Consequences of geographic segregation and discrimination

568. The right to adequate food, as any other human rights, must be implemented without discrimination of any kind as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Any discrimination in access to food, as well as to means and entitlements for its procurement, constitutes a violation of international law. The principle of non-discrimination applies to state food distribution systems as well as the distribution of international humanitarian aid.

569. As pointed out by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,

829 London Public Hearing, 23 October 2013, session 3, and confidential interview.

830 TSH004.

831 “Kim Jong Il Berates Cadres for Food Anarchy” (in Korean), Wolgan Chosun, 20 March 1997, pp.

306-317; “Kim Jong Il, Speech at Kim Il Sung University, December 1996”, British Broadcasting Corporation, 21 March 1997.

832 Andrew Natsios, The Great North Korean Famine, p. 40.

833 Tokyo Public Hearing, 29 August 2013, afternoon (01:40:00).

834 TBG027.

Even where a state faces severe resource constraints, whether caused by a process of economic adjustment, economic recession, climatic conditions or other factors, measures should be undertaken to ensure that the right to adequate food is especially fulfilled for vulnerable population groups and individuals.⁸³⁵

In this context, deprioritizing vulnerable populations constitutes a human rights violation.

570. Since its inception, the Songbun system of social classification has heavily impacted the lives of all DPRK citizens. People with lower songbun were discriminated against in terms of the quantity and composition of rations distributed by the PDS.

571. As described above,⁸³⁶ the Songbun system is also crucial in determining education and employment opportunities. In turn, one’s type of work determined the amount of rations received from the PDS. For example, those employed in special security functions were allocated 800 grams of food per day while regular labourers were entitled to only 600 grams.⁸³⁷ In practice, the differences are even more pronounced and people of high songbun have privileged access to food.

• Andrew Natsios told the Commission at the Washington Public Hearing:

“The caste-based system gives greater access to resources for people of upper castes, and for the people of lower castes, they are discriminated against.”⁸³⁸

• A former DPRK official who worked in agricultural research described the system of production and distribution of food in the DPRK:

“As far as the public distribution system is concerned, that was more a worker compensation system and not a social service system. As a ruler of society, if you have a limited quantity of food, you would give the food first to the most important people. The government kept most of the products for the central areas, the People’s Army, the Party. The rest is distributed to others.”⁸³⁹

• A witness from Hyesan (Ryanggang province) stated that people in high-ranking positions got three times more food compared to the ordinary people.⁸⁴⁰

572. Once food became scarce, the authorities decided to prioritize those people whom they considered crucial for maintaining the political system and its leadership at the expense of those deemed to be expendable. Testimonies confirm that food has been channelled towards the Party, critical industries, important military and security officers and the capital Pyongyang. Allocations differ not only with regard to the amount of food, but also in the quality of food, with rations including higher proportions of preferred grains, such as white rice.

• A former official from Pyongyang said: “The famine did not have any impact on us.

We obtained everything as before.” The official emphasized that instructions were given to prioritize distributions to party cadres in political committees and people’s committees, SSD officers and workers in munitions factories.⁸⁴¹

835 CESCR, General Comment No. 12, para. 28.

836 See section IV.B.

837 ROK Ministry of Unification, “Food rations by class: Understanding North Korea 2005”, Education Center for Unification, March 2006, pp. 245-247.

838 Washington Public Hearing, 31 October 2013, morning (00:23:35).

839 TLC033.

840 TAP001.

841 TGC004.

• A former researcher in Pyongyang described that, “during the famine there were no dead bodies in Pyongyang. I saw them when I visited relatives in the countryside.

Seeing the dead bodies, I started distrusting the regime.”⁸⁴²

• A former agent of the KPA Escort Command, an elite force assigned to guard the Supreme Leader and his family, stated that, even during the famine, people in the Escort Command received “good rations”. They were provided with three meals a day and with meat twice per week.⁸⁴³

• A former SSD agent acknowledged that he had many privileges. In particular he received rice of a very good quality even during the famine. According to that official, most of the food rations went to Pyongyang, the military and the security services. He used to get 1 kilogram of food rations (including pork, fish, oil and rice).⁸⁴⁴

• One witness who studied in Pyongyang, stated that life in the capital was much better than in her home province. “The government thinks that the city of Pyongyang should survive even if the rest of the country starves. The food rations in Pyongyang were much more than what I received in my home province of South Hamgyong. The quality of food was also better, even though the best food was of course reserved to the top cadres.”⁸⁴⁵

573. Given that people with lower songbun are concentrated in certain geographical areas, this gives the food situation in the DPRK and its underlying discrimination a geographic dimension.

