UNsanctions reaching back over six decades theongoing US military presence south of theD M Z ( a g a i n s t t h e 1 9 5 3 A r m i s t i c erecommendation) massive US joint andtrilateral military exercises with South Koreaand Japan some that simulate nuclear strikesagainst North Korea and practice the takeoverand occupation of North Korea regionalnuclear proliferation and ambitions SouthKorean National Intelligence Service (NIS)cyber-warfare against ldquoNorth Koreardquo that tilteddomestic election results the National Security

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

5

Law and redbaiting in South Korea theundemocratic militarization of Jeju OkinawaGuam and Hawailsquoi under the resurgent sign ofa US military pivot to Asia and the Pacific inresponse to a ldquoNorth Korean threatrdquo and soforth

Incongruously the Commission closes its 372-page report with a recommendation impossibleto square with its reiteration of near-singularNorth Korean culpability ldquothe United Nationsand the states that were parties to the KoreanWar should take steps to convene a high-levelpolitical conferencehellipand if agreed ratify afinal peaceful settlement of the war thatcommits all parties to the principles of theCharter of the United Nations includingrespect for human rights and fundamentalfreedomsrdquo22 If recalling the 1953 ArmisticeAgreementrsquos recommendation that a ldquopoliticalconference of a higher level of both sides [theUnited States and North KoreaChina] be heldby representatives appointed respectively tosettle through negotiation the questions of thewithdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea[and] the peaceful settlement of the Koreanquestionrdquo the COI report in all other respectsfailed to locate the issue of North Koreanhuman rights within a structure of persistentenmity that has adversely impacted the humanrights of the peoples of not only North Koreabut also South Korea and the larger Asia-Pacific region23

Instead the COI report identified NorthKorearsquos ldquoinstrumentalrdquo use of the ldquofear ofinvasion and inf i l trat ionrdquomdashwhat theCommission held to be North Korearsquos cynicalorchestration of a ldquostate of emergencyrdquo(apparently not to be conflated with theindisputable fact that the war is far fromover)mdashto explain how the North Korean statehas justified and carried out its ldquoharshgovernmental rule and its accompanyinghuman rights violationsrdquo24 Although the reportelsewhere makes brief mention of the fact thatthe United States has tied food aid to nuclear

concessions it described food shortages inNorth Korea as being irrationally ldquoblamed on ahostile outside worldrdquo by North Koreanauthorities25 Here we would do well to takestock of analysis of the root causes of NorthKorearsquos persistent food insecurity by DavidAustin head of Mercy Corpsrsquo humanitarian aidprogram to North Koreamdasha perspective onewould hope not facilely dismissible as thepropagandistic construction of the NorthKorean government

The food security situation is as y m p t o m o f t h e g r e a t e rproblemhellipwhich is technically thatthe US is still at war with NorthKorea And so there are sanctionson North Korea They are notallowed to get fuel therersquos nofertilizer And so the greaterp o l i t i c a l s i t u a t i o n h a s atremendous effect on the lives ofthe ordinary people who are notprivileged to be a part of thatbroader solution Theyrsquore ordinaryfarmers and theyrsquore suffering theconsequences of the non-solutionto the political questions hellip[U]ntilthere is engagement therersquos notgoing to be greater solutions26

On the conspicuous narrowness of COIrsquos dataculture particularly with regard to thecomplexity of North Korearsquos food securityissues Hazel Smith observes ldquoWhat is moststriking about the [UNHRC] reporting on theDPRK is the almost complete absence ofreference to relevant data from other UNagenc ies donor governments andnongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to theextent that thehellipreporting seems unaware ofthe existence of reports on the DPRK fromwithin the UN system itselfrdquo27 Instead theCommission appears to have relied heavily onan extremely dated account from MeacutedecinsSans Frontiegraveres from 1998 and the testimony of

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

6

former USAID administrator and current co-chairman of the conservative US Committeefor Human Rights in North Korea AndrewNatsios despite the wealth of much morediscerning rigorous scholarship and firsthandknowledge of North Korearsquos food situation thathas emerged in the past decade In this regardthe Commissionrsquos ascription of blame to theDPRK for food violations as Smith furtherargues ldquodemonstrates a securitization ofevidence and analysis through a heavy relianceon assumptions [about North Korean state-levelculpability for food-related human rightsviolations] and a filtering of informationthrough those assumptionsrdquo even as ldquotheweight of [other] UN agency reportingcontradictsrdquo those very premises28

The COI report it should be noted concedesthe political bias of the data culture on which itbased its findings and recommendations ldquoTheCommission is conscious of the fact that mostvictims and witnesses cooperating with theCommission had an overall unfavourableopinion of the DPRKrsquos authoritiesrdquo29 This wasuncomfortably apparent in a peculiar exchangebetween Commission chair Kirby and a NorthKorean defector residing in the United StatesDuring the October 30 2013 public hearing inWashington DC Kirby repeatedly pressed JoJin-hye to comment upon North Korearsquos hostilestance toward the COI investigation ldquoNow areyou aware that the government of North Koreasays that the type of testimony that you havegiven to the Commission of Inquiry today isfalse and that you are a defector and a personwho should not be believed because you aredefaming North Koreardquo30 The leading nature ofthis question notwithstanding Jo offered up aresponse that symptomatically attested to thestructure of enmity and the geopolitics ofunresolved war underpinningmdashand to no smalldegree compromisingmdashthe proceedings ldquoI amwell aware I know who my enemy and myfriend arerdquo31

Although the Commission conducted roughly

240 confidential interviews and held four setsof public hearings the solicited testimony ofseasoned political actors long at the helm of awell-funded transnational ldquoNorth Koreanhuman rightsrdquo industry aimed at North Koreanregime-change or regime-collapse loomed largewithin the 372-page COI report In particularthe report relied heavily for its framing ontestimony from prominent North Koreandefectors like Kang Chol-hwan Ahn Myong-chol Shin Dong-hyuk Kim Hyuk and KimYoung-soon and the ldquoexpertiserdquo of unabashedlyright-wing South Korean American andJapanese ldquoNorth Korean human rightsrdquoadvocates like Kim Young-hwan AndrewNatsios Victor Cha and Ishimaru Jiro Theinsight of this cadre of ldquowitnesses and expertsrdquointo North Korea appears frequently in the COIreport furnishing its narrative contours Inother words despite the Commissionrsquosassertion that all testimonies were carefullyvetted for reliability and Kirbyrsquos strainedassurances that such testimonies representldquoauthentic voicesrdquo the 372-page COI reporttroublingly allocates outsized representationalvalue to the words and views of ultimately onlya handful of institutionalized actors whoserelationship to US and South Koreanintelligence US soft-power institutions thinlyrenovated Cold War defense organizationshawks of neoconservative and liberal varietiesconservative evangelicals and anticommunistKoreans in South Korea and the diaspora goescompletely unquestioned32 It treats theirtestimony moreover as primary dataascribing a false positivism to sources thatldquodivulge their secrets at some distance in timeand space from the ongoing developmentsinside the target they are reporting onrdquo33

Although the COI report offers a perfunctoryaccount o f i t s own methodo log ica lunderpinnings we should remark what goesunsaid namely the interoperability of thetechnologies of North Korean human rightsnamely defector testimony and satelliteimagery and the technologies of war Indeed

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

7

North Korean human rights testimony ismorphologically indistinguishable from whatthe CIA and military intelligence agencies callldquohuman intelligencerdquo (Humint) As former CIAInspector General Frederick Hitz points outldquoWhere it has no physical presence the [CIA]has historically relied for humint primarily ondefectors detainees legal travelers oppositiongroups and foreign government liaisonservicesrdquo That the COI report gives extensivespace to defector testimony without weighingthe perils of an over-reliance on this sort ofinformational base raises the question of theempirical nature of the North Korean humanrights project Donald MacIntyre former Seoulbureau chief for Time magazine observes

North Koreans who have left theircountry have provided some of thebest information that we have Butyou canrsquot go to North Korea andcheck what they tell you Anexample arose in 2004 when theBBC ran a documentary allegingthat North Korea was usingpolitical prisoners as guinea pigs inchemical weapons tests The issueis now part of the human rightsagenda on North Korea hellipTheproblem has become worsehellipas aresult of the Japanese and Koreanmediarsquos pract ice of payingdefectors for interviews Paying forinterviews creates an incentive topad or create stories that willboost your own market valuehellipBad news about evil North Koreasells34

In his memoir The Aquariums of Pyongyang(2001) co-authored with the French anti-communist Pierre Rigoulot Kang Chol-hwan amajor COI witness states that Japanese andSouth Korean media paid him so handsomelyldquofor opening [his] mouthrdquo about North Koreathat he ldquooccasionally felt [he] was trading [his]

experience for a storyhellipno longer entirely [his]ownrdquo35

Yet the question today goes beyond whetherldquoauthentic voicesrdquo like Kangrsquos represent thetruth of North Korea Rather in light of the factthat approximately 26000 North Koreansresettled in South Korea both during and afterthe 1990srsquo North Korean famine we mightmore pointedly ask whether the testimony ofNorth Korean defectors and migrants featuredin the COI report bears a suff icientlyrepresentative relationship to the diversity ofviews and experiences of this significantminority population On this point in a SouthKorean civil society organizational response tothe COI findings Peoplersquos Solidarity forParticipatory Democracy (PSPD) highlights oneof the reportrsquos major shortcomings ldquoNorthKorean human rights issues should not belimited to the situation inside the DPRK [butshould] cover human rights concerns of allNorth Korean people their separated familiesand relativesrdquo including ldquoDPRK defectorsliving in the ROKrdquo36 It is above all thecomplexity of allegiance and nuance ofperspective within this demographic that meritcareful regard Not only does this post-faminewave of migrants constitute a critical newphase in the separated-family phenomenonwith phone calls and remittances flowing oftenin circuitous ways across the DMZ but alsot h e S o u t h K o r e a n s t a t e rsquo s p a s tinstrumentalization of North Korean defectorstoward anti-communist Cold War endsplausible when they were few and far betweenis no longer a broadly applicable strategyMoreover that North Korean migrants facecrippling labor and educational discriminationsocial stigma and diminished life chances inSouth Korea complicates a human rightsnarrative that assigns all blame to NorthKoreamdashindeed calls for other interpretiveapproaches which possess more explanatorypower37

Ultimately little in the COI findings departs

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

8

from a well-honed human rights narrativeabout North Korea an account of neo-Orientalist sadism depravity and inhumanitythat took shape after the collapse of thesocialist bloc but crystallized in the wake ofGeorge W Bushrsquos infamous designation ofNorth Korea as part of an ldquoaxis of evilrdquo Even asthe COI report in its details offers informationthat lends itself to multiple interpretations theCommissionrsquos findings in keeping with afamiliar ldquodemonization scriptrdquo toward NorthKorea rehearse the standard postulates ofNorth Korean human rights campaigns38 Theseare worth restating insofar as they form thecontours of a globally dominant narrative aboutNorth Korea to wi t North Korea i sunsurpassingly ldquoevilrdquo The defector is the voiceand representative of the North Korean peopleSatellite images reveal the truth about NorthKorea ldquoNorth Korean human rightsrdquo singularlydenotes those abuses violations and crimesperpetrated by the North Korean state (and in afew instances China) It does not compassthose abuses violations and crimes committedby other states or organizations against theNorth Korean people Relative to North Koreahuman rights and humanitarianism are by andlarge separate non-intersecting tracks39 Thepoliticized withholding of food aid by donornations even if it adversely impacts to thepoint of death the North Korean people is notitself a human rights violation40 Six decades ofUS and UN sanctions and of unending war aresimply business as usual and not themselveshuman rights violations any argument to thecontrary is the stuff of North Koreanpropaganda The breach of the right to peaceand the commission of the crime of aggressionare the least consequential of human rights inthe international human rights abuses TheKorean War is a mere footnote

II Shadow Archive of North KoreanHuman Rights

In December 1951 the Civil Rights Congresspresented a petition titled We Charge Genocide

to the United Nations Submitted as the KoreanWar was raging this document as with otherblack radical human rights petitions addressedto the United Nations during the Cold Wartested the interpretive limits of the legalinstruments of the emergent internationalhuman rights regime Specifically the petitioninsisted that the US ldquorecord of mass slayingson the basis of race of lives deliberatelywarped and distorted by the willful creation ofconditions making for premature deathpoverty and diseaserdquo be recognized as aviolation of the 1948 Genocide Conventionmdashaconvention that had entered into force earlierthat year but that the United States wouldratify only in 1988 long after its brutal hot warcounterinsurgencies in Asia had cooled41

Principally aimed at making Jim Crow legible asa crime within the supranational framework ofhuman rights this petition posited the two-f r o n t n a t u r e o f U S g e n o c i d a lviolencemdashviolence instrumentally motivated athome and abroad by a desire for ldquoeconomicprofit and political controlrdquo42 Linking massviolence perpetrated with impunity in theimperial center to that furiously unleashed onmillions in the peripherymdashhere implying ahomology between police brutality in theUnited States and the US ldquopolice actionrdquo inKoreamdashWe Charge Genocide maintained thatthe roots of the devastating US war in Koreacould be found in the racist logic of Americancapitalism Salvaged from historyrsquos dustbinthis account of US aggression in Korea has aplace within a shadow archive of North Koreanhuman rightsmdashan archive whose unredressedgrievances lurk uneasily below the smoothsurface of dominant North Korean humanrights narratives today43

Attempting to indict US criminality on theworld stage the Civil Rights Congress petitionsought to place both Jim Crow and the US warin Korea squarely under the innovative legalrubric of genocide and in so doing to indictracist and imperialist violence within theframework of universal human rights law

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

9

We Negro petitioners whosecommunities have been laid wastewhose homes have been burnedand looted whose children havebeen killed whose women havebeen raped have noted withpeculiar horror that the genocidaldoctrines and actions of theAmerican white supremacists havealready been exported to thecolored people of As ia Wesolemnly warn that a nation whichpractices genocide against its ownnat iona l s may no t be l ongdeterred if it has the power fromgenocide elsewhere44

Paul Robeson and members of the Civil RightsCongress submitting We Charge Genocide to theUnited Nations Secretariat New York December 171951 Daily WorkerDaily World PhotographsCollection Tamiment Library New York University

In highlighting the devaluation of nonwhitelifemdashlife subjected to collateralization underUS sovereigntymdashthis 1951 petition offeredanalysis along critical human rights lines thatneither peddled in a politics of pity and rescuenor reinscribed the inequality of the world

system Instead it gestured toward ahumanism that had yet to assert its fullestpolitical possibilitymdashwhat Aimeacute Ceacutesaire wouldin 1955 call ldquoa humanism made to the measureof the worldrdquo45 During a juncture in which theUnited States was waging an ldquoappallinglydirtyrdquo war in Korea that would leave roughly 4million dead this petition strove to expose theinhumanity of US capitalist democracy46

Arguing that ldquo[w]hite supremacy at homemakes for colored massacres abroadrdquo insofar asboth evince ldquocontempt for human life in acolored skinrdquo We Charge Genocide contestedthe immunity enjoyed by the lyncher and thebomber ldquoJellied gasoline in Korea and thelynchersrsquo faggot at homerdquo the petition statedldquoare connected in more ways than that bothresult in death by fire The lyncherhellipcannotmurder unpunished and unrebuked without soencouraging the [bomber] that the peace of thewor ld and the l i ves o f m i l l i ons a reendangeredrdquo47 That the Civil Rights Congresswhich openly opposed the US war againstNorth Korea would be labeled subversive bythe US federal government hounded by theHouse un-American Activities Committee(HUAC) audited by the IRS infiltrated by theFBI and mercilessly red-baited until itsremaining members voted to disband in the mid1950s only partly suffices to explain why itscharge of two-front genocide was andcontinues to be unintelligible as a humanrights claim48 Rather detectable in its struggleto make the charge of genocide stick to thegreatest mil itary power in the globalcommunitymdashand to criminalize US wars ofaggression and its asymmetrical wars in aconsequential waymdashwas a hint of theldquosomething rottenrdquo at the heart of theemergent international human rights regime

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

5

Law and redbaiting in South Korea theundemocratic militarization of Jeju OkinawaGuam and Hawailsquoi under the resurgent sign ofa US military pivot to Asia and the Pacific inresponse to a ldquoNorth Korean threatrdquo and soforth

Incongruously the Commission closes its 372-page report with a recommendation impossibleto square with its reiteration of near-singularNorth Korean culpability ldquothe United Nationsand the states that were parties to the KoreanWar should take steps to convene a high-levelpolitical conferencehellipand if agreed ratify afinal peaceful settlement of the war thatcommits all parties to the principles of theCharter of the United Nations includingrespect for human rights and fundamentalfreedomsrdquo22 If recalling the 1953 ArmisticeAgreementrsquos recommendation that a ldquopoliticalconference of a higher level of both sides [theUnited States and North KoreaChina] be heldby representatives appointed respectively tosettle through negotiation the questions of thewithdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea[and] the peaceful settlement of the Koreanquestionrdquo the COI report in all other respectsfailed to locate the issue of North Koreanhuman rights within a structure of persistentenmity that has adversely impacted the humanrights of the peoples of not only North Koreabut also South Korea and the larger Asia-Pacific region23

Instead the COI report identified NorthKorearsquos ldquoinstrumentalrdquo use of the ldquofear ofinvasion and inf i l trat ionrdquomdashwhat theCommission held to be North Korearsquos cynicalorchestration of a ldquostate of emergencyrdquo(apparently not to be conflated with theindisputable fact that the war is far fromover)mdashto explain how the North Korean statehas justified and carried out its ldquoharshgovernmental rule and its accompanyinghuman rights violationsrdquo24 Although the reportelsewhere makes brief mention of the fact thatthe United States has tied food aid to nuclear

concessions it described food shortages inNorth Korea as being irrationally ldquoblamed on ahostile outside worldrdquo by North Koreanauthorities25 Here we would do well to takestock of analysis of the root causes of NorthKorearsquos persistent food insecurity by DavidAustin head of Mercy Corpsrsquo humanitarian aidprogram to North Koreamdasha perspective onewould hope not facilely dismissible as thepropagandistic construction of the NorthKorean government

The food security situation is as y m p t o m o f t h e g r e a t e rproblemhellipwhich is technically thatthe US is still at war with NorthKorea And so there are sanctionson North Korea They are notallowed to get fuel therersquos nofertilizer And so the greaterp o l i t i c a l s i t u a t i o n h a s atremendous effect on the lives ofthe ordinary people who are notprivileged to be a part of thatbroader solution Theyrsquore ordinaryfarmers and theyrsquore suffering theconsequences of the non-solutionto the political questions hellip[U]ntilthere is engagement therersquos notgoing to be greater solutions26

On the conspicuous narrowness of COIrsquos dataculture particularly with regard to thecomplexity of North Korearsquos food securityissues Hazel Smith observes ldquoWhat is moststriking about the [UNHRC] reporting on theDPRK is the almost complete absence ofreference to relevant data from other UNagenc ies donor governments andnongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to theextent that thehellipreporting seems unaware ofthe existence of reports on the DPRK fromwithin the UN system itselfrdquo27 Instead theCommission appears to have relied heavily onan extremely dated account from MeacutedecinsSans Frontiegraveres from 1998 and the testimony of

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

6

former USAID administrator and current co-chairman of the conservative US Committeefor Human Rights in North Korea AndrewNatsios despite the wealth of much morediscerning rigorous scholarship and firsthandknowledge of North Korearsquos food situation thathas emerged in the past decade In this regardthe Commissionrsquos ascription of blame to theDPRK for food violations as Smith furtherargues ldquodemonstrates a securitization ofevidence and analysis through a heavy relianceon assumptions [about North Korean state-levelculpability for food-related human rightsviolations] and a filtering of informationthrough those assumptionsrdquo even as ldquotheweight of [other] UN agency reportingcontradictsrdquo those very premises28

The COI report it should be noted concedesthe political bias of the data culture on which itbased its findings and recommendations ldquoTheCommission is conscious of the fact that mostvictims and witnesses cooperating with theCommission had an overall unfavourableopinion of the DPRKrsquos authoritiesrdquo29 This wasuncomfortably apparent in a peculiar exchangebetween Commission chair Kirby and a NorthKorean defector residing in the United StatesDuring the October 30 2013 public hearing inWashington DC Kirby repeatedly pressed JoJin-hye to comment upon North Korearsquos hostilestance toward the COI investigation ldquoNow areyou aware that the government of North Koreasays that the type of testimony that you havegiven to the Commission of Inquiry today isfalse and that you are a defector and a personwho should not be believed because you aredefaming North Koreardquo30 The leading nature ofthis question notwithstanding Jo offered up aresponse that symptomatically attested to thestructure of enmity and the geopolitics ofunresolved war underpinningmdashand to no smalldegree compromisingmdashthe proceedings ldquoI amwell aware I know who my enemy and myfriend arerdquo31

Although the Commission conducted roughly

240 confidential interviews and held four setsof public hearings the solicited testimony ofseasoned political actors long at the helm of awell-funded transnational ldquoNorth Koreanhuman rightsrdquo industry aimed at North Koreanregime-change or regime-collapse loomed largewithin the 372-page COI report In particularthe report relied heavily for its framing ontestimony from prominent North Koreandefectors like Kang Chol-hwan Ahn Myong-chol Shin Dong-hyuk Kim Hyuk and KimYoung-soon and the ldquoexpertiserdquo of unabashedlyright-wing South Korean American andJapanese ldquoNorth Korean human rightsrdquoadvocates like Kim Young-hwan AndrewNatsios Victor Cha and Ishimaru Jiro Theinsight of this cadre of ldquowitnesses and expertsrdquointo North Korea appears frequently in the COIreport furnishing its narrative contours Inother words despite the Commissionrsquosassertion that all testimonies were carefullyvetted for reliability and Kirbyrsquos strainedassurances that such testimonies representldquoauthentic voicesrdquo the 372-page COI reporttroublingly allocates outsized representationalvalue to the words and views of ultimately onlya handful of institutionalized actors whoserelationship to US and South Koreanintelligence US soft-power institutions thinlyrenovated Cold War defense organizationshawks of neoconservative and liberal varietiesconservative evangelicals and anticommunistKoreans in South Korea and the diaspora goescompletely unquestioned32 It treats theirtestimony moreover as primary dataascribing a false positivism to sources thatldquodivulge their secrets at some distance in timeand space from the ongoing developmentsinside the target they are reporting onrdquo33

Although the COI report offers a perfunctoryaccount o f i t s own methodo log ica lunderpinnings we should remark what goesunsaid namely the interoperability of thetechnologies of North Korean human rightsnamely defector testimony and satelliteimagery and the technologies of war Indeed

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

7

North Korean human rights testimony ismorphologically indistinguishable from whatthe CIA and military intelligence agencies callldquohuman intelligencerdquo (Humint) As former CIAInspector General Frederick Hitz points outldquoWhere it has no physical presence the [CIA]has historically relied for humint primarily ondefectors detainees legal travelers oppositiongroups and foreign government liaisonservicesrdquo That the COI report gives extensivespace to defector testimony without weighingthe perils of an over-reliance on this sort ofinformational base raises the question of theempirical nature of the North Korean humanrights project Donald MacIntyre former Seoulbureau chief for Time magazine observes

