Today, November 25th, the United Nations observes the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. On this day, HRNK, an NGO with UN consultative status, pledges to continue to highlight the plight of North Korean women and strive to end the violence they suffer.
North Korea became a party to the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) on January 17, 2001. North Korea pays lip service to gender equality and goes through the requisite procedural motions to pretend it is compliant with applicable international human rights standards protecting women. In reality, the situation of North Korean women is beyond dire.
Domestic violence is widespread, but seldom prosecuted, as the authorities regard it as a private family matter. Sexual violence in the military and in the workplace is prevalent. Victims practically have no access to legal remedies. Human traffickers have enslaved, exploited, and abused North Korean women for three decades, since the days of the great famine of the mid-1990s.
Women have taken the brunt of repression. It is mostly women who have assumed responsibility for the survival of their families, struggling against mind-numbing human rights violations and human insecurity. It is mostly women who are arrested at North Korea’s informal markets, for alleged wrongdoing. It is mostly women who are arrested and forcibly repatriated by China, in direct violation of that country’s obligations under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Additional Protocol. Following arrest at the markets or forcible repatriation from China, North Korean women are brutalized, tortured, and imprisoned at kwan-li-so political prison camps or kyo-hwa-so reeducation through labor camps.
For almost a quarter century, HRNK has been investigating and reporting on violence against women in North Korea. Just ahead of Thanksgiving, those of us who live in democratic and prosperous countries must count our blessings. And we must continue to find ways to secure safety, freedom, justice, human rights, and prosperity for the women of North Korea.
Greg Scarlatoiu
President and CEO
Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK)