574. Some areas, such as Pyongyang, benefit from a privileged food situation, because the elites are concentrated there. Conversely, the remote northeastern regions have traditionally been areas, to which people were banished, including prisoners of war and groups purged in the 1950s and 1960s.⁸⁴⁶ It is not surprising that they were the first to be abandoned by the state. As noted above, in 1994 the four provinces in the Northeast that were highly dependent on the PDS, namely North and South Hamgyong, Ryanggang and Kangwon, were cut from the distribution system.

• One expert described the concern as follows:

“The Great Famine was driven by an absolute shortage of food, but also by inequalities in distribution. Differences in distribution priorities followed the Songbun system. The ‘royal families’ in Pyongyang were fed, while less or no food was sent to North Hamgyong were mostly people of lower songbun live.”⁸⁴⁷

575. The Commission received a large amount of testimony and information pointing to the fact that once the DPRK finally requested international aid, the authorities wanted this aid to be focused only on Pyongyang and specific regions.⁸⁴⁸ Access to northeastern regions was denied to humanitarian organizations.

842 TBG004.

843 TSH019.

844 TLC040.

845 TJH019.

846 See section IV.C.

847 EJH002.

848 See footage of the negotiations between DPRK authorities and the representative of the non-governmental organization CARE who tried to initiate programmes in Tongsin and Huichon in Chagang province. "The 1997 Famine Still Affecting North Korea Today". Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30-2sPGNGEw.

• In the Washington Public Hearing, Andrew Natsios stated:

“During the famine, we have substantial evidence, in the research I did and evidence from the World Food Programme, that the northeast region of the country was triaged. They actually did not allow any food to go into that area because the whole area has a very low songbun status in the system. It is where political dissidents even during the imperial period of the kingdoms in the nineteenth century, that is where dissidents were sent. There were uprisings there before so it has always been viewed as a seditious area of the country and rather dangerous, and the WFP, the NGOs, the ICRC, were not allowed into the three north-eastern provinces for almost two years during the famine.”⁸⁴⁹

576. The Commission acknowledges the role played by geographical, climatic and other elements in the decline of food availability in the DPRK. Nevetheless, the aforementioned patterns of discrimination find clear reflection in the following maps, which show large disparities between regions with regard to the prevalence of stunting and acute malnutrition.

Figure 8. Stunting prevalence by province⁸⁵⁰

849 Washington Public Hearing, 31 October 2013, morning (00:23:53). This is detailed in Andrew Natsios, The Great North Korean Famine, particularly p. 89 onwards.

850 Map produced by World Food Programme DPRK, April 2011 in “Overview of Needs and Assistance”, 2012.

Figure 9. Global acute malnutrition⁸⁵¹ 3. Awareness and concealment

577. Despite being aware of the worsening food situation, the authorities concealed relevant information from the outside world and their own population. This aggravated starvation in three respects. Firstly, by hiding the reality of starvation in the country, the DPRK violated its own population’s right to information and hindered the people’s ability to develop their own coping mechanisms at an early stage. A number of witnesses underscored that people starved to death in their homes, because they were waiting for the ration distributions to recommence. Secondly, concealing information led to a delay in obtaining international food aid that cost many lives. Thirdly, the secrecy relating to data has made it very difficult for the international community to provide targeted humanitarian and development assistance in the country.

578. According to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, violations of the ICESCR occur when a state fails to ensure the satisfaction of, at the very least, the minimum essential level required to be free from hunger. In determining which actions or omissions amount to a violation of the right to food, it is important to distinguish the state’s inability to comply with this obligation from its unwillingness to comply. Should a State party argue that resource constraints make it impossible to provide access to food for those who are unable to secure such access, the state has to demonstrate that every effort has been made to use all the resources at its disposal in an effort to satisfy, as a matter of priority,

851 OCHA, “DPR Korea 2013, Humanitarian Needs and priorities”, p. 4. Available from

http://www.wfp.org/sites/default/files/DPRK%20Overview%20Of%20Needs%20And%20Assistance

%202012.pdf

those minimum obligations.⁸⁵² A state claiming that it is unable to carry out its obligation, for reasons beyond its control, needs to prove a) that this is the case and b) that it has made all efforts to obtain the necessary international assistance and does not impede the delivery of such assistance.