North Koreans who have left theircountry have provided some of thebest information that we have Butyou canrsquot go to North Korea andcheck what they tell you Anexample arose in 2004 when theBBC ran a documentary allegingthat North Korea was usingpolitical prisoners as guinea pigs inchemical weapons tests The issueis now part of the human rightsagenda on North Korea hellipTheproblem has become worsehellipas aresult of the Japanese and Koreanmediarsquos pract ice of payingdefectors for interviews Paying forinterviews creates an incentive topad or create stories that willboost your own market valuehellipBad news about evil North Koreasells34

In his memoir The Aquariums of Pyongyang(2001) co-authored with the French anti-communist Pierre Rigoulot Kang Chol-hwan amajor COI witness states that Japanese andSouth Korean media paid him so handsomelyldquofor opening [his] mouthrdquo about North Koreathat he ldquooccasionally felt [he] was trading [his]

experience for a storyhellipno longer entirely [his]ownrdquo35

Yet the question today goes beyond whetherldquoauthentic voicesrdquo like Kangrsquos represent thetruth of North Korea Rather in light of the factthat approximately 26000 North Koreansresettled in South Korea both during and afterthe 1990srsquo North Korean famine we mightmore pointedly ask whether the testimony ofNorth Korean defectors and migrants featuredin the COI report bears a suff icientlyrepresentative relationship to the diversity ofviews and experiences of this significantminority population On this point in a SouthKorean civil society organizational response tothe COI findings Peoplersquos Solidarity forParticipatory Democracy (PSPD) highlights oneof the reportrsquos major shortcomings ldquoNorthKorean human rights issues should not belimited to the situation inside the DPRK [butshould] cover human rights concerns of allNorth Korean people their separated familiesand relativesrdquo including ldquoDPRK defectorsliving in the ROKrdquo36 It is above all thecomplexity of allegiance and nuance ofperspective within this demographic that meritcareful regard Not only does this post-faminewave of migrants constitute a critical newphase in the separated-family phenomenonwith phone calls and remittances flowing oftenin circuitous ways across the DMZ but alsot h e S o u t h K o r e a n s t a t e rsquo s p a s tinstrumentalization of North Korean defectorstoward anti-communist Cold War endsplausible when they were few and far betweenis no longer a broadly applicable strategyMoreover that North Korean migrants facecrippling labor and educational discriminationsocial stigma and diminished life chances inSouth Korea complicates a human rightsnarrative that assigns all blame to NorthKoreamdashindeed calls for other interpretiveapproaches which possess more explanatorypower37

Ultimately little in the COI findings departs

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

8

from a well-honed human rights narrativeabout North Korea an account of neo-Orientalist sadism depravity and inhumanitythat took shape after the collapse of thesocialist bloc but crystallized in the wake ofGeorge W Bushrsquos infamous designation ofNorth Korea as part of an ldquoaxis of evilrdquo Even asthe COI report in its details offers informationthat lends itself to multiple interpretations theCommissionrsquos findings in keeping with afamiliar ldquodemonization scriptrdquo toward NorthKorea rehearse the standard postulates ofNorth Korean human rights campaigns38 Theseare worth restating insofar as they form thecontours of a globally dominant narrative aboutNorth Korea to wi t North Korea i sunsurpassingly ldquoevilrdquo The defector is the voiceand representative of the North Korean peopleSatellite images reveal the truth about NorthKorea ldquoNorth Korean human rightsrdquo singularlydenotes those abuses violations and crimesperpetrated by the North Korean state (and in afew instances China) It does not compassthose abuses violations and crimes committedby other states or organizations against theNorth Korean people Relative to North Koreahuman rights and humanitarianism are by andlarge separate non-intersecting tracks39 Thepoliticized withholding of food aid by donornations even if it adversely impacts to thepoint of death the North Korean people is notitself a human rights violation40 Six decades ofUS and UN sanctions and of unending war aresimply business as usual and not themselveshuman rights violations any argument to thecontrary is the stuff of North Koreanpropaganda The breach of the right to peaceand the commission of the crime of aggressionare the least consequential of human rights inthe international human rights abuses TheKorean War is a mere footnote

II Shadow Archive of North KoreanHuman Rights

In December 1951 the Civil Rights Congresspresented a petition titled We Charge Genocide

to the United Nations Submitted as the KoreanWar was raging this document as with otherblack radical human rights petitions addressedto the United Nations during the Cold Wartested the interpretive limits of the legalinstruments of the emergent internationalhuman rights regime Specifically the petitioninsisted that the US ldquorecord of mass slayingson the basis of race of lives deliberatelywarped and distorted by the willful creation ofconditions making for premature deathpoverty and diseaserdquo be recognized as aviolation of the 1948 Genocide Conventionmdashaconvention that had entered into force earlierthat year but that the United States wouldratify only in 1988 long after its brutal hot warcounterinsurgencies in Asia had cooled41

Principally aimed at making Jim Crow legible asa crime within the supranational framework ofhuman rights this petition posited the two-f r o n t n a t u r e o f U S g e n o c i d a lviolencemdashviolence instrumentally motivated athome and abroad by a desire for ldquoeconomicprofit and political controlrdquo42 Linking massviolence perpetrated with impunity in theimperial center to that furiously unleashed onmillions in the peripherymdashhere implying ahomology between police brutality in theUnited States and the US ldquopolice actionrdquo inKoreamdashWe Charge Genocide maintained thatthe roots of the devastating US war in Koreacould be found in the racist logic of Americancapitalism Salvaged from historyrsquos dustbinthis account of US aggression in Korea has aplace within a shadow archive of North Koreanhuman rightsmdashan archive whose unredressedgrievances lurk uneasily below the smoothsurface of dominant North Korean humanrights narratives today43

Attempting to indict US criminality on theworld stage the Civil Rights Congress petitionsought to place both Jim Crow and the US warin Korea squarely under the innovative legalrubric of genocide and in so doing to indictracist and imperialist violence within theframework of universal human rights law

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

9

We Negro petitioners whosecommunities have been laid wastewhose homes have been burnedand looted whose children havebeen killed whose women havebeen raped have noted withpeculiar horror that the genocidaldoctrines and actions of theAmerican white supremacists havealready been exported to thecolored people of As ia Wesolemnly warn that a nation whichpractices genocide against its ownnat iona l s may no t be l ongdeterred if it has the power fromgenocide elsewhere44

Paul Robeson and members of the Civil RightsCongress submitting We Charge Genocide to theUnited Nations Secretariat New York December 171951 Daily WorkerDaily World PhotographsCollection Tamiment Library New York University

In highlighting the devaluation of nonwhitelifemdashlife subjected to collateralization underUS sovereigntymdashthis 1951 petition offeredanalysis along critical human rights lines thatneither peddled in a politics of pity and rescuenor reinscribed the inequality of the world

system Instead it gestured toward ahumanism that had yet to assert its fullestpolitical possibilitymdashwhat Aimeacute Ceacutesaire wouldin 1955 call ldquoa humanism made to the measureof the worldrdquo45 During a juncture in which theUnited States was waging an ldquoappallinglydirtyrdquo war in Korea that would leave roughly 4million dead this petition strove to expose theinhumanity of US capitalist democracy46

Arguing that ldquo[w]hite supremacy at homemakes for colored massacres abroadrdquo insofar asboth evince ldquocontempt for human life in acolored skinrdquo We Charge Genocide contestedthe immunity enjoyed by the lyncher and thebomber ldquoJellied gasoline in Korea and thelynchersrsquo faggot at homerdquo the petition statedldquoare connected in more ways than that bothresult in death by fire The lyncherhellipcannotmurder unpunished and unrebuked without soencouraging the [bomber] that the peace of thewor ld and the l i ves o f m i l l i ons a reendangeredrdquo47 That the Civil Rights Congresswhich openly opposed the US war againstNorth Korea would be labeled subversive bythe US federal government hounded by theHouse un-American Activities Committee(HUAC) audited by the IRS infiltrated by theFBI and mercilessly red-baited until itsremaining members voted to disband in the mid1950s only partly suffices to explain why itscharge of two-front genocide was andcontinues to be unintelligible as a humanrights claim48 Rather detectable in its struggleto make the charge of genocide stick to thegreatest mil itary power in the globalcommunitymdashand to criminalize US wars ofaggression and its asymmetrical wars in aconsequential waymdashwas a hint of theldquosomething rottenrdquo at the heart of theemergent international human rights regime

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

6

former USAID administrator and current co-chairman of the conservative US Committeefor Human Rights in North Korea AndrewNatsios despite the wealth of much morediscerning rigorous scholarship and firsthandknowledge of North Korearsquos food situation thathas emerged in the past decade In this regardthe Commissionrsquos ascription of blame to theDPRK for food violations as Smith furtherargues ldquodemonstrates a securitization ofevidence and analysis through a heavy relianceon assumptions [about North Korean state-levelculpability for food-related human rightsviolations] and a filtering of informationthrough those assumptionsrdquo even as ldquotheweight of [other] UN agency reportingcontradictsrdquo those very premises28

The COI report it should be noted concedesthe political bias of the data culture on which itbased its findings and recommendations ldquoTheCommission is conscious of the fact that mostvictims and witnesses cooperating with theCommission had an overall unfavourableopinion of the DPRKrsquos authoritiesrdquo29 This wasuncomfortably apparent in a peculiar exchangebetween Commission chair Kirby and a NorthKorean defector residing in the United StatesDuring the October 30 2013 public hearing inWashington DC Kirby repeatedly pressed JoJin-hye to comment upon North Korearsquos hostilestance toward the COI investigation ldquoNow areyou aware that the government of North Koreasays that the type of testimony that you havegiven to the Commission of Inquiry today isfalse and that you are a defector and a personwho should not be believed because you aredefaming North Koreardquo30 The leading nature ofthis question notwithstanding Jo offered up aresponse that symptomatically attested to thestructure of enmity and the geopolitics ofunresolved war underpinningmdashand to no smalldegree compromisingmdashthe proceedings ldquoI amwell aware I know who my enemy and myfriend arerdquo31

Although the Commission conducted roughly

240 confidential interviews and held four setsof public hearings the solicited testimony ofseasoned political actors long at the helm of awell-funded transnational ldquoNorth Koreanhuman rightsrdquo industry aimed at North Koreanregime-change or regime-collapse loomed largewithin the 372-page COI report In particularthe report relied heavily for its framing ontestimony from prominent North Koreandefectors like Kang Chol-hwan Ahn Myong-chol Shin Dong-hyuk Kim Hyuk and KimYoung-soon and the ldquoexpertiserdquo of unabashedlyright-wing South Korean American andJapanese ldquoNorth Korean human rightsrdquoadvocates like Kim Young-hwan AndrewNatsios Victor Cha and Ishimaru Jiro Theinsight of this cadre of ldquowitnesses and expertsrdquointo North Korea appears frequently in the COIreport furnishing its narrative contours Inother words despite the Commissionrsquosassertion that all testimonies were carefullyvetted for reliability and Kirbyrsquos strainedassurances that such testimonies representldquoauthentic voicesrdquo the 372-page COI reporttroublingly allocates outsized representationalvalue to the words and views of ultimately onlya handful of institutionalized actors whoserelationship to US and South Koreanintelligence US soft-power institutions thinlyrenovated Cold War defense organizationshawks of neoconservative and liberal varietiesconservative evangelicals and anticommunistKoreans in South Korea and the diaspora goescompletely unquestioned32 It treats theirtestimony moreover as primary dataascribing a false positivism to sources thatldquodivulge their secrets at some distance in timeand space from the ongoing developmentsinside the target they are reporting onrdquo33

Although the COI report offers a perfunctoryaccount o f i t s own methodo log ica lunderpinnings we should remark what goesunsaid namely the interoperability of thetechnologies of North Korean human rightsnamely defector testimony and satelliteimagery and the technologies of war Indeed

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

7

North Korean human rights testimony ismorphologically indistinguishable from whatthe CIA and military intelligence agencies callldquohuman intelligencerdquo (Humint) As former CIAInspector General Frederick Hitz points outldquoWhere it has no physical presence the [CIA]has historically relied for humint primarily ondefectors detainees legal travelers oppositiongroups and foreign government liaisonservicesrdquo That the COI report gives extensivespace to defector testimony without weighingthe perils of an over-reliance on this sort ofinformational base raises the question of theempirical nature of the North Korean humanrights project Donald MacIntyre former Seoulbureau chief for Time magazine observes

North Koreans who have left theircountry have provided some of thebest information that we have Butyou canrsquot go to North Korea andcheck what they tell you Anexample arose in 2004 when theBBC ran a documentary allegingthat North Korea was usingpolitical prisoners as guinea pigs inchemical weapons tests The issueis now part of the human rightsagenda on North Korea hellipTheproblem has become worsehellipas aresult of the Japanese and Koreanmediarsquos pract ice of payingdefectors for interviews Paying forinterviews creates an incentive topad or create stories that willboost your own market valuehellipBad news about evil North Koreasells34

In his memoir The Aquariums of Pyongyang(2001) co-authored with the French anti-communist Pierre Rigoulot Kang Chol-hwan amajor COI witness states that Japanese andSouth Korean media paid him so handsomelyldquofor opening [his] mouthrdquo about North Koreathat he ldquooccasionally felt [he] was trading [his]

experience for a storyhellipno longer entirely [his]ownrdquo35

Yet the question today goes beyond whetherldquoauthentic voicesrdquo like Kangrsquos represent thetruth of North Korea Rather in light of the factthat approximately 26000 North Koreansresettled in South Korea both during and afterthe 1990srsquo North Korean famine we mightmore pointedly ask whether the testimony ofNorth Korean defectors and migrants featuredin the COI report bears a suff icientlyrepresentative relationship to the diversity ofviews and experiences of this significantminority population On this point in a SouthKorean civil society organizational response tothe COI findings Peoplersquos Solidarity forParticipatory Democracy (PSPD) highlights oneof the reportrsquos major shortcomings ldquoNorthKorean human rights issues should not belimited to the situation inside the DPRK [butshould] cover human rights concerns of allNorth Korean people their separated familiesand relativesrdquo including ldquoDPRK defectorsliving in the ROKrdquo36 It is above all thecomplexity of allegiance and nuance ofperspective within this demographic that meritcareful regard Not only does this post-faminewave of migrants constitute a critical newphase in the separated-family phenomenonwith phone calls and remittances flowing oftenin circuitous ways across the DMZ but alsot h e S o u t h K o r e a n s t a t e rsquo s p a s tinstrumentalization of North Korean defectorstoward anti-communist Cold War endsplausible when they were few and far betweenis no longer a broadly applicable strategyMoreover that North Korean migrants facecrippling labor and educational discriminationsocial stigma and diminished life chances inSouth Korea complicates a human rightsnarrative that assigns all blame to NorthKoreamdashindeed calls for other interpretiveapproaches which possess more explanatorypower37

Ultimately little in the COI findings departs

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

8

from a well-honed human rights narrativeabout North Korea an account of neo-Orientalist sadism depravity and inhumanitythat took shape after the collapse of thesocialist bloc but crystallized in the wake ofGeorge W Bushrsquos infamous designation ofNorth Korea as part of an ldquoaxis of evilrdquo Even asthe COI report in its details offers informationthat lends itself to multiple interpretations theCommissionrsquos findings in keeping with afamiliar ldquodemonization scriptrdquo toward NorthKorea rehearse the standard postulates ofNorth Korean human rights campaigns38 Theseare worth restating insofar as they form thecontours of a globally dominant narrative aboutNorth Korea to wi t North Korea i sunsurpassingly ldquoevilrdquo The defector is the voiceand representative of the North Korean peopleSatellite images reveal the truth about NorthKorea ldquoNorth Korean human rightsrdquo singularlydenotes those abuses violations and crimesperpetrated by the North Korean state (and in afew instances China) It does not compassthose abuses violations and crimes committedby other states or organizations against theNorth Korean people Relative to North Koreahuman rights and humanitarianism are by andlarge separate non-intersecting tracks39 Thepoliticized withholding of food aid by donornations even if it adversely impacts to thepoint of death the North Korean people is notitself a human rights violation40 Six decades ofUS and UN sanctions and of unending war aresimply business as usual and not themselveshuman rights violations any argument to thecontrary is the stuff of North Koreanpropaganda The breach of the right to peaceand the commission of the crime of aggressionare the least consequential of human rights inthe international human rights abuses TheKorean War is a mere footnote

II Shadow Archive of North KoreanHuman Rights

In December 1951 the Civil Rights Congresspresented a petition titled We Charge Genocide

to the United Nations Submitted as the KoreanWar was raging this document as with otherblack radical human rights petitions addressedto the United Nations during the Cold Wartested the interpretive limits of the legalinstruments of the emergent internationalhuman rights regime Specifically the petitioninsisted that the US ldquorecord of mass slayingson the basis of race of lives deliberatelywarped and distorted by the willful creation ofconditions making for premature deathpoverty and diseaserdquo be recognized as aviolation of the 1948 Genocide Conventionmdashaconvention that had entered into force earlierthat year but that the United States wouldratify only in 1988 long after its brutal hot warcounterinsurgencies in Asia had cooled41

Principally aimed at making Jim Crow legible asa crime within the supranational framework ofhuman rights this petition posited the two-f r o n t n a t u r e o f U S g e n o c i d a lviolencemdashviolence instrumentally motivated athome and abroad by a desire for ldquoeconomicprofit and political controlrdquo42 Linking massviolence perpetrated with impunity in theimperial center to that furiously unleashed onmillions in the peripherymdashhere implying ahomology between police brutality in theUnited States and the US ldquopolice actionrdquo inKoreamdashWe Charge Genocide maintained thatthe roots of the devastating US war in Koreacould be found in the racist logic of Americancapitalism Salvaged from historyrsquos dustbinthis account of US aggression in Korea has aplace within a shadow archive of North Koreanhuman rightsmdashan archive whose unredressedgrievances lurk uneasily below the smoothsurface of dominant North Korean humanrights narratives today43

Attempting to indict US criminality on theworld stage the Civil Rights Congress petitionsought to place both Jim Crow and the US warin Korea squarely under the innovative legalrubric of genocide and in so doing to indictracist and imperialist violence within theframework of universal human rights law

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

9

We Negro petitioners whosecommunities have been laid wastewhose homes have been burnedand looted whose children havebeen killed whose women havebeen raped have noted withpeculiar horror that the genocidaldoctrines and actions of theAmerican white supremacists havealready been exported to thecolored people of As ia Wesolemnly warn that a nation whichpractices genocide against its ownnat iona l s may no t be l ongdeterred if it has the power fromgenocide elsewhere44

Paul Robeson and members of the Civil RightsCongress submitting We Charge Genocide to theUnited Nations Secretariat New York December 171951 Daily WorkerDaily World PhotographsCollection Tamiment Library New York University

In highlighting the devaluation of nonwhitelifemdashlife subjected to collateralization underUS sovereigntymdashthis 1951 petition offeredanalysis along critical human rights lines thatneither peddled in a politics of pity and rescuenor reinscribed the inequality of the world

system Instead it gestured toward ahumanism that had yet to assert its fullestpolitical possibilitymdashwhat Aimeacute Ceacutesaire wouldin 1955 call ldquoa humanism made to the measureof the worldrdquo45 During a juncture in which theUnited States was waging an ldquoappallinglydirtyrdquo war in Korea that would leave roughly 4million dead this petition strove to expose theinhumanity of US capitalist democracy46

Arguing that ldquo[w]hite supremacy at homemakes for colored massacres abroadrdquo insofar asboth evince ldquocontempt for human life in acolored skinrdquo We Charge Genocide contestedthe immunity enjoyed by the lyncher and thebomber ldquoJellied gasoline in Korea and thelynchersrsquo faggot at homerdquo the petition statedldquoare connected in more ways than that bothresult in death by fire The lyncherhellipcannotmurder unpunished and unrebuked without soencouraging the [bomber] that the peace of thewor ld and the l i ves o f m i l l i ons a reendangeredrdquo47 That the Civil Rights Congresswhich openly opposed the US war againstNorth Korea would be labeled subversive bythe US federal government hounded by theHouse un-American Activities Committee(HUAC) audited by the IRS infiltrated by theFBI and mercilessly red-baited until itsremaining members voted to disband in the mid1950s only partly suffices to explain why itscharge of two-front genocide was andcontinues to be unintelligible as a humanrights claim48 Rather detectable in its struggleto make the charge of genocide stick to thegreatest mil itary power in the globalcommunitymdashand to criminalize US wars ofaggression and its asymmetrical wars in aconsequential waymdashwas a hint of theldquosomething rottenrdquo at the heart of theemergent international human rights regime

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

7

North Korean human rights testimony ismorphologically indistinguishable from whatthe CIA and military intelligence agencies callldquohuman intelligencerdquo (Humint) As former CIAInspector General Frederick Hitz points outldquoWhere it has no physical presence the [CIA]has historically relied for humint primarily ondefectors detainees legal travelers oppositiongroups and foreign government liaisonservicesrdquo That the COI report gives extensivespace to defector testimony without weighingthe perils of an over-reliance on this sort ofinformational base raises the question of theempirical nature of the North Korean humanrights project Donald MacIntyre former Seoulbureau chief for Time magazine observes

North Koreans who have left theircountry have provided some of thebest information that we have Butyou canrsquot go to North Korea andcheck what they tell you Anexample arose in 2004 when theBBC ran a documentary allegingthat North Korea was usingpolitical prisoners as guinea pigs inchemical weapons tests The issueis now part of the human rightsagenda on North Korea hellipTheproblem has become worsehellipas aresult of the Japanese and Koreanmediarsquos pract ice of payingdefectors for interviews Paying forinterviews creates an incentive topad or create stories that willboost your own market valuehellipBad news about evil North Koreasells34

In his memoir The Aquariums of Pyongyang(2001) co-authored with the French anti-communist Pierre Rigoulot Kang Chol-hwan amajor COI witness states that Japanese andSouth Korean media paid him so handsomelyldquofor opening [his] mouthrdquo about North Koreathat he ldquooccasionally felt [he] was trading [his]

experience for a storyhellipno longer entirely [his]ownrdquo35

Yet the question today goes beyond whetherldquoauthentic voicesrdquo like Kangrsquos represent thetruth of North Korea Rather in light of the factthat approximately 26000 North Koreansresettled in South Korea both during and afterthe 1990srsquo North Korean famine we mightmore pointedly ask whether the testimony ofNorth Korean defectors and migrants featuredin the COI report bears a suff icientlyrepresentative relationship to the diversity ofviews and experiences of this significantminority population On this point in a SouthKorean civil society organizational response tothe COI findings Peoplersquos Solidarity forParticipatory Democracy (PSPD) highlights oneof the reportrsquos major shortcomings ldquoNorthKorean human rights issues should not belimited to the situation inside the DPRK [butshould] cover human rights concerns of allNorth Korean people their separated familiesand relativesrdquo including ldquoDPRK defectorsliving in the ROKrdquo36 It is above all thecomplexity of allegiance and nuance ofperspective within this demographic that meritcareful regard Not only does this post-faminewave of migrants constitute a critical newphase in the separated-family phenomenonwith phone calls and remittances flowing oftenin circuitous ways across the DMZ but alsot h e S o u t h K o r e a n s t a t e rsquo s p a s tinstrumentalization of North Korean defectorstoward anti-communist Cold War endsplausible when they were few and far betweenis no longer a broadly applicable strategyMoreover that North Korean migrants facecrippling labor and educational discriminationsocial stigma and diminished life chances inSouth Korea complicates a human rightsnarrative that assigns all blame to NorthKoreamdashindeed calls for other interpretiveapproaches which possess more explanatorypower37

Ultimately little in the COI findings departs

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

8

from a well-honed human rights narrativeabout North Korea an account of neo-Orientalist sadism depravity and inhumanitythat took shape after the collapse of thesocialist bloc but crystallized in the wake ofGeorge W Bushrsquos infamous designation ofNorth Korea as part of an ldquoaxis of evilrdquo Even asthe COI report in its details offers informationthat lends itself to multiple interpretations theCommissionrsquos findings in keeping with afamiliar ldquodemonization scriptrdquo toward NorthKorea rehearse the standard postulates ofNorth Korean human rights campaigns38 Theseare worth restating insofar as they form thecontours of a globally dominant narrative aboutNorth Korea to wi t North Korea i sunsurpassingly ldquoevilrdquo The defector is the voiceand representative of the North Korean peopleSatellite images reveal the truth about NorthKorea ldquoNorth Korean human rightsrdquo singularlydenotes those abuses violations and crimesperpetrated by the North Korean state (and in afew instances China) It does not compassthose abuses violations and crimes committedby other states or organizations against theNorth Korean people Relative to North Koreahuman rights and humanitarianism are by andlarge separate non-intersecting tracks39 Thepoliticized withholding of food aid by donornations even if it adversely impacts to thepoint of death the North Korean people is notitself a human rights violation40 Six decades ofUS and UN sanctions and of unending war aresimply business as usual and not themselveshuman rights violations any argument to thecontrary is the stuff of North Koreanpropaganda The breach of the right to peaceand the commission of the crime of aggressionare the least consequential of human rights inthe international human rights abuses TheKorean War is a mere footnote

II Shadow Archive of North KoreanHuman Rights

In December 1951 the Civil Rights Congresspresented a petition titled We Charge Genocide

to the United Nations Submitted as the KoreanWar was raging this document as with otherblack radical human rights petitions addressedto the United Nations during the Cold Wartested the interpretive limits of the legalinstruments of the emergent internationalhuman rights regime Specifically the petitioninsisted that the US ldquorecord of mass slayingson the basis of race of lives deliberatelywarped and distorted by the willful creation ofconditions making for premature deathpoverty and diseaserdquo be recognized as aviolation of the 1948 Genocide Conventionmdashaconvention that had entered into force earlierthat year but that the United States wouldratify only in 1988 long after its brutal hot warcounterinsurgencies in Asia had cooled41

Principally aimed at making Jim Crow legible asa crime within the supranational framework ofhuman rights this petition posited the two-f r o n t n a t u r e o f U S g e n o c i d a lviolencemdashviolence instrumentally motivated athome and abroad by a desire for ldquoeconomicprofit and political controlrdquo42 Linking massviolence perpetrated with impunity in theimperial center to that furiously unleashed onmillions in the peripherymdashhere implying ahomology between police brutality in theUnited States and the US ldquopolice actionrdquo inKoreamdashWe Charge Genocide maintained thatthe roots of the devastating US war in Koreacould be found in the racist logic of Americancapitalism Salvaged from historyrsquos dustbinthis account of US aggression in Korea has aplace within a shadow archive of North Koreanhuman rightsmdashan archive whose unredressedgrievances lurk uneasily below the smoothsurface of dominant North Korean humanrights narratives today43

Attempting to indict US criminality on theworld stage the Civil Rights Congress petitionsought to place both Jim Crow and the US warin Korea squarely under the innovative legalrubric of genocide and in so doing to indictracist and imperialist violence within theframework of universal human rights law

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

9

We Negro petitioners whosecommunities have been laid wastewhose homes have been burnedand looted whose children havebeen killed whose women havebeen raped have noted withpeculiar horror that the genocidaldoctrines and actions of theAmerican white supremacists havealready been exported to thecolored people of As ia Wesolemnly warn that a nation whichpractices genocide against its ownnat iona l s may no t be l ongdeterred if it has the power fromgenocide elsewhere44

Paul Robeson and members of the Civil RightsCongress submitting We Charge Genocide to theUnited Nations Secretariat New York December 171951 Daily WorkerDaily World PhotographsCollection Tamiment Library New York University

In highlighting the devaluation of nonwhitelifemdashlife subjected to collateralization underUS sovereigntymdashthis 1951 petition offeredanalysis along critical human rights lines thatneither peddled in a politics of pity and rescuenor reinscribed the inequality of the world

system Instead it gestured toward ahumanism that had yet to assert its fullestpolitical possibilitymdashwhat Aimeacute Ceacutesaire wouldin 1955 call ldquoa humanism made to the measureof the worldrdquo45 During a juncture in which theUnited States was waging an ldquoappallinglydirtyrdquo war in Korea that would leave roughly 4million dead this petition strove to expose theinhumanity of US capitalist democracy46

Arguing that ldquo[w]hite supremacy at homemakes for colored massacres abroadrdquo insofar asboth evince ldquocontempt for human life in acolored skinrdquo We Charge Genocide contestedthe immunity enjoyed by the lyncher and thebomber ldquoJellied gasoline in Korea and thelynchersrsquo faggot at homerdquo the petition statedldquoare connected in more ways than that bothresult in death by fire The lyncherhellipcannotmurder unpunished and unrebuked without soencouraging the [bomber] that the peace of thewor ld and the l i ves o f m i l l i ons a reendangeredrdquo47 That the Civil Rights Congresswhich openly opposed the US war againstNorth Korea would be labeled subversive bythe US federal government hounded by theHouse un-American Activities Committee(HUAC) audited by the IRS infiltrated by theFBI and mercilessly red-baited until itsremaining members voted to disband in the mid1950s only partly suffices to explain why itscharge of two-front genocide was andcontinues to be unintelligible as a humanrights claim48 Rather detectable in its struggleto make the charge of genocide stick to thegreatest mil itary power in the globalcommunitymdashand to criminalize US wars ofaggression and its asymmetrical wars in aconsequential waymdashwas a hint of theldquosomething rottenrdquo at the heart of theemergent international human rights regime

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

8

from a well-honed human rights narrativeabout North Korea an account of neo-Orientalist sadism depravity and inhumanitythat took shape after the collapse of thesocialist bloc but crystallized in the wake ofGeorge W Bushrsquos infamous designation ofNorth Korea as part of an ldquoaxis of evilrdquo Even asthe COI report in its details offers informationthat lends itself to multiple interpretations theCommissionrsquos findings in keeping with afamiliar ldquodemonization scriptrdquo toward NorthKorea rehearse the standard postulates ofNorth Korean human rights campaigns38 Theseare worth restating insofar as they form thecontours of a globally dominant narrative aboutNorth Korea to wi t North Korea i sunsurpassingly ldquoevilrdquo The defector is the voiceand representative of the North Korean peopleSatellite images reveal the truth about NorthKorea ldquoNorth Korean human rightsrdquo singularlydenotes those abuses violations and crimesperpetrated by the North Korean state (and in afew instances China) It does not compassthose abuses violations and crimes committedby other states or organizations against theNorth Korean people Relative to North Koreahuman rights and humanitarianism are by andlarge separate non-intersecting tracks39 Thepoliticized withholding of food aid by donornations even if it adversely impacts to thepoint of death the North Korean people is notitself a human rights violation40 Six decades ofUS and UN sanctions and of unending war aresimply business as usual and not themselveshuman rights violations any argument to thecontrary is the stuff of North Koreanpropaganda The breach of the right to peaceand the commission of the crime of aggressionare the least consequential of human rights inthe international human rights abuses TheKorean War is a mere footnote

II Shadow Archive of North KoreanHuman Rights

In December 1951 the Civil Rights Congresspresented a petition titled We Charge Genocide

to the United Nations Submitted as the KoreanWar was raging this document as with otherblack radical human rights petitions addressedto the United Nations during the Cold Wartested the interpretive limits of the legalinstruments of the emergent internationalhuman rights regime Specifically the petitioninsisted that the US ldquorecord of mass slayingson the basis of race of lives deliberatelywarped and distorted by the willful creation ofconditions making for premature deathpoverty and diseaserdquo be recognized as aviolation of the 1948 Genocide Conventionmdashaconvention that had entered into force earlierthat year but that the United States wouldratify only in 1988 long after its brutal hot warcounterinsurgencies in Asia had cooled41

Principally aimed at making Jim Crow legible asa crime within the supranational framework ofhuman rights this petition posited the two-f r o n t n a t u r e o f U S g e n o c i d a lviolencemdashviolence instrumentally motivated athome and abroad by a desire for ldquoeconomicprofit and political controlrdquo42 Linking massviolence perpetrated with impunity in theimperial center to that furiously unleashed onmillions in the peripherymdashhere implying ahomology between police brutality in theUnited States and the US ldquopolice actionrdquo inKoreamdashWe Charge Genocide maintained thatthe roots of the devastating US war in Koreacould be found in the racist logic of Americancapitalism Salvaged from historyrsquos dustbinthis account of US aggression in Korea has aplace within a shadow archive of North Koreanhuman rightsmdashan archive whose unredressedgrievances lurk uneasily below the smoothsurface of dominant North Korean humanrights narratives today43

Attempting to indict US criminality on theworld stage the Civil Rights Congress petitionsought to place both Jim Crow and the US warin Korea squarely under the innovative legalrubric of genocide and in so doing to indictracist and imperialist violence within theframework of universal human rights law

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

9

We Negro petitioners whosecommunities have been laid wastewhose homes have been burnedand looted whose children havebeen killed whose women havebeen raped have noted withpeculiar horror that the genocidaldoctrines and actions of theAmerican white supremacists havealready been exported to thecolored people of As ia Wesolemnly warn that a nation whichpractices genocide against its ownnat iona l s may no t be l ongdeterred if it has the power fromgenocide elsewhere44

Paul Robeson and members of the Civil RightsCongress submitting We Charge Genocide to theUnited Nations Secretariat New York December 171951 Daily WorkerDaily World PhotographsCollection Tamiment Library New York University

In highlighting the devaluation of nonwhitelifemdashlife subjected to collateralization underUS sovereigntymdashthis 1951 petition offeredanalysis along critical human rights lines thatneither peddled in a politics of pity and rescuenor reinscribed the inequality of the world

system Instead it gestured toward ahumanism that had yet to assert its fullestpolitical possibilitymdashwhat Aimeacute Ceacutesaire wouldin 1955 call ldquoa humanism made to the measureof the worldrdquo45 During a juncture in which theUnited States was waging an ldquoappallinglydirtyrdquo war in Korea that would leave roughly 4million dead this petition strove to expose theinhumanity of US capitalist democracy46

Arguing that ldquo[w]hite supremacy at homemakes for colored massacres abroadrdquo insofar asboth evince ldquocontempt for human life in acolored skinrdquo We Charge Genocide contestedthe immunity enjoyed by the lyncher and thebomber ldquoJellied gasoline in Korea and thelynchersrsquo faggot at homerdquo the petition statedldquoare connected in more ways than that bothresult in death by fire The lyncherhellipcannotmurder unpunished and unrebuked without soencouraging the [bomber] that the peace of thewor ld and the l i ves o f m i l l i ons a reendangeredrdquo47 That the Civil Rights Congresswhich openly opposed the US war againstNorth Korea would be labeled subversive bythe US federal government hounded by theHouse un-American Activities Committee(HUAC) audited by the IRS infiltrated by theFBI and mercilessly red-baited until itsremaining members voted to disband in the mid1950s only partly suffices to explain why itscharge of two-front genocide was andcontinues to be unintelligible as a humanrights claim48 Rather detectable in its struggleto make the charge of genocide stick to thegreatest mil itary power in the globalcommunitymdashand to criminalize US wars ofaggression and its asymmetrical wars in aconsequential waymdashwas a hint of theldquosomething rottenrdquo at the heart of theemergent international human rights regime

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

9

We Negro petitioners whosecommunities have been laid wastewhose homes have been burnedand looted whose children havebeen killed whose women havebeen raped have noted withpeculiar horror that the genocidaldoctrines and actions of theAmerican white supremacists havealready been exported to thecolored people of As ia Wesolemnly warn that a nation whichpractices genocide against its ownnat iona l s may no t be l ongdeterred if it has the power fromgenocide elsewhere44

Paul Robeson and members of the Civil RightsCongress submitting We Charge Genocide to theUnited Nations Secretariat New York December 171951 Daily WorkerDaily World PhotographsCollection Tamiment Library New York University

In highlighting the devaluation of nonwhitelifemdashlife subjected to collateralization underUS sovereigntymdashthis 1951 petition offeredanalysis along critical human rights lines thatneither peddled in a politics of pity and rescuenor reinscribed the inequality of the world

system Instead it gestured toward ahumanism that had yet to assert its fullestpolitical possibilitymdashwhat Aimeacute Ceacutesaire wouldin 1955 call ldquoa humanism made to the measureof the worldrdquo45 During a juncture in which theUnited States was waging an ldquoappallinglydirtyrdquo war in Korea that would leave roughly 4million dead this petition strove to expose theinhumanity of US capitalist democracy46

Arguing that ldquo[w]hite supremacy at homemakes for colored massacres abroadrdquo insofar asboth evince ldquocontempt for human life in acolored skinrdquo We Charge Genocide contestedthe immunity enjoyed by the lyncher and thebomber ldquoJellied gasoline in Korea and thelynchersrsquo faggot at homerdquo the petition statedldquoare connected in more ways than that bothresult in death by fire The lyncherhellipcannotmurder unpunished and unrebuked without soencouraging the [bomber] that the peace of thewor ld and the l i ves o f m i l l i ons a reendangeredrdquo47 That the Civil Rights Congresswhich openly opposed the US war againstNorth Korea would be labeled subversive bythe US federal government hounded by theHouse un-American Activities Committee(HUAC) audited by the IRS infiltrated by theFBI and mercilessly red-baited until itsremaining members voted to disband in the mid1950s only partly suffices to explain why itscharge of two-front genocide was andcontinues to be unintelligible as a humanrights claim48 Rather detectable in its struggleto make the charge of genocide stick to thegreatest mil itary power in the globalcommunitymdashand to criminalize US wars ofaggression and its asymmetrical wars in aconsequential waymdashwas a hint of theldquosomething rottenrdquo at the heart of theemergent international human rights regime

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

10

Pyongyang North Korea in the aftermath of an airraid by US planes in fall 1950 A total of 420000bombs eventually would be dropped on a city thatthen boasted approximately 400000 residents

As Ceacutesaire would trenchantly comment inDiscours sur le colonialisme (1955) ldquocapitalistsocietyhellipis incapable of establishing a conceptof the rights of all menrdquomdashand further notedthat it degrades humans by subjecting them toldquothingificationrdquo49 Ceacutesairersquos critique begins toalert us to a ldquomajor deficiency in the doctrinalanalysis of international lawrdquo namely ldquothat nosystematic undertaking ishellipoffered of theinfluence of colonialism in the development ofthe basic conceptual framework of thesubjectrdquo5 0 Indeed the very ldquoedifice ofinternational law embed[s] relations ofimperialist dominationrdquo5 1 It is thus nocoincidence that the various human rightsvernacularsmdashanticolonial race radicalcommunitarian Third Worldmdashthat flashed upduring the Cold War with visions of ldquoahumanism made to the measure of the worldrdquohave today been relegated to the status ofldquorebellious spectersrdquo in the dominant paradigmof international human rights52 That the liberalmodel of rights has prevailed in this era ofadvanced global capitalism ldquoas the privilegedideological frame through which excessivecruelty [is] conceived and interpretedrdquo hasmeant the neutralization as Randall Williamshas argued of ldquoother epistemic forms andpolitical practicesrdquo53 On the institutional

consolidation of the human rights movement inthe late Cold War period historian SamuelMoyn observes that its emergence as a ldquonewmoralizedrdquo policy regime was catalyzed by ldquothereception of Soviet and later East Europeandissidents by politicians journalists andintellectualsrdquo in the West giving rise to anarrow notion of internationalism based onindividual rights54 Human rights are thuscentral to a US triumphalist narrative ofg l o b a l s o c i a l i s t d e c l e n s i o n F o rneoconservatives human rights ldquounderstoodas anticommunism by another namerdquoenergized a US foreign pol icy thatsystematically aimed to quash any vestige ofsocialism around the world and to erode ThirdWorld self-determination despite the fact thatldquothe master principle of collective self-determinationrdquo rhetorically inflamed theimagination of the nascent human rightsregime at mid century55 This is to point outthat human rights critique brandished as anincriminating tool may have been wielded bycapitalist and socialist states alike in a mutualtu quoque calling-out of abuses throughout theCold War As that era waned however theinternational human rights regime tilted fatallyand collusively toward US unilateralism

How we think of human rights today in otherwords is conditioned by the ldquoascendance of theUS over the past two decades to the position ofglobal hegemon secured by its relativemonopoly over the capacity for massdestructionrdquo56 Nowhere is this more apparentthan in the demotion in our era of Third Worldself-determination with its ldquobasis in collectivityand sovereigntyrdquo from its former status ldquoas thefirst and most important threshold rightrdquo57 Inthe contemporary moment the liberal humanrights frame appears as the ldquoconsensual realrdquoa self-evident vehicle for social justiceconcerns58 Yet with their near-exclusive focuson pain and suffering in the present andexculpatory stance toward their ownv io lencemdashvio lence now branded asldquoemancipatoryrdquomdashhuman rights as a ldquomoral

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

11

discourserdquo supposedly divorced from politicshas functioned to evacuate historical andgeopolitical contexts and indeed to imply theobscenity of explanatory frames other than themost immediate59 Legacies of past USinterventions superficially acknowledged asldquoanti-Americanismrdquo might occasion cursoryregard from USndashbased human rights activistswho otherwise decry and assiduously catalogthe rights violations of long-standing enemiesof the United States Mobilized in this way as ajargon of power deployed across unevengeopolitical terrain todayrsquos discourse ofuniversal human rights renders illegible orldquoroguerdquo rights-based interpretations of thestructural violence perpetrated by imperialnations

As a ruling idea that obscures the brutality ofthe imperial past and disavows the violence ofthe imperial present human rights enact atemporal claim on modernity Of human rightsas decontextualizing ideology Costas Douzinasstates ldquo[t]he specific political situation that ledto the abuses the colonial history and theconflicts that matured into civil war theeconomics that allowed the famine to developall these are irrelevant from the perspective ofthe moralistrdquo60 In other words despite theirprofound structural effects the seismicdeformations wrought by colonialism theworld-altering predations of capitalism theunresolved Cold War counterinsurgencies andthe militarized asymmetry of the postndashCold Warworld are pushed to the backgroundmdashif theyfactor in at allmdashof the ldquouniversalrdquo human rightsframework When marshaled against the statesin the global South human rights critiqueamnestically wipes the slate of colonialismclean adopting a conveniently presentistperspective As John Feffer states ldquoIndetermining causality this framework hasproven unhelpfulrdquo61 Fixated on spectacles ofpain and suffering in the now crises in someinstances of their own making human rightscampaigns thus accord mere footnote status tounsettled histories of colonial violence This is

no oversight In the contemporary humanrights frame which assumes the centrifugalityof a rights-based tradition cultivated in imperialcenters Frantz Fanonrsquos decolonizing insightldquoit will take centuries to humanize this worldwhich the imperialist forces have reduced tothe animal levelrdquo is unrecognizable not only asa human rights critique but also as an urgentunfinished project of the present62

Identified in the human rights frame as ldquoone ofthe worst examples of a failed experiment insocial engineering in the twentieth-centuryrdquomdashapariah without parallelmdashNorth Korea isregarded as lacking a meaningful rightsparadigm of its own63 Rarely does the humanrights framing of North Korea expand toacknowledge the countryrsquos realization ofeconomic and social rights during its ldquoGoldenAgerdquo an era from the 1960s to ear ly1970smdashaccording to Stephen Linton of theEugene Bell Foundationmdashcharacterized by ldquoapublic distribution system that providedcitizens with a food and clothing rationhousing education and medical care free ofchargerdquo64 Nor does todayrsquos dominant humanrights frame recognize that North Korearsquosleadership seriously endeavored ldquoto fix thesystematic problems that accelerated the foodcrisis in the early 1990srdquo much less concedethat ldquoanecdotal evidencerdquo over the past fifteenyears even according to some longtime Koreawatchers appears to point to ldquoa lessening ofrepressionrdquo65 Instead as an inculpatorydiscourse human rights critiques of NorthKorea have served hegemonic interestscordoning off the North Korean statersquos allegedcrimes for discrete consideration while turninga willfully blind eye to the violence of humanrights as well as the brutality of the worldeconomic system Rights-based approaches toNorth Korea in other words have promotedv i o l e n c e i n t h e n a m e o f h u m a nrightsmdashjustifying war occupation sanctionsthe withholding of humanitarian anddeve lopmenta l a id and neo l ibera lmarketizationmdashwhile indicting what is

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

12

singularly presented as North Korearsquos repellantviolence66 This unilateral framing of NorthKorea has enabled the United States in itsposition as global rescuer to attempt to extendits imperium over North Korea while exemptingits past and present exercise of ldquosovereignty asterrorrdquo toward the North Korean people fromthe very standards it applies to the NorthKorean state67 Rife with troubling implicationsthe twenty-first-century US adoption of arights frame toward North Korea has notsignaled simply a shift in conceptualcategoriesmdashwith what would once have beenregarded as ldquodomestic problemsrdquo nowconstrued as ldquoactionable offenses in theinternational arenardquo68 Rather it has placed softand hard interventionist options with theirpredictably devastating consequences firmlyon the table

This antinomy between the ends of the NorthKorean human rights project or regime changein the service of the individual rights of theNorth Korean people and the violent means ofhuman rights which bears the potential toharm if not to kill the imperiled subjects thatrights campaigns purportedly wish to savebespeaks a discomfiting political truth abouthuman rights as a tool of unilateral US powerThis projectrsquos ideological trappings arenowhere more evident than in the starkdissonance between human rights and humansecurity approaches to North Korea Bothprofess concern for the North Korean peopleyet on ly the human r ights camp hasconsistently argued against food aid whileadvocating for fortified sanctions militaryintervention and even advance plans forrefugee camps to house fleeing North Koreansafter an externally triggered regime collapseArguing that ldquohumanitarian concernrdquo towardNorth Korea inadvertently ldquoundermin[es] ournational securityrdquo US Congressman EdRoyce a major author of human rightslegislation aimed at North Korea referencedKim Duk Hong a defector who declared thatextending food aid to North Korea ldquois the same

as providing funding for North Korearsquos nuclearprogramrdquo During the George W Bushadministration Kim Duk Hong tellinglyadvocated ldquoIf we really want to destroy KimJong Il we should be brave We shouldnrsquot beafraid of warrdquo

It bears reflecting on what the dominant rights-based approach to North Korea hasepistemically foreclosed69 As a geopoliticalconstruct that has naturalized contemporaryperceptions of North Korea facilitating theappearance of global consensus the humanrights frame may have assumed institutionalform in the wake of world-altering calamitiesconfronting North Korea at the Cold Warrsquos endthe collapse of the social ist bloc thedevastating 1990srsquo famine and the surge ofthousands of North Koreans across the borderinto China and eventually South Korea Yetthese crises alone cannot account for thecharacter of the North Korean human rightsproject Rather in its embrace of transnationalinterventionist politics the North Koreanhuman rights agenda tellingly located itselfldquoagainst rather than within an engagementframeworkrdquo during an optimistic juncture ofthawed inter-Korean relations70 In doing so itrevealed the prospect of US intervention to beits animating spirit

III Jargon of North Korean Human Rights

If presented by its advocates as ldquoan unqualifiedgoodrdquo human rights in our era have in factfrequently functioned as a hegemonicinterpretive lens and discursive framework ofpowermdashkeyed to the prospect of unilateralmilitary violencemdashwhereby the ldquoevilsrdquo of NorthKorea and other ldquorogue nationsrdquo and ldquooutpostsof tyrannyrdquo can be marked for elimination71 In2000 Hazel Smith critically observed that ldquothedominant approach [to North Korea] remainsheavily coloured by a security perspectivewhich ishellipcuriously old-fashioned in its relianceupon the use and potential of military forcerdquo72

After 911 with North Korea demonized as part

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

13

of the axis of evil the proclivity to securitizehuman rights relative to North Korea has in noway abated Human rights were transformedduring the George W Bush era into a definingUS policy instrument toward North KoreaThis era would moreover spawn a coalitionalspectrum of anticommunist neoconservativeevangelical and defector-based NGOs in boththe United States and South Korea73 Indeedthe past decade has been witness to theconsolidation of a USndashfunded transnationaladvocacy propaganda and intelligencenetwork under the elastic banner of NorthKorean human rights Tellingly the twoprimary ways of knowing North Korea withintodayrsquos implicitly militarized human rightsframe are through forms of intelligence whosereliability is far from assuredmdashspecificallydefector testimony and satellite imageryreferred to as human intelligence (Humint) andimagery intelligence (Imint) respectively inintelligence circles Both forms of ldquoevidencerdquowe might be reminded were central to then-Secretary of State Colin Powellrsquos supposedlyairtight case for US intervention in Iraqwhich he delivered before the UN SecurityCouncil in 2003

Colin Powell at the United Nations on February 52003 making the case for US war in Iraq

Capturing the Bush imprint on North Koreanhuman rights as a politics and critique aimed atNorth Korearsquos collapse the phrase ldquoaxis of evilrdquois worth scrutinizing for what it reveals aboutthe jargon of North Korean human rights as aunilateral discourse and vocabulary of imperialdomination Coined by Bush speechwriterDavid Frum to justify preemptive US attackagainst longstanding US foes the originalphrase ldquoaxis of hatredrdquo was altered to ldquoaxis ofevilrdquo to reflect Bushrsquos just-folks variety ofldquotheologicalrdquo rhetoric74 The evangelical cast tothis idiom of power cannot be facilelydismissed As a moralizing take on NorthKorea the phrase made no pretense as toevidentiary basis Rather it performativelysought to elicit belief In a 2009 presentationbefore the Senate in which he referred toNorth Korea as ldquoHolocaust Nowrdquo SamBrownback the leading Congressional hawk onUS North Korea policy conceded theepistemological indeterminacy of the NorthKorean human rights enterprise ldquo[P]erhaps allof the evils of Camp 22 and these other campsare fictionsrdquo he startlingly admitted beforecalling on the United States to give NorthKorearsquos leadership ldquoa s tark choice transparency or extinctionrdquo75 Echoing SouthKorean intelligence assessments of defectortestimony which have held that ldquoabsence ofproof does not mean the absence of realityrdquoBrownbackrsquos dogmatic belief in evil also speaksvolumes about the preemptive militarized logicof the North Korean human rights projectmdashine s s e n c e a w i l l i n g n e s s t o e x t r a c tldquotransparencyrdquo from North Korea at the barrelof a gun His eitheror logic moreoverexcludes the possibility of a third termmdashacomplex middle ground unaccounted for in hisdefault equation of North Korea with evil76

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

12

singularly presented as North Korearsquos repellantviolence66 This unilateral framing of NorthKorea has enabled the United States in itsposition as global rescuer to attempt to extendits imperium over North Korea while exemptingits past and present exercise of ldquosovereignty asterrorrdquo toward the North Korean people fromthe very standards it applies to the NorthKorean state67 Rife with troubling implicationsthe twenty-first-century US adoption of arights frame toward North Korea has notsignaled simply a shift in conceptualcategoriesmdashwith what would once have beenregarded as ldquodomestic problemsrdquo nowconstrued as ldquoactionable offenses in theinternational arenardquo68 Rather it has placed softand hard interventionist options with theirpredictably devastating consequences firmlyon the table

This antinomy between the ends of the NorthKorean human rights project or regime changein the service of the individual rights of theNorth Korean people and the violent means ofhuman rights which bears the potential toharm if not to kill the imperiled subjects thatrights campaigns purportedly wish to savebespeaks a discomfiting political truth abouthuman rights as a tool of unilateral US powerThis projectrsquos ideological trappings arenowhere more evident than in the starkdissonance between human rights and humansecurity approaches to North Korea Bothprofess concern for the North Korean peopleyet on ly the human r ights camp hasconsistently argued against food aid whileadvocating for fortified sanctions militaryintervention and even advance plans forrefugee camps to house fleeing North Koreansafter an externally triggered regime collapseArguing that ldquohumanitarian concernrdquo towardNorth Korea inadvertently ldquoundermin[es] ournational securityrdquo US Congressman EdRoyce a major author of human rightslegislation aimed at North Korea referencedKim Duk Hong a defector who declared thatextending food aid to North Korea ldquois the same

as providing funding for North Korearsquos nuclearprogramrdquo During the George W Bushadministration Kim Duk Hong tellinglyadvocated ldquoIf we really want to destroy KimJong Il we should be brave We shouldnrsquot beafraid of warrdquo

It bears reflecting on what the dominant rights-based approach to North Korea hasepistemically foreclosed69 As a geopoliticalconstruct that has naturalized contemporaryperceptions of North Korea facilitating theappearance of global consensus the humanrights frame may have assumed institutionalform in the wake of world-altering calamitiesconfronting North Korea at the Cold Warrsquos endthe collapse of the social ist bloc thedevastating 1990srsquo famine and the surge ofthousands of North Koreans across the borderinto China and eventually South Korea Yetthese crises alone cannot account for thecharacter of the North Korean human rightsproject Rather in its embrace of transnationalinterventionist politics the North Koreanhuman rights agenda tellingly located itselfldquoagainst rather than within an engagementframeworkrdquo during an optimistic juncture ofthawed inter-Korean relations70 In doing so itrevealed the prospect of US intervention to beits animating spirit

III Jargon of North Korean Human Rights

If presented by its advocates as ldquoan unqualifiedgoodrdquo human rights in our era have in factfrequently functioned as a hegemonicinterpretive lens and discursive framework ofpowermdashkeyed to the prospect of unilateralmilitary violencemdashwhereby the ldquoevilsrdquo of NorthKorea and other ldquorogue nationsrdquo and ldquooutpostsof tyrannyrdquo can be marked for elimination71 In2000 Hazel Smith critically observed that ldquothedominant approach [to North Korea] remainsheavily coloured by a security perspectivewhich ishellipcuriously old-fashioned in its relianceupon the use and potential of military forcerdquo72

After 911 with North Korea demonized as part

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

13

of the axis of evil the proclivity to securitizehuman rights relative to North Korea has in noway abated Human rights were transformedduring the George W Bush era into a definingUS policy instrument toward North KoreaThis era would moreover spawn a coalitionalspectrum of anticommunist neoconservativeevangelical and defector-based NGOs in boththe United States and South Korea73 Indeedthe past decade has been witness to theconsolidation of a USndashfunded transnationaladvocacy propaganda and intelligencenetwork under the elastic banner of NorthKorean human rights Tellingly the twoprimary ways of knowing North Korea withintodayrsquos implicitly militarized human rightsframe are through forms of intelligence whosereliability is far from assuredmdashspecificallydefector testimony and satellite imageryreferred to as human intelligence (Humint) andimagery intelligence (Imint) respectively inintelligence circles Both forms of ldquoevidencerdquowe might be reminded were central to then-Secretary of State Colin Powellrsquos supposedlyairtight case for US intervention in Iraqwhich he delivered before the UN SecurityCouncil in 2003

Colin Powell at the United Nations on February 52003 making the case for US war in Iraq

Capturing the Bush imprint on North Koreanhuman rights as a politics and critique aimed atNorth Korearsquos collapse the phrase ldquoaxis of evilrdquois worth scrutinizing for what it reveals aboutthe jargon of North Korean human rights as aunilateral discourse and vocabulary of imperialdomination Coined by Bush speechwriterDavid Frum to justify preemptive US attackagainst longstanding US foes the originalphrase ldquoaxis of hatredrdquo was altered to ldquoaxis ofevilrdquo to reflect Bushrsquos just-folks variety ofldquotheologicalrdquo rhetoric74 The evangelical cast tothis idiom of power cannot be facilelydismissed As a moralizing take on NorthKorea the phrase made no pretense as toevidentiary basis Rather it performativelysought to elicit belief In a 2009 presentationbefore the Senate in which he referred toNorth Korea as ldquoHolocaust Nowrdquo SamBrownback the leading Congressional hawk onUS North Korea policy conceded theepistemological indeterminacy of the NorthKorean human rights enterprise ldquo[P]erhaps allof the evils of Camp 22 and these other campsare fictionsrdquo he startlingly admitted beforecalling on the United States to give NorthKorearsquos leadership ldquoa s tark choice transparency or extinctionrdquo75 Echoing SouthKorean intelligence assessments of defectortestimony which have held that ldquoabsence ofproof does not mean the absence of realityrdquoBrownbackrsquos dogmatic belief in evil also speaksvolumes about the preemptive militarized logicof the North Korean human rights projectmdashine s s e n c e a w i l l i n g n e s s t o e x t r a c tldquotransparencyrdquo from North Korea at the barrelof a gun His eitheror logic moreoverexcludes the possibility of a third termmdashacomplex middle ground unaccounted for in hisdefault equation of North Korea with evil76

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

13

of the axis of evil the proclivity to securitizehuman rights relative to North Korea has in noway abated Human rights were transformedduring the George W Bush era into a definingUS policy instrument toward North KoreaThis era would moreover spawn a coalitionalspectrum of anticommunist neoconservativeevangelical and defector-based NGOs in boththe United States and South Korea73 Indeedthe past decade has been witness to theconsolidation of a USndashfunded transnationaladvocacy propaganda and intelligencenetwork under the elastic banner of NorthKorean human rights Tellingly the twoprimary ways of knowing North Korea withintodayrsquos implicitly militarized human rightsframe are through forms of intelligence whosereliability is far from assuredmdashspecificallydefector testimony and satellite imageryreferred to as human intelligence (Humint) andimagery intelligence (Imint) respectively inintelligence circles Both forms of ldquoevidencerdquowe might be reminded were central to then-Secretary of State Colin Powellrsquos supposedlyairtight case for US intervention in Iraqwhich he delivered before the UN SecurityCouncil in 2003

Colin Powell at the United Nations on February 52003 making the case for US war in Iraq

Capturing the Bush imprint on North Koreanhuman rights as a politics and critique aimed atNorth Korearsquos collapse the phrase ldquoaxis of evilrdquois worth scrutinizing for what it reveals aboutthe jargon of North Korean human rights as aunilateral discourse and vocabulary of imperialdomination Coined by Bush speechwriterDavid Frum to justify preemptive US attackagainst longstanding US foes the originalphrase ldquoaxis of hatredrdquo was altered to ldquoaxis ofevilrdquo to reflect Bushrsquos just-folks variety ofldquotheologicalrdquo rhetoric74 The evangelical cast tothis idiom of power cannot be facilelydismissed As a moralizing take on NorthKorea the phrase made no pretense as toevidentiary basis Rather it performativelysought to elicit belief In a 2009 presentationbefore the Senate in which he referred toNorth Korea as ldquoHolocaust Nowrdquo SamBrownback the leading Congressional hawk onUS North Korea policy conceded theepistemological indeterminacy of the NorthKorean human rights enterprise ldquo[P]erhaps allof the evils of Camp 22 and these other campsare fictionsrdquo he startlingly admitted beforecalling on the United States to give NorthKorearsquos leadership ldquoa s tark choice transparency or extinctionrdquo75 Echoing SouthKorean intelligence assessments of defectortestimony which have held that ldquoabsence ofproof does not mean the absence of realityrdquoBrownbackrsquos dogmatic belief in evil also speaksvolumes about the preemptive militarized logicof the North Korean human rights projectmdashine s s e n c e a w i l l i n g n e s s t o e x t r a c tldquotransparencyrdquo from North Korea at the barrelof a gun His eitheror logic moreoverexcludes the possibility of a third termmdashacomplex middle ground unaccounted for in hisdefault equation of North Korea with evil76

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

14

Satellite imagery that Colin Powell furnished asevidence of Iraqrsquos possession of WMDs at the UnitedNations on February 5 2003

Indeed axiomatic to North Korean humanrights campaigns is what today more generallypasses as common sense North Korearsquosassoc iat ion wi th an inhumanity andatrociousness so total and thoroughgoing sototalitarian that these attributes defyevidentiary analysis Absence of evidenceconfirms what therefore must be sinisterly trueabout North Koreamdashthat it is ldquothe mostrepressive regime extant scoring at theabsolute bottom on all standard measures withrespect to regime type political and civilliberties and human rightsrdquo that ldquo[i]t is aliving hell on earth where citizens have norightsrdquo that it is ldquothe worst human rightssituation in the world todayrdquo that it is theldquoworldrsquos worst persecutorrdquo77 In the vivid yetempty jargon of North Korean human rightsthese superlative claims which solicit ourbelief serve as the murky epistemological basisof the interventionist rights-based agendatoward North Korea They are expressed in therange of analogies deployed by campaignsmounted to rescue the people of North Koreafrom evil Alluding to ldquowhat we all know to betruerdquo about North Korea the language of NorthKorean human rights enacts a relationalstancemdasha Manichean posture between us as

the universal benchmark for the human and theNorth Korean ldquoregimerdquo as the global standardof inhumanity Its pariah status implied in themetaphors in which it is routinely cast NorthKorea figures in rights campaigns as a negativespace in effect a terra nullius impossible tocomprehend in autochthonous terms Ifillegible or impenetrable it invites theimposition of phantasmic meanings carceral(prison gulag concentration camp)apocalyptic (hell on earth place of darkness)Christian irredentist (Jerusalem of the Eastland of the gospel) historical (antebellumslavery the Third Reich Khmer Rouge) andquasi-scientific (black hole) The violence-to-come suggested by these teleological andeschatological terms oriented toward NorthKorearsquos ldquoliberationrdquo or ldquosalvationrdquo raises thequestion of whether recognition of humanity inthese human rights frameworks holds out ldquothepromisehellipof liberating the flesh [and]redeeming onersquos sufferingrdquo or rather ofldquointensifying itrdquo78 Yet the implicit violence ofaffect that darkens the fiat lux imperative ofN o r t h K o r e a n h u m a n r i g h t scampaignersmdashtodayrsquos ldquoemissar[ies] of lightrdquoand ldquogang of virtuerdquomdashmight give us somepause79

As a condensed figuration of the evil dangerand wanton disregard for life human rightsactivists ascribe to North Korea the ldquohiddenrdquoyet paradoxically hyper-visible gulagmdashcapturedin what they claim are unassailable satelliteimages mdashfacilitates the rescripting ofimperialist narratives of the past alongsecuritized lines authorizing intervention inthe name of a safer world Not simply in theseaccounts a state like any other with its owncarceral system North Korea is deemed to bethe ldquoworldrsquos largest prison camprdquo or in thewords of Mark Palmer cofounder of theNational Endowment for Democracy (NED) theldquolarger gulag which is North Koreardquo80 NorthKorea in the demagogic assessment of Libertyin North Korea (LiNK) cofounder Adrian Hongis a ldquostaggering system entirely built and

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

15

mastered for the express purpose ofpropagating human sufferingrdquo 8 1

Not simply this is to say a neutral analytic ormimetic representational technology by way ofwhich the violence of North Korea can berecognized censured and archived humanrights mystify the structural violence thatproduces and conditions the ldquogeopoliticaldivide between first and third worldsrdquo82 Theyaffirm the prerogatives of the global Northleaving its neoconservative neoimperial andneoliberal underpinnings not to mentionlegacies of violence unexamined Perverselyidentifying with figures they regard as victimsrather than with those they condemn asldquoperpetrators of social injusticerdquo todayrsquos globalhuman rights advocates are themselvestypically ldquobeneficiaries of past injusticerdquo83

Insofar as the injustice in questionmdashslaverysettler colonialism native genocide Jim Crowimperial wars CIA-engineered coups politicalpurgesmdashis ldquonow regarded as pastrdquo even if itsbenefits continue to accrue human rightsactivists of brutally enriched imperial and sub-imperial nations have not seen fit to ldquodisgorgetheir unjust gainsrdquo in any systematic way84

Unsettling todayrsquos dominant framework ofNorth Korean human rights is the violence ofthe unresolved Korean War If limited andldquoforgottenrdquo from the perspective of Americansthe Korean War was total and searinglyunforgettable from the perspective of Koreanswho directly bore its consequences As early as1952 journalist IF Stone observed that theKorean War rehabilitated a US economygeared as a result of World War II towardtotal war Seized as opportunity thisdevastating war permitted ldquothe TrumanAdministration to get authorization from afiscally conservative Congress to solve theworld liquidity crisisrdquo85 On top of tripling USdefense spending it furnished a rationale forthe bilateral linking of ldquoclient states in Asia tothe USrdquo86 Indeed General James Van Fleetcommanding officer of US and UN forces in

Korea described the war as ldquoa blessingrdquo andremarked ldquoThere had to be a Korea either hereor some place in the worldrdquo87

ldquoCentral to [the] ideological enterpriserdquo ofhuman rights however ldquois the scripting ofWashington as an outsider to [the] horrors [ofhuman rights] an exterior power watchingfrom afarrdquo rather than an actor in any waycentral to the catastrophe88 Self-fashioned notas a beneficiary or perpetrator of violence butrather as an innocent observer ab extra thehuman rights advocate ldquopresume[s] to speak onbehalf of those who cannot speak forthemselves even define[s] the interests ofthose [she or he] speak[s] for (as if people areunable to do this for themselves)rdquo89 Stagedacross geopo l i t i ca l l inesmdashcolon ia lperipheryglobal South and imperialcenterglobal Northmdashthe human rightsnarrative strips historical context awayoffering a notably partial account in bothsenses of the word Yet in this regard thehuman rights narrative of North Korea drawson earlier modes of colonial narration thatfeature encounters between unequal forms ofhumanity Here we might recall Wayne Boothrsquostheory of unreliable narration which heelaborates in a study of the rhetoric of fictionfor what it reveals about the perspectivallimitations of geopolitical modes of narrationthat privilege imperial perspectives towardviolence in the colonial periphery ldquothereflector in becoming inconscient about hisown motives and about the reality about himbecomes a vicious agent in the storyrdquo90 It isprecisely ldquohis viciousness and his unconsciousdistortionsrdquo that render the account mediatedby this narrator unreliable91 Complicit in thespectacle of suffering before him the narratorwho at first appears to be a dispassionateobserver ldquobecomes involved in the action sod e e p l y rdquo t h a t h e r i s k sldquoproducinghellipcatastropherdquo92 In this wayunderstood as a perceptual problematicUSndashbased human rights politics toward NorthK o r e a n o t o n l y m u s t d i s a v o w t h e

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

16

counterrevolutionary nature of prior USintervention in the Korean War ldquoa civil andrevolutionary war a peoplersquos warrdquo but alsoinvert the militarized legacies and illiberalconsequences of US involvement in theKorean peninsula as cause for potential furtherinterventionist action93

In Songhwan (2003)mdasha documentary thatfollows South Korean grassroots solidarityefforts for the repatriation of long-termunconverted communist prisoners who hadbeen incarcerated and tortured in South Koreafor their alleged spying activities to NorthKoreamdashSouth Korean filmmaker Kim Dong-wonrecords his journalist colleague Ishimaru Jirorsquosrightward political transformation into abudding activist focused on North Korea humanrights Conceding that he himself ldquocouldnrsquotsurvive where [he couldnrsquot] make films freelyrdquoKim remarks that Ishimaru nonethelessldquodownplay[s] the fact that North Korea hasbeen at war with America for the past 50yearsrdquo and that ldquo[w]ars limit the human rightsof North Koreans and aggravatehellipthe foodshortagerdquo94 In Kimrsquos structural account whichrefuses the seductive immediacy of the humanrights narrat ive frame the pol i t icalincarceration of prisoners who withstooddecades-long efforts to brutalize them intorenouncing North Korea is akin to the isolationimposed on North Korea as a result of over halfa century of aggressive US policy As Kim putsit ldquoBy refusing to sign a nonaggression pactthe US must also share the blame The USrsquoseconomic sanctions and threats of war againstthe North remind me of the conversion schemeagainst the prisoners Just as the scheme failedto break the prisoners American threats willfail to break the Northrdquo

IV Parlous Refuge

Human rights campaigns of the global Northare structured by a geopolitical imaginary thatreproduces and naturalizes a divided-worldsystem ldquoDanger there safety here Victims

there saviors here Tyranny there freedomhererdquo95 Specific to the discourse of NorthKorean human rights this list might beextended WMDs nuclear proliferation over-the-top defense spending There Domesticsurveillance class stratification laborexploitation political imprisonment militarizedborders sexual trafficking religiousintolerance hunger and immiseration ThereGeared therefore toward regime changemdashasupersession by whatever means of the vileldquothererdquo with a kinder gentler ldquohererdquomdashhumanrights campaigns against North Korea havecolluded in a remarkably homogeneousneoliberal vision of its future In human rightsschema not only are North Korearsquos liberationand salvation synonymous with free-marketprinciples but also those advocating for itsfreedom verge upon asserting a proprietaryright if not a shareholderrsquos stake in its post-collapse future In this regard advocatesfigure in the framework of North Koreanhuman rights as beneficiaries of futureviolence

In a speech delivered to US and South Koreanbusiness leaders in 2003 then-US DefenseSecretary Donald Rumsfeld hailed the prospectof a future in which ldquofreedom will come to thepeople [of North Korea] and light up thatoppressed land with hope and promiserdquo96 Thefact that Rumsfeld had also notoriously insistedon the viability of a hypothetical two-front USmilitary campaign against Iraq and NorthKorea suggests that he envisioned ldquohope andpromiserdquo to be the liberal fruits of an illiberalwar97 In serial calls for regime change in NorthKorea LiNK cofounder Adrian Hong has alsoglibly pitched the vast growth potential of apost-collapse North Korea brightened bycapitalism and annexed to US financialinterests ldquoWith the right inputs a North Koreaf ree o f the K im reg ime wou ld br ingabouthellipopportun i t ies for economicdevelopment investment and traderdquo98 Thatneol iberal designs for North Koreanreconstruction animate calls for regime change

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

17

should alert us to the risk-based nature of thehuman rights project aimed at North Korea Inher appearance in the now-classic NorthKorean human rights documentary Seoul Train(2004) Suzanne Scholtemdashpresident of thehard-right Defense Forum Foundation anorganization that brings North Koreandefectors to Washington DCmdash critiquedSouth Korearsquos pro-engagement policy towardNorth Korea ldquo[The] South Korean governmentis afraid of a regime collapse but thatrsquos wrongto fear that They should be welcoming it andthey should be planning for itrdquo99 Recognizingthat engineered regime collapse would havegrave humanitarian consequences on averageNorth Koreans the very people deemed to beldquothe most sufferinghellipon earthrdquo by USndashbasedhuman rights advocates South Korean scholarshave cautioned against the hubris of theinterventionist human rights vision100 It isnonetheless revealing that within the politicaleconomy of North Korean human rights thehuman dimension factors as an oversight

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld points to asatellite image of the Korean peninsula at night in a2005 Pentagon press briefing

If utopian in its stated aims to save NorthKorean humanity the North Korean humanrights project reveals its darker dystopian sidein the apocalyptic scenarios it envisions as ameans toward that emancipatory goal NorthKorean human rights advocacy is strikinglyriddled with the neoliberal rhetoric offinancialization interest and speculationmdashsomuch so that when weighing in on the post-

regime collapse scenario the human rightsadvocate gripped by market-fever is scarcelydistinguishable from a speculator As NaomiKlein has pointed out destruction in the formof ldquocountries smashed to rubble whether by so-called Acts of God or by Acts of Bushrdquorepresents gl istening possibi l i tymdashaparadisemdashto the disaster capitalist ldquowherethere is destruction there is reconstruction achance to grab ho ld o f lsquo the terr ib lebarrennessrsquohellipand fill it with the most perfectbeautiful plansrdquo101

In sounding a death knell for socialism thehegemonic human rights project is ldquoas much abrief for capitalism as human rightsrdquo102 Itscarcely acknowledges the fact that ldquoeven ascapitalism has declared victory it has grosslyfailed in its destructive effects on a vastnumber of the worldrsquos peoplerdquo103 Running as acontinuous thread in North Korean humanrights discourse is the teleological presumptionthat the Korean peninsula must be unifiedldquounder a peaceful politically free market-oriented systemrdquo104 The North Korean FreedomAct of 2003 explicitly stipulated funding forldquoentities that promote market economiesrdquo105

Signed by Bush into law the North KoreanHuman Rights Act of 2004 the successor to the2003 bill retained this highly politicalprovision authorizing the US president ldquotoprovide grants to private non-profitorganizations that promotehellipthe developmentof a market economy in North Koreardquo106

Declaring North Korea to be ldquothe most closedsociety on Earthrdquo Brownback a driving forcebehind both major human rights bills assertedin ringing tones that ldquoa brighter fuller freeand open Korean Peninsula is in our ultimatenational interestrdquo107 The irony is inescapablethe most voluble condemnation of the NorthKorean governmentrsquos supposed resistance tomarketization comes from the very humanrights camp that has agitated for a fortifiedsanctions regime against the country therebyrestricting its access to capital This not onlystands to harm the ldquoordinaryrdquo North Koreans

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

16

counterrevolutionary nature of prior USintervention in the Korean War ldquoa civil andrevolutionary war a peoplersquos warrdquo but alsoinvert the militarized legacies and illiberalconsequences of US involvement in theKorean peninsula as cause for potential furtherinterventionist action93

In Songhwan (2003)mdasha documentary thatfollows South Korean grassroots solidarityefforts for the repatriation of long-termunconverted communist prisoners who hadbeen incarcerated and tortured in South Koreafor their alleged spying activities to NorthKoreamdashSouth Korean filmmaker Kim Dong-wonrecords his journalist colleague Ishimaru Jirorsquosrightward political transformation into abudding activist focused on North Korea humanrights Conceding that he himself ldquocouldnrsquotsurvive where [he couldnrsquot] make films freelyrdquoKim remarks that Ishimaru nonethelessldquodownplay[s] the fact that North Korea hasbeen at war with America for the past 50yearsrdquo and that ldquo[w]ars limit the human rightsof North Koreans and aggravatehellipthe foodshortagerdquo94 In Kimrsquos structural account whichrefuses the seductive immediacy of the humanrights narrat ive frame the pol i t icalincarceration of prisoners who withstooddecades-long efforts to brutalize them intorenouncing North Korea is akin to the isolationimposed on North Korea as a result of over halfa century of aggressive US policy As Kim putsit ldquoBy refusing to sign a nonaggression pactthe US must also share the blame The USrsquoseconomic sanctions and threats of war againstthe North remind me of the conversion schemeagainst the prisoners Just as the scheme failedto break the prisoners American threats willfail to break the Northrdquo

IV Parlous Refuge

Human rights campaigns of the global Northare structured by a geopolitical imaginary thatreproduces and naturalizes a divided-worldsystem ldquoDanger there safety here Victims

there saviors here Tyranny there freedomhererdquo95 Specific to the discourse of NorthKorean human rights this list might beextended WMDs nuclear proliferation over-the-top defense spending There Domesticsurveillance class stratification laborexploitation political imprisonment militarizedborders sexual trafficking religiousintolerance hunger and immiseration ThereGeared therefore toward regime changemdashasupersession by whatever means of the vileldquothererdquo with a kinder gentler ldquohererdquomdashhumanrights campaigns against North Korea havecolluded in a remarkably homogeneousneoliberal vision of its future In human rightsschema not only are North Korearsquos liberationand salvation synonymous with free-marketprinciples but also those advocating for itsfreedom verge upon asserting a proprietaryright if not a shareholderrsquos stake in its post-collapse future In this regard advocatesfigure in the framework of North Koreanhuman rights as beneficiaries of futureviolence

In a speech delivered to US and South Koreanbusiness leaders in 2003 then-US DefenseSecretary Donald Rumsfeld hailed the prospectof a future in which ldquofreedom will come to thepeople [of North Korea] and light up thatoppressed land with hope and promiserdquo96 Thefact that Rumsfeld had also notoriously insistedon the viability of a hypothetical two-front USmilitary campaign against Iraq and NorthKorea suggests that he envisioned ldquohope andpromiserdquo to be the liberal fruits of an illiberalwar97 In serial calls for regime change in NorthKorea LiNK cofounder Adrian Hong has alsoglibly pitched the vast growth potential of apost-collapse North Korea brightened bycapitalism and annexed to US financialinterests ldquoWith the right inputs a North Koreaf ree o f the K im reg ime wou ld br ingabouthellipopportun i t ies for economicdevelopment investment and traderdquo98 Thatneol iberal designs for North Koreanreconstruction animate calls for regime change

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

17

should alert us to the risk-based nature of thehuman rights project aimed at North Korea Inher appearance in the now-classic NorthKorean human rights documentary Seoul Train(2004) Suzanne Scholtemdashpresident of thehard-right Defense Forum Foundation anorganization that brings North Koreandefectors to Washington DCmdash critiquedSouth Korearsquos pro-engagement policy towardNorth Korea ldquo[The] South Korean governmentis afraid of a regime collapse but thatrsquos wrongto fear that They should be welcoming it andthey should be planning for itrdquo99 Recognizingthat engineered regime collapse would havegrave humanitarian consequences on averageNorth Koreans the very people deemed to beldquothe most sufferinghellipon earthrdquo by USndashbasedhuman rights advocates South Korean scholarshave cautioned against the hubris of theinterventionist human rights vision100 It isnonetheless revealing that within the politicaleconomy of North Korean human rights thehuman dimension factors as an oversight

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld points to asatellite image of the Korean peninsula at night in a2005 Pentagon press briefing

If utopian in its stated aims to save NorthKorean humanity the North Korean humanrights project reveals its darker dystopian sidein the apocalyptic scenarios it envisions as ameans toward that emancipatory goal NorthKorean human rights advocacy is strikinglyriddled with the neoliberal rhetoric offinancialization interest and speculationmdashsomuch so that when weighing in on the post-

regime collapse scenario the human rightsadvocate gripped by market-fever is scarcelydistinguishable from a speculator As NaomiKlein has pointed out destruction in the formof ldquocountries smashed to rubble whether by so-called Acts of God or by Acts of Bushrdquorepresents gl istening possibi l i tymdashaparadisemdashto the disaster capitalist ldquowherethere is destruction there is reconstruction achance to grab ho ld o f lsquo the terr ib lebarrennessrsquohellipand fill it with the most perfectbeautiful plansrdquo101

In sounding a death knell for socialism thehegemonic human rights project is ldquoas much abrief for capitalism as human rightsrdquo102 Itscarcely acknowledges the fact that ldquoeven ascapitalism has declared victory it has grosslyfailed in its destructive effects on a vastnumber of the worldrsquos peoplerdquo103 Running as acontinuous thread in North Korean humanrights discourse is the teleological presumptionthat the Korean peninsula must be unifiedldquounder a peaceful politically free market-oriented systemrdquo104 The North Korean FreedomAct of 2003 explicitly stipulated funding forldquoentities that promote market economiesrdquo105

Signed by Bush into law the North KoreanHuman Rights Act of 2004 the successor to the2003 bill retained this highly politicalprovision authorizing the US president ldquotoprovide grants to private non-profitorganizations that promotehellipthe developmentof a market economy in North Koreardquo106

Declaring North Korea to be ldquothe most closedsociety on Earthrdquo Brownback a driving forcebehind both major human rights bills assertedin ringing tones that ldquoa brighter fuller freeand open Korean Peninsula is in our ultimatenational interestrdquo107 The irony is inescapablethe most voluble condemnation of the NorthKorean governmentrsquos supposed resistance tomarketization comes from the very humanrights camp that has agitated for a fortifiedsanctions regime against the country therebyrestricting its access to capital This not onlystands to harm the ldquoordinaryrdquo North Koreans

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

17

should alert us to the risk-based nature of thehuman rights project aimed at North Korea Inher appearance in the now-classic NorthKorean human rights documentary Seoul Train(2004) Suzanne Scholtemdashpresident of thehard-right Defense Forum Foundation anorganization that brings North Koreandefectors to Washington DCmdash critiquedSouth Korearsquos pro-engagement policy towardNorth Korea ldquo[The] South Korean governmentis afraid of a regime collapse but thatrsquos wrongto fear that They should be welcoming it andthey should be planning for itrdquo99 Recognizingthat engineered regime collapse would havegrave humanitarian consequences on averageNorth Koreans the very people deemed to beldquothe most sufferinghellipon earthrdquo by USndashbasedhuman rights advocates South Korean scholarshave cautioned against the hubris of theinterventionist human rights vision100 It isnonetheless revealing that within the politicaleconomy of North Korean human rights thehuman dimension factors as an oversight

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld points to asatellite image of the Korean peninsula at night in a2005 Pentagon press briefing

If utopian in its stated aims to save NorthKorean humanity the North Korean humanrights project reveals its darker dystopian sidein the apocalyptic scenarios it envisions as ameans toward that emancipatory goal NorthKorean human rights advocacy is strikinglyriddled with the neoliberal rhetoric offinancialization interest and speculationmdashsomuch so that when weighing in on the post-

regime collapse scenario the human rightsadvocate gripped by market-fever is scarcelydistinguishable from a speculator As NaomiKlein has pointed out destruction in the formof ldquocountries smashed to rubble whether by so-called Acts of God or by Acts of Bushrdquorepresents gl istening possibi l i tymdashaparadisemdashto the disaster capitalist ldquowherethere is destruction there is reconstruction achance to grab ho ld o f lsquo the terr ib lebarrennessrsquohellipand fill it with the most perfectbeautiful plansrdquo101

In sounding a death knell for socialism thehegemonic human rights project is ldquoas much abrief for capitalism as human rightsrdquo102 Itscarcely acknowledges the fact that ldquoeven ascapitalism has declared victory it has grosslyfailed in its destructive effects on a vastnumber of the worldrsquos peoplerdquo103 Running as acontinuous thread in North Korean humanrights discourse is the teleological presumptionthat the Korean peninsula must be unifiedldquounder a peaceful politically free market-oriented systemrdquo104 The North Korean FreedomAct of 2003 explicitly stipulated funding forldquoentities that promote market economiesrdquo105

Signed by Bush into law the North KoreanHuman Rights Act of 2004 the successor to the2003 bill retained this highly politicalprovision authorizing the US president ldquotoprovide grants to private non-profitorganizations that promotehellipthe developmentof a market economy in North Koreardquo106

Declaring North Korea to be ldquothe most closedsociety on Earthrdquo Brownback a driving forcebehind both major human rights bills assertedin ringing tones that ldquoa brighter fuller freeand open Korean Peninsula is in our ultimatenational interestrdquo107 The irony is inescapablethe most voluble condemnation of the NorthKorean governmentrsquos supposed resistance tomarketization comes from the very humanrights camp that has agitated for a fortifiedsanctions regime against the country therebyrestricting its access to capital This not onlystands to harm the ldquoordinaryrdquo North Koreans

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

18

whom such measures purport to help but alsoeffectively announces to the internationalcommunity that North Korea is closed forbusiness108 It is hard to avoid the conclusionthat subtending the push for ldquohuman rightsrdquo inNorth Korea is less concern for the actualpeople of North Korea than an external desireto open it in l ieu of the North Koreangovernment for investment

The neoliberal euphoria of North Koreanhuman rights is most troublingly evident in thedegraded place of the human within the visionof post-collapse reconstruction conjured byadvocates The rehabilitated ldquohumanrdquo of theNorth Korean human rights project may havebeen rescued from a ldquospace of darknessrdquoextracted from the familiar web of socialrelations that structured her or his life in NorthKorea Once deracinated however this subjectis precariously situated in the neoliberaleconomic order109 Poorly served in such asetting by abstract assurances of universalhumanity the ldquoliberatedrdquo subject of NorthKorean human rights campaigns must navigatea perilous landscape whose operative logic isldquopossessive individualism property rightsm a r k e t e c o n o m i e s a n d f i n a n c i a lderegulationrdquo110 In this regard as DavidHarvey contends the project of human rightsmay champion its ldquoconcern for the individualrdquoyet it does so at the expense of ldquoany socialdemocratic concern for equality democracyand social solidaritiesrdquo111 In its ldquoinsistenceupon the individual as the foundational elementin political-economic liferdquo North Korean humanrights offer the dubious freedom of the marketas a foil to the unfreedom of the North Koreanstate112

As an anticipatory account of North Korearsquosldquoinevitablerdquo absorption by the South the NorthKorean defector memoirmdasha geopolitical genreheavily subsidized by both US and SouthKorean governmentsmdashframes the trajectoryfrom North Korea to South Korea via Chinaand other third-party countries as an

emancipatory journey from ldquohellrdquo to ldquoloudluminous paradiserdquo 1 1 3 Central to theredemptive arc of such memoirs is theconversion of the benighted North Korean toldquoliberal personhoodrdquo114 Yet the resettlement ofthousands of North Koreans in South Korea inthe wake of North Korearsquos devastating 1990sfaminemdashwith roughly 26000 now below theDMZmdashhas challenged the monopoly thatsubsidized anticommunist defector accountshave had on representing North Korea115

Promoted by the US Congressndashfunded NED asa ldquosecondrdquo implicitly more legitimate ldquoNorthKoreanrdquo culturemdashand thus as a counter too f f i c i a l N o r t h K o r e a n s e l f -representationsmdashdefector narratives arestructured as progressive narratives ofemancipation 1 1 6 Yet challenging thedevelopmental narrative arc that would positNorth Korea as a space of inhumanity andSouth Korea as a liberating sanctuary is theinequality discrimination and alienationconfronting resettled North Koreans asdegraded human capital in the South As SouthKorean activist and scholar Lee Daehoon haspointed out South Korean prejudice againstresettled North Koreans challenges ldquothe mythof ethnic homogeneityrdquo and is moreover of acontinuum with racism against labor migrantsfrom Southeast and South Asian countries wholdquorepresent what the South Korean nation doesnot want to be nonwhite poor non-Christian[and] out of placerdquo117 We might inquire ismarket freedom with its production ofhistorically specific forms of humanitymdashnamelyat-risk subjectivities subordinated to themarket as an ostensible ldquoethichellipfor all humanactionrdquomdashthe vision of liberation particular tothe North Korean human rights project118 ldquoWerisked our lives to come hererdquo states a NorthKorean defector in the 2011 South Koreanindependent film The Journals of Musan(Musanilgi) only to be ldquowork[ed] to deathmaking just five dollars an hourrdquo119 At the endof Dance Town (2010) another recent SouthKorean independent film North Koreandefector Ri Jeong-Rim stands on the northern

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

19

banks of Seoulrsquos Han River facing southwardtoward the Gangnam district as she sobs withgrief and loneliness Depicted as having fled toSouth Korea out of fear of prosecution forhaving watched smuggled porn this charactermakes faltering steps toward assimilationincluding dating a South Korean police officerwho rapes her in an alley Albeit described inhuman rights discourse as ldquoheavenrdquo SouthKorea in these films which highlight theanomie of capitalist dystopian spaces appearsas a ldquoparlous refugerdquo at best120

Ri Jeong-Rim (Rha Mi-ran) in Dance Town (2010)

Human rights discourse ldquoexhorts us always toidentify with victims whose suffering itgraphically depictsrdquo yet the typical victim israrely the detritus of neoliberal capitalism andthe empathy of human rights is no substitutefor political solidarity across a divided-worldsystem121 Pointing out that ldquo[a]t no point inhuman history has there been a greater gapbetween the North and the South between thepoor and the rich in the developed worldrdquoDouzinas argues that charity so central to thehumanitarian and human rights campaigns ofadvanced capitalist societies is ldquopart of a risk-aversion strategyrdquo an ldquoinsurance policyrdquoagainst restitutory claims from the globalSouth122 Such campaigns rarely if everaddress the ldquosimple and undoubted factrdquo thatthe states in which they are based are oftenldquothe main cause through colonialismimperialism and exported neoliberal capitalismof the huge disparities between the North andthe Southrdquo123 Yet risk also inheres in thehuman rights project Even as human rights

campaigns might ldquosaverdquo select individualstransporting the war orphan the dissident theinformant the trafficked woman and therefugee to what are in theory safer shores withtheir implicit emphasis on ldquofree marketindividualismrdquo these initiatives seldom accountfor much less strive to mitigate the perils ofneoliberalism that await the uprooted subjectsof human rights ldquorescuerdquo124

Offering critical reflection on the dominantdiscursive frame of North Korean human rightsas a modality of asymmetrical powerldquoReframing North Korean Human Rightsrdquo atwo-part thematic issue of Critical AsianStudies attends to what has hovered asdisavowed marginalized seemingly obsoleteor epiphenomenal in the shadows of the NorthKorean human rights project not the least ofwhich is the right to peace Furnishing amultifaceted account of North Korean humanr ights f rom USndash UKndash and SouthKoreandashbased scholars policy analysts andsocial justice advocates this issue illuminatesthe strictures of North Korean humanrightsmdashas an amnestic posture toward imperialviolence a lethal politicized agenda gussied upas a moral mission a geopolitical language andstructure of postndash911 US unilateralism andan ideological mode of perception conversionsubject-formation and historiography Workingbeyond these limitations a number of theessays in this issue inquire into modes ofunderstanding and engaging North Korea inaddition to human rights practices that havebeen sidelined by the dominant regime-changendashoriented North Korean human rightsproject

Christine Hong is an assistant professor ofliterature at UC Santa Cruz and an executiveboard member of the Korea Policy InstituteShe is co-editor with Hazel Smith of the CriticalAsian Studies double issue on ldquoReframingNorth Korean Human Rightsrdquo (454 (2013) and461 (2014))

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

19

banks of Seoulrsquos Han River facing southwardtoward the Gangnam district as she sobs withgrief and loneliness Depicted as having fled toSouth Korea out of fear of prosecution forhaving watched smuggled porn this charactermakes faltering steps toward assimilationincluding dating a South Korean police officerwho rapes her in an alley Albeit described inhuman rights discourse as ldquoheavenrdquo SouthKorea in these films which highlight theanomie of capitalist dystopian spaces appearsas a ldquoparlous refugerdquo at best120

Ri Jeong-Rim (Rha Mi-ran) in Dance Town (2010)

Human rights discourse ldquoexhorts us always toidentify with victims whose suffering itgraphically depictsrdquo yet the typical victim israrely the detritus of neoliberal capitalism andthe empathy of human rights is no substitutefor political solidarity across a divided-worldsystem121 Pointing out that ldquo[a]t no point inhuman history has there been a greater gapbetween the North and the South between thepoor and the rich in the developed worldrdquoDouzinas argues that charity so central to thehumanitarian and human rights campaigns ofadvanced capitalist societies is ldquopart of a risk-aversion strategyrdquo an ldquoinsurance policyrdquoagainst restitutory claims from the globalSouth122 Such campaigns rarely if everaddress the ldquosimple and undoubted factrdquo thatthe states in which they are based are oftenldquothe main cause through colonialismimperialism and exported neoliberal capitalismof the huge disparities between the North andthe Southrdquo123 Yet risk also inheres in thehuman rights project Even as human rights

campaigns might ldquosaverdquo select individualstransporting the war orphan the dissident theinformant the trafficked woman and therefugee to what are in theory safer shores withtheir implicit emphasis on ldquofree marketindividualismrdquo these initiatives seldom accountfor much less strive to mitigate the perils ofneoliberalism that await the uprooted subjectsof human rights ldquorescuerdquo124

Offering critical reflection on the dominantdiscursive frame of North Korean human rightsas a modality of asymmetrical powerldquoReframing North Korean Human Rightsrdquo atwo-part thematic issue of Critical AsianStudies attends to what has hovered asdisavowed marginalized seemingly obsoleteor epiphenomenal in the shadows of the NorthKorean human rights project not the least ofwhich is the right to peace Furnishing amultifaceted account of North Korean humanr ights f rom USndash UKndash and SouthKoreandashbased scholars policy analysts andsocial justice advocates this issue illuminatesthe strictures of North Korean humanrightsmdashas an amnestic posture toward imperialviolence a lethal politicized agenda gussied upas a moral mission a geopolitical language andstructure of postndash911 US unilateralism andan ideological mode of perception conversionsubject-formation and historiography Workingbeyond these limitations a number of theessays in this issue inquire into modes ofunderstanding and engaging North Korea inaddition to human rights practices that havebeen sidelined by the dominant regime-changendashoriented North Korean human rightsproject

Christine Hong is an assistant professor ofliterature at UC Santa Cruz and an executiveboard member of the Korea Policy InstituteShe is co-editor with Hazel Smith of the CriticalAsian Studies double issue on ldquoReframingNorth Korean Human Rightsrdquo (454 (2013) and461 (2014))

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

20

Recommended Citation Christine Hong Warby Other Means The Violence of North KoreanHuman Rights The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol12 Issue 13 No 2 March 31 2014

References

Americarsquos overcrowded prisons One nationbehind bars 2013 The Economist 17 AugustAvailable here (accessed 11 September 2013)

Amnesty International concerns in theDemocratic Peoplersquos Republic of Korea 1985New York Amnesty International May

Armstrong Charles 2003 The North Koreanrevolution 1945ndash1950 Ithaca NY andLondon Cornell University Press

Atanasoski Neda 2013 Humanitarianviolence The US deployment of diversityMinneapolis and London University ofMinnesota Press

Becker Olivia 2014 The UNrsquos report on NorthKorean atrocities surprised no one Vice NewsFebruary 18 Available here (accessed 20February 2014)

Benjamin Walter 1986 Critique of violenceR e f l e c t i o n s E s s a y s a p h o r i s m s autobiographical writings Ed Peter DemetzTrans Edmund Jephcott New York SchockenBooks

Booth Wayne 1961 The rhetoric of fictionChicago and London University of ChicagoPress

Brown Wendy 2004 ldquoThe most we can hopeforhelliprdquo Human rights and the politics offatalism The South Atlantic Quarterly 103(23) 451ndash63

Brownback Sam 2008 North Korea SenateHearing S3498 Congressional Record 29April Available here (accessed 15 November2011)

Ceacutesaire Aimeacute 2000 Discourse on colonialismTrans Joan Pinkham New York MonthlyReview Press

Civil Rights Congress 1951 We chargegenocide The historic petition to the UnitedNations for relief from a crime of the UnitedStates government against the Negro peopleNew York Civil Rights Congress

Charter of the United Nations 1945 Availablehere (accessed 10 March 2014)

Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in theDemocratic Peoplersquos Republic of Korea UnitedNations Human Rights Council 2014 Report ofthe detailed findings of the commission ofinquiry on human rights in the DemocraticPeoplersquos Republic of Korea February 7

Conrad Joseph 2006 Heart of darkness EdPaul B Armstrong New York WW Norton

The crime of aggression Nd Coalition for theInternational Criminal Court Available here(accessed 24 March 2014)

Cumings Bruce 1990 The origins of theKorean War The roaring of the cataract1947ndash1950 Vol 2 Princeton NJ PrincetonUniversity Press

mdashmdashmdash 2010 The Korean War A history NewYork Modern Library-Random House

Douzinas Costas 2007 Human rights andempire The po l i t ica l ph i losophy o fcosmopolitanism New York Routledge

Em Henry and Christine Hong Coda Aconversat ion with Kim Dong-choonUnpublished interview

Fanon Frantz 2004 The wretched of theearth Trans Richard Philcox New YorkGrove

Feffer John 2004 The forgotten lessons ofHelsinki Human rights and US ndashNorth Korean

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

21

relations World Policy Journal 21 (3) 31ndash39

mdashmdashmdash 2006 North Korea and the politics offamine Foreign Policy in Focus 18 September

Frank Ruediger 2006 The political economyof sanctions against North Korea AsianPerspective 30 (3) 5ndash36

Frum David 2003 The right man An insideaccount of the Bush White House New YorkRandom House

Haggard Stephan and Marcus Noland 2011Witness to transformation Refugee insightsinto North Korea Washington DC Peter GPeterson Institute for International Economics

mdashmdashmdash 2011 The logic and illogic of food aid38 North Informed Analysis of North Korea 13April Available here (accessed 13 April 2011)

Hartman Saidiya 1997 Scenes of subjectionTerror slavery and self-making in nineteenth-century America New York Oxford OxfordUniversity Press

Harvey David 2005 A brief history ofneoliberalism New York Oxford UniversityPress

Hauben Ronda 2013 The role of the UN in theUnending Korean War ldquoUnited NationsCommandrdquo as camouflage Global Research 21September Available here (accessed 24 March2014)

Hitz Frederick P 2007 Human sourceintelligence Handbook of intelligence studiesEd Loch K Johnson Abdington UK and NewYork Routledge

Hong Adrian 2011 How to free North KoreaThe time to topple the criminal government inPyongyang is now Herersquos how to do it ForeignPolicy 19 December Available here (accessed16 February 2012)

Hong Christine 2011 When applies fall far

from the tree A case for humanitarian aid toNorth Korea Interview with David AustinKoreAm September

Horn Eva 2003 Knowing the enemy Theepistemology of secret intelligence Trans SaraOgger Grey Room 11 58ndash85

HR 4011 2004 North Korean Human RightsAct of 2004 108th Congress Available at here(accessed 9 October 2007)

The Journals of Musan (Musanilgi) 2011 DirPark Jungbum Fine Cut

Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot 2001The aquariums of Pyongyang Ten years in theNorth Korean gulag Trans Yair Reiner NewYork Basic BooksPerseus Books

Kirby Michael 2014 Statement to the 25th

session of the Human Rights Council Geneva17 March Available here (accessed 20 March2014)

Kim Yong-sam 1995 Political prisonersrsquocamps in North Korea The testimony of AnMyong-chol an ex-guard at a politicalprisonersrsquo camp in North Korea Seoul Centerfor the Advancement of North Korean HumanRights

Klein Naomi 2005 The rise of disastercapitalism The Nation 14 April Available here(accessed 28 January 2012)

Korean War Armistice Agreement 1953 July27 Available here (accessed 13 July 2013)

Lankov Andrei 2013 How human rights inNorth Korea are gradually improving NKNews 12 September Available here (accessed18 September 2013)

Lee Daehoon 2012 Security nationalism andantindashNorth Koreanism in South Korea Paperdelivered at Seoul National Universityconference entitled ldquoConfiguration ofPeacelessness on the Korean Peninsula

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

22

Dialogue between Humanities and SocialSciencerdquo Seoul 25 July

Lin Chun 2006 The transformation of Chinesesocialism Durham NC and London DukeUniversity Press

Lindqvist Sven 2001 A history of bombingTrans Linda Haverty Rugg New York NewPress

MacIntyre Donald 2006 US media and theKorean peninsula Korea witness 135 years ofwar crisis and news in the land of the morningcalm Ed Donald Kirk and Choe Sang HunEunHaeng NaMu Publishing

Mattei Ugo and Laura Nader 2008 PlunderWhen the rule of law is illegal Malden MABlackwell

McCormack Gavan 2006 Criminal statesSoprano vs baritonemdashNorth Korea and the USThe Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus Availablehere (accessed 9 September 2009)

Meister Robert 2011 After evil A politics ofhuman rights New York Columbia UniversityPress

Melamed Jodi 2011 Represent and destroyRationalizing violence in the new racialcapitalism Minneapolis and London Universityof Minnesota Press

Mieacuteville China 2006 Between equal rights AMarxist theory of international law ChicagoHaymarket Books

Minnesota Lawyers International HumanRights Committee and Asia Watch 1988Human rights in the Democratic PeoplersquosRepublic of Korea (North Korea) MinneapolisMinnesota Lawyers International HumanRights Committee

Moon Katherine 2008 Beyond demonizationA new strategy for human rights in NorthKoreardquo Current History September 263ndash68

Moon Ruth 2008 Worldrsquos worst persecutorWill US diplomatic shift and Graham visit helpChristians Christianity Today A Magazine ofEvangelical Conviction December Availablehere (accessed on 6 April 2010)

Moses A Dirk 2010 Raphael Lemkin cultureand the concept of genocide In DonaldBloxham and A Dirk Moses eds The Oxfordhandbook on genocide studies Oxford OxfordUniversity Press 19ndash41

Moyn Samuel 2010 The last utopia Humanrights in history Cambridge Mass andLondon BelknapHarvard University Press

Mutua Makau 2002 Human rights A politicaland cultural critique Philadelphia Universityof Pennsylvania Press

N Korea calls Rumsfeld ldquopsychopathrdquo 2003BBC News 27 September Available here(accessed 7 March 2012)

Obama Barack 2013 Remarks by thePresident at 60th Anniversary of the Korean WarArmistice July 27 Available here (accessed on28 July 2013)

Palat Ravi Arvind 2004 Capita l is trestructuring and the Pacific Rim London andNew York RoutledgeCurzon

Peoplersquos Solidarity for Participatory Democracy(PSPD) 2014 Written statement on UnitedNations Commission of Inquiry report onhuman rights in the Democratic PeoplersquosRepublic of Korea 17 February Available here(accessed 17 February 2014)

Puar Jasbir 2007 Terrorist assemblagesHomonationalism in queer times DurhamNC and London Duke University Press

Repatriation (Songhwan) 2003 Dir Kim Dong-won PURN Productions

S 1903 2003 North Korean Freedom Act of2003 108th Congress Available here (accessed

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

23

9 October 2007)

S Hrg 2003 (Hidden) The hidden gulagPutting human rights on the North Koreanpo l i cy agenda Hear ing be fore theSubcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairsof the Committee on Foreign Relations of theUS Senate S Hrg 108ndash404 4 November

S Hrg 2003(Life) Life inside North KoreaHearing before the Subcommittee on EastAsian and Pacific Affairs of the Committee onForeign Relations of the US Senate S Hrg108-131 5 June

Scarlatiou Greg 2013 Are human rights reallyimproving in North Korea NK News 20September Available here (accessed 21September 2013)

Scholte Suzanne 2009 Advancing humanrights at the Capitol Working paper Availablehere (accessed 10 January 2012)

mdashmdashmdash 2011 Remarks before House Committeeon Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on AfricaGlobal Health and Human Rights 20September Available here (accessed 16February 2012)

Seoul Train 2004 Seoul train Dir JimButterworth et al Incite Productions

Sharlet Jeff 2006 Godrsquos senator Who wouldJesus vote for Meet Sam Brownback RollingStone 9 February 50ndash54 56ndash57 74

Smith Hazel 2000 Bad mad sad or rationalactor Why the ldquosecuritizationrdquo paradigmmakes for poor policy analysis of north KoreaInternational Affairs 76 (3) 593ndash617

mdashmdashmdash 2014 Crimes against humanityUnpacking the North Korean human rightsdebate Critical Asian Studies 46 (1)

Stone IF 1952 The hidden history of theKorean War New York Monthly Review Press

Weingartner Erich 2013 Reconciling thehuman factor Understanding the North Koreanhuman rightshumanitarian divide 38 NorthInformed Analysis of North Korea May 28Available here (accessed 28 May 2013)

Williams Randall 2010 The divided worldHuman rights and its violence MinneapolisUniversity of Minnesota

mdashmdashmdash 2011 The ballot and the bullet Anti-juridical praxis from Malcolm X and NelsonMandela to the Bolivarian Revolution RadicalPhilosophy Review 14 (1) 1ndash23

Yu Chong-ae 2004 USrsquos ldquoNorth KoreanFreedom Act of 2003rdquo Unpublished seminarpaper Available here (accessed 8 January2013)

Zolo Danilo 2009 Victorrsquos justice FromNuremberg to Baghdad Trans MW WeirLondon and New York Verso

Notes

1 Kirby 2014

2 Ibid

3 Zolo 2009 28

4 We should be reminded here that the UnitedNations played a vital role in fomenting theKorean War and crystallizing the structure ofdivision that has prevailed on the Koreanpeninsula s ince the Uni ted Nat ionsldquolegitimat[ed] an election in the South of Koreain May 1948 which was boycotted by manyKoreans and from which all North Koreans andmany South Koreans were excludedrdquo andsanctioned US military command in SouthKorea by permitting it to ldquowear the hatrdquo whichit still dons today of the ldquoUnited NationsCommandrdquo See Hauben 2013

5 In remarks before an audience of Americanveterans on the occasion of the sixtieth

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

24

anniversary of the signing of the 1953Armistice Agreement President Obamadeclared ldquo[The Korean] war was no tie Koreawas a victory When 50 million South Koreanslive in freedommdasha vibrant democracy one ofthe worldrsquos most dynamic economies in starkcontrast to the repression and poverty of theNorthmdashthatrsquos a victory thatrsquos your legacyrdquo SeeObama 2013

6 An account that ldquoblam[es] the government ofthe DPRK as the only perpetrator of humanrights violationshellipis a narrow approachrdquo theSouth Korean NGO Peoplersquos Solidarity forParticipatory Democracy (PSPD) cautioned in apublic response to the COI report endorsed bynumerous South Korean civil society andhuman rights organizations and it ldquoraisesconcerns on politicising public discourses onNorth Korean human rightsrdquo See PeoplersquosSolidarity for Participatory Democracystatement 2014

7 Em and Hong nd

8 On the ldquounique position of the crime ofaggression within the Rome Statuterdquo the NGOthe Coalition for the International CriminalCourt writes ldquoIn a compromise reached duringthe negotiation of the Rome Statute in 1998Article 5 of the Rome Statute lists the crime ofaggression as one of the core crimes under theCourtrsquos jurisdiction However in contrast to theother three crimes (genocide crimes againsthumanity and war crimes) the Court remainedunable to exercise jurisdiction over the crime ofaggression as the Statute did not define thecrime or set out jurisdictional conditionsrdquo SeeThe crime of aggression nd

9 Commission of Inquiry Report 2014 366emphasis added

10 Cumings 2010 23

11 Mattei and Nader 143 2008 Zolo 2009 31

12 Ibid 41

13 Zolo 2009 123

14 Charter of the United Nations 1945

15 Benjamin 1986 283

16 Atanasoski 2013 27

17 Zolo 2009 30

18 The COI report states ldquoThe authorities of theRepublic of Korea Japan the United Kingdomof Great Britain and Northern Ireland and theUnited States of America provided operationaland substantive support for the conduct of thepublic hearings including by facilitating theidentification and hiring of a venue assisting inthe provision of the services of professionalinterpreters and providing video-recording andtranscripts of the proceedingsrdquo SeeCommission of Inquiry Report 2014 10

19 Becker 2014

20 Commission of Inquiry Report 2014 27

21 Ibid 368

22 Kirby 2014 Commission of Inquiry 2014372 emphasis added

23 Korean War Armistice Agreement 1953

24 Commission of Inquiry Report 2014 26

25 Ibid

26 Hong 2011

27 Smith 2014 135

28 Ibid 134

29 It bears remarking the obviousmdashnamely thata more balanced perspective might have beenhad not only were North Korea to have agreedto participate in the proceedings but also hadthe Commission sought out a broader spectrumof views Commission of Inquiry Report 2014

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

25

15

30 Ibid 35

31 Ibid 38

32 Kirby 2014

33 Hitz 2007 127

34 MacIntyre 2006 406 This rumor about theldquogruesome medical testing of chemical andbiological weaponshellipon persons withdisabilitiesrdquo appears as the most extremeallegation of mistreatment of people withdisabilities in the COI report Yet here it isworth pointing out the incoherence of thereport which elsewhere notes that despite theldquowidespread prejudice against people withdisabilitiesrdquo North Korea has taken legalmeasures to ensure their human rightsincluding passing a domestic law ldquopromisingfree medical care and special education forpersons with disabilitiesrdquo in 2003 and signingthe Convention on the Rights of Persons withDisabilities in 2013 as well as establishing theKorean Federation for the Protection ofDisabled People in 1998 and sending a NorthKorean athlete to the 2012 Paralympics Thereport further makes nodding mention of NorthKorearsquos construction of ldquo11 special boardingschools for hearing-impaired children andvision-impaired childrenrdquo as early as 1959dur ing the per i od o f Nor th Koreanreconstruction See Commission of InquiryReport 2014 93 91 92

35 Kang and Rigoulot 2001 224

3 6 Peoplersquos Solidarity for ParticipatoryDemocracy 2014

37 At moments atypical views on the part ofdefectors momentarily surface in thetranscriptions for the COI hearings thoughthey do not translate into Commissionrsquosfindings for example at the same October 302013 hearing in Washington DC ldquoMrs Xrdquo a

North Korean defector living in the UnitedStates inadvertently commented on thelimitations of the COIrsquos reliance on defectortestimony ldquoWell people can say many differentthings about North Korea depending on whatthey saw there Some people might say lsquoI sawcell phones in North Korearsquo or some people[might] say lsquoThey seem to be doing okay therersquodepending on what they sawhellip Even in theUnited States there are homeless people butyou donrsquot call the United States the country ofthe homelessrdquo Commission of Inquiry PublicHearing 2013 73

38 On the ldquodemonization scriptrdquo toward NorthKorea see MacIntyre 2006 407

39 Of the ldquohuman rightshumanitarian dividerdquorelative to North Korea Erich Weingartnerwrites ldquoFor human rights activists the mainproblem in North Korea lies with a dictatorialgovernment ruled by the Kim family dynastywhich has imposed i ts i ron wi l l on adisenfranchised populationrdquo Ultimately forhuman rights activists the ldquohuman rightsdeficit is considered to be so extreme in NorthKorea that the only solution is regime change[which] is unlikely to evolve through internalreformrdquo See Weingartner 2013

40 As Stephan Haggard and Marcus Nolandhave pointed out ldquoLike genocide food aidrequires alacrity waiting for evidence ofstarvation means you are already too laterdquo SeeHaggard and Noland The logic and illogic offood aid 2011

41 Civil Rights Congress 1951 xi

42 Ibid 7

43 The formal name for North Korea is theD e m o c r a t i c P e o p l e rsquo s R e p u b l i c o fKoreamdashhereafter in this introduction ldquoNorthKoreardquo

44 Civil Rights Congress 1951 7

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

26

45 Ceacutesaire 2000 73

46 Cumings 2010 xviii

47 Civil Rights Congress 1951 7

48 In its framing of US involvement in theKorean War as illegal violence against ldquothepeople of Asiardquo the Civil Rights Congresswould not be alone On the obliterating US aircampaign against North Korea historian BruceCumings among others has pointed out thatthe Genocide Convention ldquowas approved in1948 and entered into force in 1951mdashjust asthe USAF [US Air Force] was inflictinggenocide under this definition and under theaegis of the United Nations Command on thecitizens of North Koreardquo See Cumings 2010161 emphasis added

49 Ceacutesaire 2000 37 42 In a similar vein juristJoseph Hornung states ldquoInternational lawexists only for the powerful Up to now theyhave shown no consideration for the weak Theother peoples who make up three-quarters ofhumanity have no recourse against injusticerdquoAs quoted in Lindqvist 2001 19

50 Mieacuteville 2006 225 emphasis added Asscholars have increasingly noted colonialismas a historical pattern of destruction is ther e f e r e n c e f o r R a p h a e l L e m k i n rsquo sconceptualization of genocide Lemkintheorized the Holocaust not in exclusive orexceptional terms but as a form of colonialisminternal to Europe As A Dirk Moses writesldquoGenocide for Lemkinhellipwas a special form offoreign conquest occupation and oftenwarfare It was necessarily imperial andc o l o n i a l i n n a t u r e rdquo Y e t ldquo c u l t u r a lgenociderdquomdashwhat Lemkin had in earlierscholarship identified as ldquovandalismrdquomdashwasstripped from the final draft of the 1948Convention in no small part for fear of its utilityin prosecuting the brutality of colonialism SeeMoses 2010 26 Highlighting AmnestyInternationalrsquos disqualification of NelsonMandela from its ldquoprisoner of consciencerdquo

category Randall Wil l iams offers anilluminating discussion of the fateful cleavagebetween Amnesty Internat ional anddecolonization struggles in the 1960s SeeWilliams 2010 1ndash23

51 Mieacuteville 2006 271

52 Williams 2010 xvii I borrow the term ldquoraceradicalrdquo from Jodi Melamedrsquos definition of theterm ldquorace radicalismhelliprefers to points ofresistance to official anti-racismsrdquo of the USstate and it ldquooriginated in the forcefulanticolonial and leftist antiracist movements ofthe 1930s and 1940srdquo See Melamed 2011 xviiemphasis in original

53 Williams 2010 xvii

54 Moyn 2010 8

55 Ibid 157 86

56 Williams 2011 9

57 Moyn 2010 107 98

58 Melamed 2011 xiv

59 Brown 2004 453 Wendy Brown observesthat human rights activism might ldquogenerallypresen thellipi t se l f a s someth ing o f anantipoliticsmdasha pure defense of the innocent andthe powerless against power a pure defense ofthe individual against immense and potentiallycruel or despotic machineries of culture statewar ethnic conflict tribalism patriarchy andother mobilizations or instantiations ofcollective power against individualsrdquo SeeBrown 2004 453

60

61 Feffer 2006 6

62 Fanon 2004 57

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

27

63 Armstrong 2003 3

64 Prepared statement of Stephen LintonChairman of the Eugene Bell foundation SHrg 2003 (Life) 37 The Eugene BellFoundation is a humanitarian organization thathas worked in rural North Korea since 1995John Feffer similarly notes that ldquoFor severaldecades the Democratic Peoplersquos Republic ofKorea (DPRK) prided itself on meeting the foodneeds of its population although it has littlearable land Like many socialist countriesNorth Korea emphasized this successmdashalongwith high literacy rates an equitable healthcare system and guaranteed jobs for allmdashasproof that it upheld human rights that itsrecord in fact exceeded that of Westerncountriesrdquo See Feffer 2006 1

65 Feffer 2006 16 Lankov 2013 The responseof Greg Scarlatiou executive director of theUS Committee on Human Rights in NorthKorea to Andrei Lankovrsquos article is instructiveWhereas Lankov reads intelligence reports of adecrease in overall prison population in NorthKorea as a sign of progress Scarlatiouinterprets the same reports as a likelyldquostaggeringly high rate of death in detentionrdquoSee Lankov 2013 and Scarlatiou 2013

66 Encapsulated in the ldquotwenty-first-centurydoctrine of humanitarian interventionmdashtheldquoResponsibility to Protectrdquo (R2P)mdashhellipproposes anew nomos of the Earth that would repudiatepast violence (which always appears assomething cyclical and uncontained) byendorsing exceptional violencemdashthat of rescueand occupationrdquo See Meister 2011 ix

67 Martti Koskenniemi quoted in Mieacuteville 2006255 As Gavan McCormack has observedldquoUnlike the US North Korea has not committedaggressive war (at least in the past halfcentury) overthrown any democratically

elected government threatened any neighborwith nuclear weapons or attempted to justifythe practices of torture and assassinationrdquoThough North Korea ldquoplainly runs roughshodover the rights of its citizensrdquo according toMcCormack the ldquomajor ongoing andunapologized [for]rdquo crimes of the United Statesmerit at the very least commensurate criticalscrutiny See McCormack 2006

68 Feffer 2006 7 As John Feffer has remarkedby subscribing to a narrative of deliberatemalice on the part of the North Koreangovernment ldquothe human rights framework didlittle to help us understand the sources of thefaminerdquo that North Korea experienced in themid-to-late 1990s See Feffer 2006 23

6 9 Drawing in part on South Koreanintelligence reports based on North Koreandefector testimony the mid to late 1980srsquocountry reports put out by international humanrights organizations offered slender at timesopenly speculative accounts of the NorthKorean human rights landscape with NorthKorearsquos imprisonment of the Spanish-languagetranslator Ali Lameda looming large Thesereports notwithstanding North Korean humanrights emerged as an institutionalizedtransnational force to be reckoned with in thewake of George W Bushrsquos ldquoaxis of evilrdquo speechSee Amnesty International concerns in theDemocratic Peoplersquos Republic of Korea 1985and Minnesota Lawyers International HumanRights Committee and Asia Watch 1988

70 Feffer 2004 37

71 Mutua 2002 1

72 Smith 2000 593

73 Describing the Values Action Team (VAT) as aldquocellrdquo of leaders from the religious right thathelped to drive the North Korean human rightsagenda during the Bush era Jeff Sharlet in hisportrait of Sam Brownback for Rolling Stonestates ldquoOne victory for the group [VAT] was

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

28

Brownbackrsquos North Korea Human Rights Actwhich establishes a confrontational stancetoward the dictatorial regime and shifts fundsfor humanitarian aid from the United Nationsto Chr i s t i an o rgan i za t i ons rdquo SeanWoomdashBrownbackrsquos former general counsel andnow the chief of staff of the HelsinkiCommissionmdashcalls this a process of ldquoprivatizingdemocracyrdquo See Sharlet 2006 56

74 Frum 2003 236

75 Brownback 2008 emphasis added We mightnote the same logic at play in David Hawkrsquosassertion during a 2003 Senate hearing onNorth Korean human rights ldquoUntil such timeas onsite verifications are allowed the refugeetestimonies as are presented in the reportretain their credence and authorityrdquo See SHrg 2003 (Life)

76 Kim 1995 9

77 Haggard and Noland 2011 Witness totransformation 101 Scholte 2009 Moon(Ruth) 2008

78 Hartman 1997 5

79 Conrad 2006 24 36

80 Seoul Train 2004 S Hrg 2003 (Hidden) TheEconomist commenting on the US prisonpopulation observes ldquoThe land of the Free has5 percent of the worldrsquos population but 25percent of its prisoners See Americarsquosovercrowded prisons 2013

81 Hong 2011 emphasis added

82 Williams 2010 29

83 Meister 2011 viii 24

84 Ibid

85 Palat 2004 13

86 Ibid 17

87 As quoted in Stone 1952 348

88 Williams 2010 66

89 Harvey 2005 177

90 Booth 1961 347 emphasis in original

91 Ibid

92 Booth 1961 344

93 Cumings 1990 772

94 Repatriation 2003

95 Williams 2010 29

9 6 Quoted in N Korea ca l ls Rumsfe ldldquopsychopathrdquo 2003

97 As Lindqvist succinctly contends ldquoNo state ofemergency could exist that would give someonethe right to destroy entire countries and theirinhabitantsrdquo and here he cites the Indian juristNagendra Singh ldquoIt would indeed be arrogantfor any single nation to argue that to savehumanity from bondage it was thoughtnecessary to destroy humanity itselfrdquo SeeLindqvist 2001 144

98 Hong 2011

99 Seoul Train 2004 See Chung Byung-horsquoscountervailing commentary in the same film

100 Scholte 2011

101 Klein 2005 The ldquoreconstruction businessrdquothat attends externally engineered regimecollapse according to Ugo Mattei and LauraNader ldquooften hir[es] more or less gulliblehuman rights activistsrdquo to furnish ldquoa rhetoricalargument for more lsquointerventionrsquo whichsometimes is the province of justice-motivatedindividuals attempting to restore peace orderand the rule of lawrdquo See Mattei and Nader2008 127

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

29

102 Brown 2004 456

103 Lin 2006 13

104 S 1903 2003

105 Ibid

106 HR 4011 2004

107 S Hrg 2003 (Life) 1 3

108 On the destabilizing intention behindsanctions against North Korea Ruediger Frankpoints out that ldquo[f]rom the outset it is clearthat the sender of sanctions deliberately inflictsdamage on the innocent hoping that their painwill translate into resistance against theirleadersrdquo He also observes the deleteriousimpact sanctions have on foreign investment inNorth Korea ldquoAs many foreign businesspeoplehave complained the sanctions [against NorthKorea] have damaged their businessesrdquo Frankalso remarks ldquoNorth Korea needs hardcurrencyrdquo for the most basic of provisionsincluding food for the people See Frank 200615 30

109 See Frank 2006 41

110 Melamed 2011 xvii

111 Harvey 2005 176

112 Ibid On the market as a foil for the statesee Puar 2007 26

113 Kang and Rigoulot 2001 199

114 Atanasoski 2013 5

115 As John Feffer writes ldquoWith the increase inthe flow of people out of the country news ofwhat was going on in North Korea was nolonger restricted to a handful of defectorsvetted by the South Korean governmentrdquo SeeFeffer 2004 33

116 As Chong-ae Yu documents in her account ofthe transnational political interests behind theNorth Korean Freedom Act of 2003 and theinstrumental role of US state funding of theseinterests NED not only has supported the ldquotwomost active South Korean NGOs involved inNorth Korean human rights issues CitizensrsquoAlliance for North Korean Human Rightshellipandthe Network for North Korean Democracy andHuman Rightsrdquo but also through itssponsorship of South Korean organizations andindividuals on the issue of North Korean humanr ights abuses was ins t rumenta l ininternationalizing the North Korean humanrights movement See Yu 2004

117 Lee 2012

118 Harvey 2005 165

119 Park 2011

120 Ibid 171

121 Meister 2011 34

122 Douzinas 2007 71 73

123 Ibid 75

124 Meister 2011 236

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

25

15

30 Ibid 35

31 Ibid 38

32 Kirby 2014

33 Hitz 2007 127

34 MacIntyre 2006 406 This rumor about theldquogruesome medical testing of chemical andbiological weaponshellipon persons withdisabilitiesrdquo appears as the most extremeallegation of mistreatment of people withdisabilities in the COI report Yet here it isworth pointing out the incoherence of thereport which elsewhere notes that despite theldquowidespread prejudice against people withdisabilitiesrdquo North Korea has taken legalmeasures to ensure their human rightsincluding passing a domestic law ldquopromisingfree medical care and special education forpersons with disabilitiesrdquo in 2003 and signingthe Convention on the Rights of Persons withDisabilities in 2013 as well as establishing theKorean Federation for the Protection ofDisabled People in 1998 and sending a NorthKorean athlete to the 2012 Paralympics Thereport further makes nodding mention of NorthKorearsquos construction of ldquo11 special boardingschools for hearing-impaired children andvision-impaired childrenrdquo as early as 1959dur ing the per i od o f Nor th Koreanreconstruction See Commission of InquiryReport 2014 93 91 92

35 Kang and Rigoulot 2001 224

3 6 Peoplersquos Solidarity for ParticipatoryDemocracy 2014

37 At moments atypical views on the part ofdefectors momentarily surface in thetranscriptions for the COI hearings thoughthey do not translate into Commissionrsquosfindings for example at the same October 302013 hearing in Washington DC ldquoMrs Xrdquo a

North Korean defector living in the UnitedStates inadvertently commented on thelimitations of the COIrsquos reliance on defectortestimony ldquoWell people can say many differentthings about North Korea depending on whatthey saw there Some people might say lsquoI sawcell phones in North Korearsquo or some people[might] say lsquoThey seem to be doing okay therersquodepending on what they sawhellip Even in theUnited States there are homeless people butyou donrsquot call the United States the country ofthe homelessrdquo Commission of Inquiry PublicHearing 2013 73

38 On the ldquodemonization scriptrdquo toward NorthKorea see MacIntyre 2006 407

39 Of the ldquohuman rightshumanitarian dividerdquorelative to North Korea Erich Weingartnerwrites ldquoFor human rights activists the mainproblem in North Korea lies with a dictatorialgovernment ruled by the Kim family dynastywhich has imposed i ts i ron wi l l on adisenfranchised populationrdquo Ultimately forhuman rights activists the ldquohuman rightsdeficit is considered to be so extreme in NorthKorea that the only solution is regime change[which] is unlikely to evolve through internalreformrdquo See Weingartner 2013

40 As Stephan Haggard and Marcus Nolandhave pointed out ldquoLike genocide food aidrequires alacrity waiting for evidence ofstarvation means you are already too laterdquo SeeHaggard and Noland The logic and illogic offood aid 2011

41 Civil Rights Congress 1951 xi

42 Ibid 7

43 The formal name for North Korea is theD e m o c r a t i c P e o p l e rsquo s R e p u b l i c o fKoreamdashhereafter in this introduction ldquoNorthKoreardquo

44 Civil Rights Congress 1951 7

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

26

45 Ceacutesaire 2000 73

46 Cumings 2010 xviii

47 Civil Rights Congress 1951 7

48 In its framing of US involvement in theKorean War as illegal violence against ldquothepeople of Asiardquo the Civil Rights Congresswould not be alone On the obliterating US aircampaign against North Korea historian BruceCumings among others has pointed out thatthe Genocide Convention ldquowas approved in1948 and entered into force in 1951mdashjust asthe USAF [US Air Force] was inflictinggenocide under this definition and under theaegis of the United Nations Command on thecitizens of North Koreardquo See Cumings 2010161 emphasis added

49 Ceacutesaire 2000 37 42 In a similar vein juristJoseph Hornung states ldquoInternational lawexists only for the powerful Up to now theyhave shown no consideration for the weak Theother peoples who make up three-quarters ofhumanity have no recourse against injusticerdquoAs quoted in Lindqvist 2001 19

50 Mieacuteville 2006 225 emphasis added Asscholars have increasingly noted colonialismas a historical pattern of destruction is ther e f e r e n c e f o r R a p h a e l L e m k i n rsquo sconceptualization of genocide Lemkintheorized the Holocaust not in exclusive orexceptional terms but as a form of colonialisminternal to Europe As A Dirk Moses writesldquoGenocide for Lemkinhellipwas a special form offoreign conquest occupation and oftenwarfare It was necessarily imperial andc o l o n i a l i n n a t u r e rdquo Y e t ldquo c u l t u r a lgenociderdquomdashwhat Lemkin had in earlierscholarship identified as ldquovandalismrdquomdashwasstripped from the final draft of the 1948Convention in no small part for fear of its utilityin prosecuting the brutality of colonialism SeeMoses 2010 26 Highlighting AmnestyInternationalrsquos disqualification of NelsonMandela from its ldquoprisoner of consciencerdquo

category Randall Wil l iams offers anilluminating discussion of the fateful cleavagebetween Amnesty Internat ional anddecolonization struggles in the 1960s SeeWilliams 2010 1ndash23

51 Mieacuteville 2006 271

52 Williams 2010 xvii I borrow the term ldquoraceradicalrdquo from Jodi Melamedrsquos definition of theterm ldquorace radicalismhelliprefers to points ofresistance to official anti-racismsrdquo of the USstate and it ldquooriginated in the forcefulanticolonial and leftist antiracist movements ofthe 1930s and 1940srdquo See Melamed 2011 xviiemphasis in original

53 Williams 2010 xvii

54 Moyn 2010 8

55 Ibid 157 86

56 Williams 2011 9

57 Moyn 2010 107 98

58 Melamed 2011 xiv

59 Brown 2004 453 Wendy Brown observesthat human rights activism might ldquogenerallypresen thellipi t se l f a s someth ing o f anantipoliticsmdasha pure defense of the innocent andthe powerless against power a pure defense ofthe individual against immense and potentiallycruel or despotic machineries of culture statewar ethnic conflict tribalism patriarchy andother mobilizations or instantiations ofcollective power against individualsrdquo SeeBrown 2004 453

60

61 Feffer 2006 6

62 Fanon 2004 57

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

27

63 Armstrong 2003 3

64 Prepared statement of Stephen LintonChairman of the Eugene Bell foundation SHrg 2003 (Life) 37 The Eugene BellFoundation is a humanitarian organization thathas worked in rural North Korea since 1995John Feffer similarly notes that ldquoFor severaldecades the Democratic Peoplersquos Republic ofKorea (DPRK) prided itself on meeting the foodneeds of its population although it has littlearable land Like many socialist countriesNorth Korea emphasized this successmdashalongwith high literacy rates an equitable healthcare system and guaranteed jobs for allmdashasproof that it upheld human rights that itsrecord in fact exceeded that of Westerncountriesrdquo See Feffer 2006 1

65 Feffer 2006 16 Lankov 2013 The responseof Greg Scarlatiou executive director of theUS Committee on Human Rights in NorthKorea to Andrei Lankovrsquos article is instructiveWhereas Lankov reads intelligence reports of adecrease in overall prison population in NorthKorea as a sign of progress Scarlatiouinterprets the same reports as a likelyldquostaggeringly high rate of death in detentionrdquoSee Lankov 2013 and Scarlatiou 2013

66 Encapsulated in the ldquotwenty-first-centurydoctrine of humanitarian interventionmdashtheldquoResponsibility to Protectrdquo (R2P)mdashhellipproposes anew nomos of the Earth that would repudiatepast violence (which always appears assomething cyclical and uncontained) byendorsing exceptional violencemdashthat of rescueand occupationrdquo See Meister 2011 ix

67 Martti Koskenniemi quoted in Mieacuteville 2006255 As Gavan McCormack has observedldquoUnlike the US North Korea has not committedaggressive war (at least in the past halfcentury) overthrown any democratically

elected government threatened any neighborwith nuclear weapons or attempted to justifythe practices of torture and assassinationrdquoThough North Korea ldquoplainly runs roughshodover the rights of its citizensrdquo according toMcCormack the ldquomajor ongoing andunapologized [for]rdquo crimes of the United Statesmerit at the very least commensurate criticalscrutiny See McCormack 2006

68 Feffer 2006 7 As John Feffer has remarkedby subscribing to a narrative of deliberatemalice on the part of the North Koreangovernment ldquothe human rights framework didlittle to help us understand the sources of thefaminerdquo that North Korea experienced in themid-to-late 1990s See Feffer 2006 23

6 9 Drawing in part on South Koreanintelligence reports based on North Koreandefector testimony the mid to late 1980srsquocountry reports put out by international humanrights organizations offered slender at timesopenly speculative accounts of the NorthKorean human rights landscape with NorthKorearsquos imprisonment of the Spanish-languagetranslator Ali Lameda looming large Thesereports notwithstanding North Korean humanrights emerged as an institutionalizedtransnational force to be reckoned with in thewake of George W Bushrsquos ldquoaxis of evilrdquo speechSee Amnesty International concerns in theDemocratic Peoplersquos Republic of Korea 1985and Minnesota Lawyers International HumanRights Committee and Asia Watch 1988

70 Feffer 2004 37

71 Mutua 2002 1

72 Smith 2000 593

73 Describing the Values Action Team (VAT) as aldquocellrdquo of leaders from the religious right thathelped to drive the North Korean human rightsagenda during the Bush era Jeff Sharlet in hisportrait of Sam Brownback for Rolling Stonestates ldquoOne victory for the group [VAT] was

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

28

Brownbackrsquos North Korea Human Rights Actwhich establishes a confrontational stancetoward the dictatorial regime and shifts fundsfor humanitarian aid from the United Nationsto Chr i s t i an o rgan i za t i ons rdquo SeanWoomdashBrownbackrsquos former general counsel andnow the chief of staff of the HelsinkiCommissionmdashcalls this a process of ldquoprivatizingdemocracyrdquo See Sharlet 2006 56

74 Frum 2003 236

75 Brownback 2008 emphasis added We mightnote the same logic at play in David Hawkrsquosassertion during a 2003 Senate hearing onNorth Korean human rights ldquoUntil such timeas onsite verifications are allowed the refugeetestimonies as are presented in the reportretain their credence and authorityrdquo See SHrg 2003 (Life)

76 Kim 1995 9

77 Haggard and Noland 2011 Witness totransformation 101 Scholte 2009 Moon(Ruth) 2008

78 Hartman 1997 5

79 Conrad 2006 24 36

80 Seoul Train 2004 S Hrg 2003 (Hidden) TheEconomist commenting on the US prisonpopulation observes ldquoThe land of the Free has5 percent of the worldrsquos population but 25percent of its prisoners See Americarsquosovercrowded prisons 2013

81 Hong 2011 emphasis added

82 Williams 2010 29

83 Meister 2011 viii 24

84 Ibid

85 Palat 2004 13

86 Ibid 17

87 As quoted in Stone 1952 348

88 Williams 2010 66

89 Harvey 2005 177

90 Booth 1961 347 emphasis in original

91 Ibid

92 Booth 1961 344

93 Cumings 1990 772

94 Repatriation 2003

95 Williams 2010 29

9 6 Quoted in N Korea ca l ls Rumsfe ldldquopsychopathrdquo 2003

97 As Lindqvist succinctly contends ldquoNo state ofemergency could exist that would give someonethe right to destroy entire countries and theirinhabitantsrdquo and here he cites the Indian juristNagendra Singh ldquoIt would indeed be arrogantfor any single nation to argue that to savehumanity from bondage it was thoughtnecessary to destroy humanity itselfrdquo SeeLindqvist 2001 144

98 Hong 2011

99 Seoul Train 2004 See Chung Byung-horsquoscountervailing commentary in the same film

100 Scholte 2011

101 Klein 2005 The ldquoreconstruction businessrdquothat attends externally engineered regimecollapse according to Ugo Mattei and LauraNader ldquooften hir[es] more or less gulliblehuman rights activistsrdquo to furnish ldquoa rhetoricalargument for more lsquointerventionrsquo whichsometimes is the province of justice-motivatedindividuals attempting to restore peace orderand the rule of lawrdquo See Mattei and Nader2008 127

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

29

102 Brown 2004 456

103 Lin 2006 13

104 S 1903 2003

105 Ibid

106 HR 4011 2004

107 S Hrg 2003 (Life) 1 3

108 On the destabilizing intention behindsanctions against North Korea Ruediger Frankpoints out that ldquo[f]rom the outset it is clearthat the sender of sanctions deliberately inflictsdamage on the innocent hoping that their painwill translate into resistance against theirleadersrdquo He also observes the deleteriousimpact sanctions have on foreign investment inNorth Korea ldquoAs many foreign businesspeoplehave complained the sanctions [against NorthKorea] have damaged their businessesrdquo Frankalso remarks ldquoNorth Korea needs hardcurrencyrdquo for the most basic of provisionsincluding food for the people See Frank 200615 30

109 See Frank 2006 41

110 Melamed 2011 xvii

111 Harvey 2005 176

112 Ibid On the market as a foil for the statesee Puar 2007 26

113 Kang and Rigoulot 2001 199

114 Atanasoski 2013 5

115 As John Feffer writes ldquoWith the increase inthe flow of people out of the country news ofwhat was going on in North Korea was nolonger restricted to a handful of defectorsvetted by the South Korean governmentrdquo SeeFeffer 2004 33

116 As Chong-ae Yu documents in her account ofthe transnational political interests behind theNorth Korean Freedom Act of 2003 and theinstrumental role of US state funding of theseinterests NED not only has supported the ldquotwomost active South Korean NGOs involved inNorth Korean human rights issues CitizensrsquoAlliance for North Korean Human Rightshellipandthe Network for North Korean Democracy andHuman Rightsrdquo but also through itssponsorship of South Korean organizations andindividuals on the issue of North Korean humanr ights abuses was ins t rumenta l ininternationalizing the North Korean humanrights movement See Yu 2004

117 Lee 2012

118 Harvey 2005 165

119 Park 2011

120 Ibid 171

121 Meister 2011 34

122 Douzinas 2007 71 73

123 Ibid 75

124 Meister 2011 236

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

26

45 Ceacutesaire 2000 73

46 Cumings 2010 xviii

47 Civil Rights Congress 1951 7

48 In its framing of US involvement in theKorean War as illegal violence against ldquothepeople of Asiardquo the Civil Rights Congresswould not be alone On the obliterating US aircampaign against North Korea historian BruceCumings among others has pointed out thatthe Genocide Convention ldquowas approved in1948 and entered into force in 1951mdashjust asthe USAF [US Air Force] was inflictinggenocide under this definition and under theaegis of the United Nations Command on thecitizens of North Koreardquo See Cumings 2010161 emphasis added

49 Ceacutesaire 2000 37 42 In a similar vein juristJoseph Hornung states ldquoInternational lawexists only for the powerful Up to now theyhave shown no consideration for the weak Theother peoples who make up three-quarters ofhumanity have no recourse against injusticerdquoAs quoted in Lindqvist 2001 19

50 Mieacuteville 2006 225 emphasis added Asscholars have increasingly noted colonialismas a historical pattern of destruction is ther e f e r e n c e f o r R a p h a e l L e m k i n rsquo sconceptualization of genocide Lemkintheorized the Holocaust not in exclusive orexceptional terms but as a form of colonialisminternal to Europe As A Dirk Moses writesldquoGenocide for Lemkinhellipwas a special form offoreign conquest occupation and oftenwarfare It was necessarily imperial andc o l o n i a l i n n a t u r e rdquo Y e t ldquo c u l t u r a lgenociderdquomdashwhat Lemkin had in earlierscholarship identified as ldquovandalismrdquomdashwasstripped from the final draft of the 1948Convention in no small part for fear of its utilityin prosecuting the brutality of colonialism SeeMoses 2010 26 Highlighting AmnestyInternationalrsquos disqualification of NelsonMandela from its ldquoprisoner of consciencerdquo

category Randall Wil l iams offers anilluminating discussion of the fateful cleavagebetween Amnesty Internat ional anddecolonization struggles in the 1960s SeeWilliams 2010 1ndash23

51 Mieacuteville 2006 271

52 Williams 2010 xvii I borrow the term ldquoraceradicalrdquo from Jodi Melamedrsquos definition of theterm ldquorace radicalismhelliprefers to points ofresistance to official anti-racismsrdquo of the USstate and it ldquooriginated in the forcefulanticolonial and leftist antiracist movements ofthe 1930s and 1940srdquo See Melamed 2011 xviiemphasis in original

53 Williams 2010 xvii

54 Moyn 2010 8

55 Ibid 157 86

56 Williams 2011 9

57 Moyn 2010 107 98

58 Melamed 2011 xiv

59 Brown 2004 453 Wendy Brown observesthat human rights activism might ldquogenerallypresen thellipi t se l f a s someth ing o f anantipoliticsmdasha pure defense of the innocent andthe powerless against power a pure defense ofthe individual against immense and potentiallycruel or despotic machineries of culture statewar ethnic conflict tribalism patriarchy andother mobilizations or instantiations ofcollective power against individualsrdquo SeeBrown 2004 453

60

61 Feffer 2006 6

62 Fanon 2004 57

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

27

63 Armstrong 2003 3

64 Prepared statement of Stephen LintonChairman of the Eugene Bell foundation SHrg 2003 (Life) 37 The Eugene BellFoundation is a humanitarian organization thathas worked in rural North Korea since 1995John Feffer similarly notes that ldquoFor severaldecades the Democratic Peoplersquos Republic ofKorea (DPRK) prided itself on meeting the foodneeds of its population although it has littlearable land Like many socialist countriesNorth Korea emphasized this successmdashalongwith high literacy rates an equitable healthcare system and guaranteed jobs for allmdashasproof that it upheld human rights that itsrecord in fact exceeded that of Westerncountriesrdquo See Feffer 2006 1

65 Feffer 2006 16 Lankov 2013 The responseof Greg Scarlatiou executive director of theUS Committee on Human Rights in NorthKorea to Andrei Lankovrsquos article is instructiveWhereas Lankov reads intelligence reports of adecrease in overall prison population in NorthKorea as a sign of progress Scarlatiouinterprets the same reports as a likelyldquostaggeringly high rate of death in detentionrdquoSee Lankov 2013 and Scarlatiou 2013

66 Encapsulated in the ldquotwenty-first-centurydoctrine of humanitarian interventionmdashtheldquoResponsibility to Protectrdquo (R2P)mdashhellipproposes anew nomos of the Earth that would repudiatepast violence (which always appears assomething cyclical and uncontained) byendorsing exceptional violencemdashthat of rescueand occupationrdquo See Meister 2011 ix

67 Martti Koskenniemi quoted in Mieacuteville 2006255 As Gavan McCormack has observedldquoUnlike the US North Korea has not committedaggressive war (at least in the past halfcentury) overthrown any democratically

elected government threatened any neighborwith nuclear weapons or attempted to justifythe practices of torture and assassinationrdquoThough North Korea ldquoplainly runs roughshodover the rights of its citizensrdquo according toMcCormack the ldquomajor ongoing andunapologized [for]rdquo crimes of the United Statesmerit at the very least commensurate criticalscrutiny See McCormack 2006

68 Feffer 2006 7 As John Feffer has remarkedby subscribing to a narrative of deliberatemalice on the part of the North Koreangovernment ldquothe human rights framework didlittle to help us understand the sources of thefaminerdquo that North Korea experienced in themid-to-late 1990s See Feffer 2006 23

6 9 Drawing in part on South Koreanintelligence reports based on North Koreandefector testimony the mid to late 1980srsquocountry reports put out by international humanrights organizations offered slender at timesopenly speculative accounts of the NorthKorean human rights landscape with NorthKorearsquos imprisonment of the Spanish-languagetranslator Ali Lameda looming large Thesereports notwithstanding North Korean humanrights emerged as an institutionalizedtransnational force to be reckoned with in thewake of George W Bushrsquos ldquoaxis of evilrdquo speechSee Amnesty International concerns in theDemocratic Peoplersquos Republic of Korea 1985and Minnesota Lawyers International HumanRights Committee and Asia Watch 1988

70 Feffer 2004 37

71 Mutua 2002 1

72 Smith 2000 593

73 Describing the Values Action Team (VAT) as aldquocellrdquo of leaders from the religious right thathelped to drive the North Korean human rightsagenda during the Bush era Jeff Sharlet in hisportrait of Sam Brownback for Rolling Stonestates ldquoOne victory for the group [VAT] was

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

28

Brownbackrsquos North Korea Human Rights Actwhich establishes a confrontational stancetoward the dictatorial regime and shifts fundsfor humanitarian aid from the United Nationsto Chr i s t i an o rgan i za t i ons rdquo SeanWoomdashBrownbackrsquos former general counsel andnow the chief of staff of the HelsinkiCommissionmdashcalls this a process of ldquoprivatizingdemocracyrdquo See Sharlet 2006 56

74 Frum 2003 236

75 Brownback 2008 emphasis added We mightnote the same logic at play in David Hawkrsquosassertion during a 2003 Senate hearing onNorth Korean human rights ldquoUntil such timeas onsite verifications are allowed the refugeetestimonies as are presented in the reportretain their credence and authorityrdquo See SHrg 2003 (Life)

76 Kim 1995 9

77 Haggard and Noland 2011 Witness totransformation 101 Scholte 2009 Moon(Ruth) 2008

78 Hartman 1997 5

79 Conrad 2006 24 36

80 Seoul Train 2004 S Hrg 2003 (Hidden) TheEconomist commenting on the US prisonpopulation observes ldquoThe land of the Free has5 percent of the worldrsquos population but 25percent of its prisoners See Americarsquosovercrowded prisons 2013

81 Hong 2011 emphasis added

82 Williams 2010 29

83 Meister 2011 viii 24

84 Ibid

85 Palat 2004 13

86 Ibid 17

87 As quoted in Stone 1952 348

88 Williams 2010 66

89 Harvey 2005 177

90 Booth 1961 347 emphasis in original

91 Ibid

92 Booth 1961 344

93 Cumings 1990 772

94 Repatriation 2003

95 Williams 2010 29

9 6 Quoted in N Korea ca l ls Rumsfe ldldquopsychopathrdquo 2003

97 As Lindqvist succinctly contends ldquoNo state ofemergency could exist that would give someonethe right to destroy entire countries and theirinhabitantsrdquo and here he cites the Indian juristNagendra Singh ldquoIt would indeed be arrogantfor any single nation to argue that to savehumanity from bondage it was thoughtnecessary to destroy humanity itselfrdquo SeeLindqvist 2001 144

98 Hong 2011

99 Seoul Train 2004 See Chung Byung-horsquoscountervailing commentary in the same film

100 Scholte 2011

101 Klein 2005 The ldquoreconstruction businessrdquothat attends externally engineered regimecollapse according to Ugo Mattei and LauraNader ldquooften hir[es] more or less gulliblehuman rights activistsrdquo to furnish ldquoa rhetoricalargument for more lsquointerventionrsquo whichsometimes is the province of justice-motivatedindividuals attempting to restore peace orderand the rule of lawrdquo See Mattei and Nader2008 127

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

29

102 Brown 2004 456

103 Lin 2006 13

104 S 1903 2003

105 Ibid

106 HR 4011 2004

107 S Hrg 2003 (Life) 1 3

108 On the destabilizing intention behindsanctions against North Korea Ruediger Frankpoints out that ldquo[f]rom the outset it is clearthat the sender of sanctions deliberately inflictsdamage on the innocent hoping that their painwill translate into resistance against theirleadersrdquo He also observes the deleteriousimpact sanctions have on foreign investment inNorth Korea ldquoAs many foreign businesspeoplehave complained the sanctions [against NorthKorea] have damaged their businessesrdquo Frankalso remarks ldquoNorth Korea needs hardcurrencyrdquo for the most basic of provisionsincluding food for the people See Frank 200615 30

109 See Frank 2006 41

110 Melamed 2011 xvii

111 Harvey 2005 176

112 Ibid On the market as a foil for the statesee Puar 2007 26

113 Kang and Rigoulot 2001 199

114 Atanasoski 2013 5

115 As John Feffer writes ldquoWith the increase inthe flow of people out of the country news ofwhat was going on in North Korea was nolonger restricted to a handful of defectorsvetted by the South Korean governmentrdquo SeeFeffer 2004 33

116 As Chong-ae Yu documents in her account ofthe transnational political interests behind theNorth Korean Freedom Act of 2003 and theinstrumental role of US state funding of theseinterests NED not only has supported the ldquotwomost active South Korean NGOs involved inNorth Korean human rights issues CitizensrsquoAlliance for North Korean Human Rightshellipandthe Network for North Korean Democracy andHuman Rightsrdquo but also through itssponsorship of South Korean organizations andindividuals on the issue of North Korean humanr ights abuses was ins t rumenta l ininternationalizing the North Korean humanrights movement See Yu 2004

117 Lee 2012

118 Harvey 2005 165

119 Park 2011

120 Ibid 171

121 Meister 2011 34

122 Douzinas 2007 71 73

123 Ibid 75

124 Meister 2011 236

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

27

63 Armstrong 2003 3

64 Prepared statement of Stephen LintonChairman of the Eugene Bell foundation SHrg 2003 (Life) 37 The Eugene BellFoundation is a humanitarian organization thathas worked in rural North Korea since 1995John Feffer similarly notes that ldquoFor severaldecades the Democratic Peoplersquos Republic ofKorea (DPRK) prided itself on meeting the foodneeds of its population although it has littlearable land Like many socialist countriesNorth Korea emphasized this successmdashalongwith high literacy rates an equitable healthcare system and guaranteed jobs for allmdashasproof that it upheld human rights that itsrecord in fact exceeded that of Westerncountriesrdquo See Feffer 2006 1

65 Feffer 2006 16 Lankov 2013 The responseof Greg Scarlatiou executive director of theUS Committee on Human Rights in NorthKorea to Andrei Lankovrsquos article is instructiveWhereas Lankov reads intelligence reports of adecrease in overall prison population in NorthKorea as a sign of progress Scarlatiouinterprets the same reports as a likelyldquostaggeringly high rate of death in detentionrdquoSee Lankov 2013 and Scarlatiou 2013

66 Encapsulated in the ldquotwenty-first-centurydoctrine of humanitarian interventionmdashtheldquoResponsibility to Protectrdquo (R2P)mdashhellipproposes anew nomos of the Earth that would repudiatepast violence (which always appears assomething cyclical and uncontained) byendorsing exceptional violencemdashthat of rescueand occupationrdquo See Meister 2011 ix

67 Martti Koskenniemi quoted in Mieacuteville 2006255 As Gavan McCormack has observedldquoUnlike the US North Korea has not committedaggressive war (at least in the past halfcentury) overthrown any democratically

elected government threatened any neighborwith nuclear weapons or attempted to justifythe practices of torture and assassinationrdquoThough North Korea ldquoplainly runs roughshodover the rights of its citizensrdquo according toMcCormack the ldquomajor ongoing andunapologized [for]rdquo crimes of the United Statesmerit at the very least commensurate criticalscrutiny See McCormack 2006

68 Feffer 2006 7 As John Feffer has remarkedby subscribing to a narrative of deliberatemalice on the part of the North Koreangovernment ldquothe human rights framework didlittle to help us understand the sources of thefaminerdquo that North Korea experienced in themid-to-late 1990s See Feffer 2006 23

6 9 Drawing in part on South Koreanintelligence reports based on North Koreandefector testimony the mid to late 1980srsquocountry reports put out by international humanrights organizations offered slender at timesopenly speculative accounts of the NorthKorean human rights landscape with NorthKorearsquos imprisonment of the Spanish-languagetranslator Ali Lameda looming large Thesereports notwithstanding North Korean humanrights emerged as an institutionalizedtransnational force to be reckoned with in thewake of George W Bushrsquos ldquoaxis of evilrdquo speechSee Amnesty International concerns in theDemocratic Peoplersquos Republic of Korea 1985and Minnesota Lawyers International HumanRights Committee and Asia Watch 1988

70 Feffer 2004 37

71 Mutua 2002 1

72 Smith 2000 593

73 Describing the Values Action Team (VAT) as aldquocellrdquo of leaders from the religious right thathelped to drive the North Korean human rightsagenda during the Bush era Jeff Sharlet in hisportrait of Sam Brownback for Rolling Stonestates ldquoOne victory for the group [VAT] was

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

28

Brownbackrsquos North Korea Human Rights Actwhich establishes a confrontational stancetoward the dictatorial regime and shifts fundsfor humanitarian aid from the United Nationsto Chr i s t i an o rgan i za t i ons rdquo SeanWoomdashBrownbackrsquos former general counsel andnow the chief of staff of the HelsinkiCommissionmdashcalls this a process of ldquoprivatizingdemocracyrdquo See Sharlet 2006 56

74 Frum 2003 236

75 Brownback 2008 emphasis added We mightnote the same logic at play in David Hawkrsquosassertion during a 2003 Senate hearing onNorth Korean human rights ldquoUntil such timeas onsite verifications are allowed the refugeetestimonies as are presented in the reportretain their credence and authorityrdquo See SHrg 2003 (Life)

76 Kim 1995 9

77 Haggard and Noland 2011 Witness totransformation 101 Scholte 2009 Moon(Ruth) 2008

78 Hartman 1997 5

79 Conrad 2006 24 36

80 Seoul Train 2004 S Hrg 2003 (Hidden) TheEconomist commenting on the US prisonpopulation observes ldquoThe land of the Free has5 percent of the worldrsquos population but 25percent of its prisoners See Americarsquosovercrowded prisons 2013

81 Hong 2011 emphasis added

82 Williams 2010 29

83 Meister 2011 viii 24

84 Ibid

85 Palat 2004 13

86 Ibid 17

87 As quoted in Stone 1952 348

88 Williams 2010 66

89 Harvey 2005 177

90 Booth 1961 347 emphasis in original

91 Ibid

92 Booth 1961 344

93 Cumings 1990 772

94 Repatriation 2003

95 Williams 2010 29

9 6 Quoted in N Korea ca l ls Rumsfe ldldquopsychopathrdquo 2003

97 As Lindqvist succinctly contends ldquoNo state ofemergency could exist that would give someonethe right to destroy entire countries and theirinhabitantsrdquo and here he cites the Indian juristNagendra Singh ldquoIt would indeed be arrogantfor any single nation to argue that to savehumanity from bondage it was thoughtnecessary to destroy humanity itselfrdquo SeeLindqvist 2001 144

98 Hong 2011

99 Seoul Train 2004 See Chung Byung-horsquoscountervailing commentary in the same film

100 Scholte 2011

101 Klein 2005 The ldquoreconstruction businessrdquothat attends externally engineered regimecollapse according to Ugo Mattei and LauraNader ldquooften hir[es] more or less gulliblehuman rights activistsrdquo to furnish ldquoa rhetoricalargument for more lsquointerventionrsquo whichsometimes is the province of justice-motivatedindividuals attempting to restore peace orderand the rule of lawrdquo See Mattei and Nader2008 127

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

29

102 Brown 2004 456

103 Lin 2006 13

104 S 1903 2003

105 Ibid

106 HR 4011 2004

107 S Hrg 2003 (Life) 1 3

108 On the destabilizing intention behindsanctions against North Korea Ruediger Frankpoints out that ldquo[f]rom the outset it is clearthat the sender of sanctions deliberately inflictsdamage on the innocent hoping that their painwill translate into resistance against theirleadersrdquo He also observes the deleteriousimpact sanctions have on foreign investment inNorth Korea ldquoAs many foreign businesspeoplehave complained the sanctions [against NorthKorea] have damaged their businessesrdquo Frankalso remarks ldquoNorth Korea needs hardcurrencyrdquo for the most basic of provisionsincluding food for the people See Frank 200615 30

109 See Frank 2006 41

110 Melamed 2011 xvii

111 Harvey 2005 176

112 Ibid On the market as a foil for the statesee Puar 2007 26

113 Kang and Rigoulot 2001 199

114 Atanasoski 2013 5

115 As John Feffer writes ldquoWith the increase inthe flow of people out of the country news ofwhat was going on in North Korea was nolonger restricted to a handful of defectorsvetted by the South Korean governmentrdquo SeeFeffer 2004 33

116 As Chong-ae Yu documents in her account ofthe transnational political interests behind theNorth Korean Freedom Act of 2003 and theinstrumental role of US state funding of theseinterests NED not only has supported the ldquotwomost active South Korean NGOs involved inNorth Korean human rights issues CitizensrsquoAlliance for North Korean Human Rightshellipandthe Network for North Korean Democracy andHuman Rightsrdquo but also through itssponsorship of South Korean organizations andindividuals on the issue of North Korean humanr ights abuses was ins t rumenta l ininternationalizing the North Korean humanrights movement See Yu 2004

117 Lee 2012

118 Harvey 2005 165

119 Park 2011

120 Ibid 171

121 Meister 2011 34

122 Douzinas 2007 71 73

123 Ibid 75

124 Meister 2011 236

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

28

Brownbackrsquos North Korea Human Rights Actwhich establishes a confrontational stancetoward the dictatorial regime and shifts fundsfor humanitarian aid from the United Nationsto Chr i s t i an o rgan i za t i ons rdquo SeanWoomdashBrownbackrsquos former general counsel andnow the chief of staff of the HelsinkiCommissionmdashcalls this a process of ldquoprivatizingdemocracyrdquo See Sharlet 2006 56

74 Frum 2003 236

75 Brownback 2008 emphasis added We mightnote the same logic at play in David Hawkrsquosassertion during a 2003 Senate hearing onNorth Korean human rights ldquoUntil such timeas onsite verifications are allowed the refugeetestimonies as are presented in the reportretain their credence and authorityrdquo See SHrg 2003 (Life)

76 Kim 1995 9

77 Haggard and Noland 2011 Witness totransformation 101 Scholte 2009 Moon(Ruth) 2008

78 Hartman 1997 5

79 Conrad 2006 24 36

80 Seoul Train 2004 S Hrg 2003 (Hidden) TheEconomist commenting on the US prisonpopulation observes ldquoThe land of the Free has5 percent of the worldrsquos population but 25percent of its prisoners See Americarsquosovercrowded prisons 2013

81 Hong 2011 emphasis added

82 Williams 2010 29

83 Meister 2011 viii 24

84 Ibid

85 Palat 2004 13

86 Ibid 17

87 As quoted in Stone 1952 348

88 Williams 2010 66

89 Harvey 2005 177

90 Booth 1961 347 emphasis in original

91 Ibid

92 Booth 1961 344

93 Cumings 1990 772

94 Repatriation 2003

95 Williams 2010 29

9 6 Quoted in N Korea ca l ls Rumsfe ldldquopsychopathrdquo 2003

97 As Lindqvist succinctly contends ldquoNo state ofemergency could exist that would give someonethe right to destroy entire countries and theirinhabitantsrdquo and here he cites the Indian juristNagendra Singh ldquoIt would indeed be arrogantfor any single nation to argue that to savehumanity from bondage it was thoughtnecessary to destroy humanity itselfrdquo SeeLindqvist 2001 144

98 Hong 2011

99 Seoul Train 2004 See Chung Byung-horsquoscountervailing commentary in the same film

100 Scholte 2011

101 Klein 2005 The ldquoreconstruction businessrdquothat attends externally engineered regimecollapse according to Ugo Mattei and LauraNader ldquooften hir[es] more or less gulliblehuman rights activistsrdquo to furnish ldquoa rhetoricalargument for more lsquointerventionrsquo whichsometimes is the province of justice-motivatedindividuals attempting to restore peace orderand the rule of lawrdquo See Mattei and Nader2008 127

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

29

102 Brown 2004 456

103 Lin 2006 13

104 S 1903 2003

105 Ibid

106 HR 4011 2004

107 S Hrg 2003 (Life) 1 3

108 On the destabilizing intention behindsanctions against North Korea Ruediger Frankpoints out that ldquo[f]rom the outset it is clearthat the sender of sanctions deliberately inflictsdamage on the innocent hoping that their painwill translate into resistance against theirleadersrdquo He also observes the deleteriousimpact sanctions have on foreign investment inNorth Korea ldquoAs many foreign businesspeoplehave complained the sanctions [against NorthKorea] have damaged their businessesrdquo Frankalso remarks ldquoNorth Korea needs hardcurrencyrdquo for the most basic of provisionsincluding food for the people See Frank 200615 30

109 See Frank 2006 41

110 Melamed 2011 xvii

111 Harvey 2005 176

112 Ibid On the market as a foil for the statesee Puar 2007 26

113 Kang and Rigoulot 2001 199

114 Atanasoski 2013 5

115 As John Feffer writes ldquoWith the increase inthe flow of people out of the country news ofwhat was going on in North Korea was nolonger restricted to a handful of defectorsvetted by the South Korean governmentrdquo SeeFeffer 2004 33

116 As Chong-ae Yu documents in her account ofthe transnational political interests behind theNorth Korean Freedom Act of 2003 and theinstrumental role of US state funding of theseinterests NED not only has supported the ldquotwomost active South Korean NGOs involved inNorth Korean human rights issues CitizensrsquoAlliance for North Korean Human Rightshellipandthe Network for North Korean Democracy andHuman Rightsrdquo but also through itssponsorship of South Korean organizations andindividuals on the issue of North Korean humanr ights abuses was ins t rumenta l ininternationalizing the North Korean humanrights movement See Yu 2004

117 Lee 2012

118 Harvey 2005 165

119 Park 2011

120 Ibid 171

121 Meister 2011 34

122 Douzinas 2007 71 73

123 Ibid 75

124 Meister 2011 236

APJ | JF 12 | 13 | 2

29

102 Brown 2004 456

103 Lin 2006 13

104 S 1903 2003

105 Ibid

106 HR 4011 2004

107 S Hrg 2003 (Life) 1 3

108 On the destabilizing intention behindsanctions against North Korea Ruediger Frankpoints out that ldquo[f]rom the outset it is clearthat the sender of sanctions deliberately inflictsdamage on the innocent hoping that their painwill translate into resistance against theirleadersrdquo He also observes the deleteriousimpact sanctions have on foreign investment inNorth Korea ldquoAs many foreign businesspeoplehave complained the sanctions [against NorthKorea] have damaged their businessesrdquo Frankalso remarks ldquoNorth Korea needs hardcurrencyrdquo for the most basic of provisionsincluding food for the people See Frank 200615 30

109 See Frank 2006 41

110 Melamed 2011 xvii

111 Harvey 2005 176

112 Ibid On the market as a foil for the statesee Puar 2007 26

113 Kang and Rigoulot 2001 199

114 Atanasoski 2013 5

115 As John Feffer writes ldquoWith the increase inthe flow of people out of the country news ofwhat was going on in North Korea was nolonger restricted to a handful of defectorsvetted by the South Korean governmentrdquo SeeFeffer 2004 33

116 As Chong-ae Yu documents in her account ofthe transnational political interests behind theNorth Korean Freedom Act of 2003 and theinstrumental role of US state funding of theseinterests NED not only has supported the ldquotwomost active South Korean NGOs involved inNorth Korean human rights issues CitizensrsquoAlliance for North Korean Human Rightshellipandthe Network for North Korean Democracy andHuman Rightsrdquo but also through itssponsorship of South Korean organizations andindividuals on the issue of North Korean humanr ights abuses was ins t rumenta l ininternationalizing the North Korean humanrights movement See Yu 2004

117 Lee 2012

118 Harvey 2005 165

119 Park 2011

120 Ibid 171

121 Meister 2011 34

122 Douzinas 2007 71 73

123 Ibid 75

124 Meister 2011 236