579. The authorities in the DPRK were well aware of the country’s deteriorating food situation long before appealing for aid in 1995. State actions such as the reduction of rations, or the launch of campaigns such as “Let’s eat two meals per day”, shows that the authorities preferred to take steps that deeply affected the right to adequate food in the country to asking for international assistance.

580. In his memoirs, former high-level DPRK official Mr Hwang Jang-yop wrote:

“People in North Korea were also starving in 1994, however, there wasn’t any news that people starved to death.”⁸⁵³ In fact, all allegations of food shortages were categorically rejected by the DPRK. In January 1994, the spokesperson of the DPRK Agricultural Commission condemned the reports of hunger in the Western media as a “wicked deception to degrade the socialist image of the DPRK”.⁸⁵⁴ He argued that the DPRK had accumulated a large amount of grain stocks as an important strategic resource.

581. According to former DPRK officials who have given testimonies to the Commission, the highest level authorities in Pyongyang knew about the details of the famine. Each province had to regularly submit statistics on how many people had died from starvation and how many people were missing from their homes. Those documents were kept confidential.⁸⁵⁵

• At the Washington Public Hearing, Andrew Natsios argued that the system of measuring the height and weight of every child in school once a year was another source of information the state has at its disposition. He also noted that the decision to lower the minimum height requirements for an 18-year-old boy to enter the DPRK military was based on this type of data.⁸⁵⁶

582. The Commission finds that there was awareness about the famine situation all the way up to the Supreme Leader. Former officials stated that the provinces submitted detailed reports about the situation to the capital. Kim Jong-il also visited numerous locations in the country as part of his “military first” and “on-the-spot guidance” visits.⁸⁵⁷ On these occasions, he could not have missed what was happening in the country.

852 CESCR, General Comment No. 12: The right to adequate food (1999), para. 17. See also CESCR, General Comment No. 3, para. 10.

853 Hwang Jang-yop Hoegorok (Hwang Jang-yop’s memoirs) (Published in Korean by Zeitgeist, 2006, translated by Daily NK).

854 Spokesperson for the DPRK Agricultural Commission, North Korean Policy Trend, No. 27 (January 1994), p. 47 cited in Lee Suk, “The DPRK famine of 1994-2000: Existence and Impact”, KINU, 2005, p. 8.

855 TBG022, a former ministry official; TLC033.

856 Washington Public Hearing, 31 October 2013, morning.

857 Official DPRK sources have emphasised that Kim Jong-il's devoted his frequent field visits to military units and other work units “talking to soldiers and people and acquainting himself in detail with their living conditions.” Between 1964 and 2002, Kim Jong-il reportedly “provided field guidance to at least 8,460 units, spending over 4,200 days.” See “Kim Jong Il’s Hobbies”, KCNA, 24 May 2002. Available from: http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2002/200205/news05/24.htm. “In the period from 1995 to 2001, he gave on-site guidance to 1,300 units, covering some 116,700 kilometres.” See

“Splendid fruition of Songun politics”, KCNA, 9 April 2003. Available from:

http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2003/200304/news04/10.htm.

• At the London Public Hearing, former KPA officer Mr Kim Joo-il told the Commissioners how Kim Jong-il paid a visit to his military unit and was made aware of the lack of food suffered by the soldiers:

“In 1996, Kim Jong-il had visited Cholwon-gun in Kangwon Province. He came to inspect the battalion himself and he asked to see the food that was being provided to the soldiers. So they showed Kim Jong Il a bowl of porridge. When they turned the bowl upside down there were only three grains of rice.”

Kim Jong-il became very angry and divested the battalion commander of his rank and sent him to a detention centre. However, the food situation for the unit did not improve.⁸⁵⁸

583. The practices of the authorities to conceal information have obstructed the development and delivery of targeted and efficient international assistance programmes to address the needs of the most vulnerable.⁸⁵⁹ Human rights treaty bodies have also repeatedly requested the DPRK to provide them with reliable data and indicators.⁸⁶⁰ Data, indicators and figures emanating from the DPRK and its authorities have been widely considered to be unreliable.

584. The data published by international organizations must be treated with caution.⁸⁶¹ The unreliability of the data comes, amongst other things, from the inability to perform random and free sampling and to freely access a large portion of the DPRK’s territory.

Therefore, the data published is generally an extrapolation to the whole country, based on data gathered in a limited portion of the country in very controlled settings.

4. Actions and omissions of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea