Discrimination based on social class and birth: the songbun system, past and present 27 Through the Songbun system, the state places citizens of the DPRK into three broad

classes with approximately 51 more specific categories, although the actual categories seem to have been adjusted over the years.²⁸⁸ Decisions about residency, occupation, access to food, health care, education and other services have been contingent on songbun. Songbun is also reflected through geographic segregation.²⁸⁹

272. Elites are concentrated among the population officially permitted to live in Pyongyang, which has a population of 3.3 million according to the 2008 population census.

The ruling elites among them are assigned to live in the most modern part of the capital.

Goods and public services in Pyongyang are superior to those in other regions. Ordinary citizens of low or medium songbun are precluded from residing in Pyongyang, and even obtaining the right to visit Pyongyang is difficult.

• Mr Kim Soo-am of the Korea Institute for National Unification [of the Republic of Korea] described the continuing impact of songbun at the Seoul Public Hearing:

“Family background is also a core factor in discriminating between people, allowing different levels of access to the right of food. The core elites who live in Pyongyang or other major cities still receive benefits in terms of medicine, and those who live in the ri [villages], the level of residents, they have very limited access to medical facilities, so the rights to enjoy healthy life [are] also discriminated and not guaranteed…”²⁹⁰

• A witness at the Seoul Public Hearing, Ms Kwon Young-hee, described the discrimination that her family confronted because both her parents were originally from South Korea. The family encountered discrimination when they sought to leave Musan in North Hamgyong Province and move to Pyongyang:

“I learned about the fact that we were not able to relocate to Pyongyang. By the time we learned about the rejection we were old enough to understand that we were discriminated against, because my elder sister against her wish had to apply to this other college and so my siblings suffered from this kind of discrimination.”²⁹¹ 273. The Songbun system saw antecedents in the early policies of the DPRK when the leadership sought to elevate peasants and laborers over the former landlords and those they

288 The classes reflect the assumed political loyalty of an individual’s family to the DPRK’s political system and its leadership. One former official noted that there are actually 103 songbun classes today and that he had provided this documentation to the government of the ROK, TBG031.

289 Section IV.C.

290 Seoul Public Hearing, 21 August 2013, afternoon (02:31:00).

291 Seoul Public Hearing, 24 August 2013, morning (02:57:55).

deemed to have been Japanese collaborators. In 1946, the North Korean Provisional People’s Committee began to purge officials who had been associated with the Japanese colonial administration and undertook the first citizen registration campaign. The official start of the Songbun system appears to have been in 1957 when the Party adopted the resolution “On the Transformation of the Struggle with Counterrevolutionary Elements into an All-people All-Party movement” (the May 30th Resolution). The adoption of this resolution was linked to a purge of potential rivals by Kim Il-sung. At that time, the division of people coalesced into three broad categories of core, wavering and hostile.

274. In conjunction with the May 30th Resolution, the Cabinet issued Decree No. 149 that dictated where members of the hostile class could reside and essentially exiled a large number of people to more remote parts of the country with more difficult living conditions.

Other stages in the institutionalization of the Songbun system include the 1964 resolution

“On Further Strengthening the Work with Various Groups and Strata of the Population”, which launched another campaign to refine the Songbun system. In 1966, a resident re-registration drive which lasted until 1970 led to the re-classification of the population into the three classes with 51 sub-categories.²⁹² Other campaigns to re-examine political loyalty and family background followed, such as the 1983-84 citizenship identification card renewal project.

275. The highest songbun was awarded to family members of guerrillas who fought with Kim Il-sung against Japanese forces (although many of them were eventually subject to purges over the years).

• One former high-level official explained to the Commission that he knew of his songbun status since he was about 10 years old as there had been a certificate in his family home about his grandfather’s involvement in the Korean War. He was also told by his family not to play or associate with those of a lower status. He grew up believing that a high songbun meant that one was closer to the Kim family.²⁹³

292 The 51 categories are Core class: People from the families of laborers, hired people from the families of laborers, hired peasants (farm servants), poor farmers, and administrative clerical workers during the Yi Dynasty and Japanese occupation, Korean Workers’ Party bereaved families of revolutionaries (killed cadre members, in anti-Japan struggles), bereaved families of patriots (killed as noncombatants during the Korean War), revolutionary intellectuals (trained by North Korea after liberation from Japan), families of those killed during the Korean Wars, families of the fallen during the Korean War, servicemen’s families (families of active People’s Army officers and men), and families of honored wounded soldiers (family members of service members wounded during the Korean War); Basic class: Small merchants, artisans, small factory owners, small service traders, medium service traders, unaffiliated persons hailing from South Korea, families of those who went to the South (3 distinct categories), people who formerly were medium-scale farmers, nationalistic capitalists, people repatriated from China, intellectuals trained before national liberation, people from the core class who are deemed lazy and corrupt, tavern hostesses, practitioners of superstition, family members of Confucianists, people who were previously locally influential figures, and economic offenders;

Complex (wavering and hostile) class: Wealthy farmers, merchants, industrialists, landowners or those whose private assets have been completely confiscated, pro-Japan and pro-US people, reactionary bureaucrats, defectors from the South, members of the Chondoist Chongu Party, Buddhists, Catholics, expelled party members, expelled public officials, those who helped South Korea during the Korean War, family members of anyone arrested or imprisoned, spies, anti-party and counter-revolutionary sectarians, families of people who were executed, anyone released from prison, and political prisoners, members of the Democratic Party, capitalists whose private assets have been completed confiscated. KINU, White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea (2012), p. 222, citing source as Ministry of Unification report, “An Overview of North Korea”, 2000, p. 420.

293 TSH019.

276. The lowest songbun was given to, among others, formerly wealthy industrialists, alleged spies, Catholics and Buddhists. In effect, a family’s history even before the establishment of the DPRK pre-determined a citizen’s destiny in the DPRK.

277. In the past, songbun was the key factor determining the course of every citizen from birth. Higher songbun determined whether a person could gain access to the army (particularly the more elite units), university and the Workers’ Party of Korea—necessary preconditions to any future career in public service. Conversely, those with lower songbun were often assigned to jobs in mining and farming, and their descendants often were excluded from higher education. Hard work, individual ability and personal political loyalty provided only limited opportunity to improve one´s songbun. However, conduct deemed to be politically disloyal could destroy the favourable songbun of individuals and their entire family.

278. The determination of songbun is recorded in a comprehensive resident registration system with detailed files on all adult citizens and their families. The systematic compilation of these files by security agencies and institutions of the Workers’ Party of Korea is not a transparent process, and determinations cannot be contested.²⁹⁴ Moreover, official discrimination under the Songbun system is also an intergenerational phenomenon, where an individual’s classification is not only determined by his or her personal conduct, but also by the songbun classifications derived from more than one generation of the person’s extended family. Therefore, a system of perpetual discrimination on the ground of birth, akin to a caste-based system, has emerged in the DPRK.

279. The existence and relevance of songbun status does not appear to have been formally encoded in law. However, it tacitly reverberates in constitutional references to the working people becoming the masters of society and exhortations that all citizens and organs of the state should struggle staunchly against class enemies.²⁹⁵ The concept is also invoked in internal guidance and training documents.²⁹⁶ Former security and party officials interviewed by the Commission indicated how consideration of songbun prominently featured in important decisions relating to a person. For example, a former official explained to the Commission that the Ministry of Public Security color-coded files according to a person’s songbun. The files of core class families were placed in red folders, while those of families whose members included an inmate of a political prison camp (kwanliso) were placed in a black folder.²⁹⁷

280. Songbun appears also to be an important factor when considering the punishment for a criminal offense. As one witness explained, when someone with higher songbun commits the same crime as someone with lower songbun, the one with the higher songbun will get the lighter punishment. When someone is sent to a detention centre by a security agency, what will be assessed first is the person’s family tree and background. If the individual comes from the core class (i.e. has higher songbun), then, regardless of the crime, the individual will be treated relatively well on the assumption that the individual had no intention of betraying the country. If the individual comes from a lower songbun, then the person is assumed to be “built” to do bad things, and will receive a harsher punishment.²⁹⁸

294 TJH022, TJH023.

295 DPRK Constitution, articles 8 and 162.

296 The 1993 Ministry of Social Safety publication of a document entitled, “Resident Registration Project Reference Manual” issued a set of instructions for resident registration investigators to use during the conduct of their songbun investigations. See Robert Collins, “Marked for Life: Songbun North Korea’s Classification System”, Committee on Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), 2012.

297 TCC014.

298 TAP011.

• Ms Kwon Young-hee told the story of her brother who was arrested in China and forcibly repatriated to the DPRK during the mourning period for Kim Il-sung in 1994. Instead of being treated as an “economic” offender for going to China illegally, he was charged as a political prisoner.

“Just because our parents were from the South, if we do commit a crime or commit an offence, we always get heavier punishments. I think that was one of the most unfair things and that is why one of my brothers cannot be found, one of my brothers was sent to the prison.”²⁹⁹

281. It is difficult to verify the exact proportions of different songbun classes today and to know how much these have changed over time. Figures from 2009 suggest the core class to be about 28 per cent of the population, while the basic class constitutes 45 per cent, and the complex (wavering and hostile) class constitutes the remaining 27 per cent.³⁰⁰ Within the core class, there is a ruling elite. This group is sometimes referred to as the revolutionary class, as it is comprised of the extended family of Kim Il-sung and a small number of other families who usually have a forebear of the highest level songbun. The ruling elite includes the families of Political Bureau members and secretaries of the Workers’ Party of Korea, members of the Central People’s Committee, the State Administration Council, the Central Military Commission and the National Defense Commission.³⁰¹ They are directly involved in the preparation of major policy decisions and participate in the inner circle of policy-making.

282. The broader elite are those individuals with core class songbun³⁰² who continue to dominate the central and local administrative structures, the broader corps of officers in the military and the security agencies, and other managerial positions. Both the ruling and broader elite are able to use their official powers, privileges to move freely around the country, access to state resources and social connections to seize opportunities arising from the DPRK’s increasing marketization.

283. Intergenerational responsibility and collective punishment are core elements of the songbun system. Despite auspicious family origins, songbun can be lowered if a person or his or her relative commits a crime in the DPRK.³⁰³ Songbun status appears to be particularly affected by offenses deemed to be of a political nature.

• Mr Kang Chol-hwan, a former political prisoner, gave testimony to the Commission’s at the Seoul Public Hearing in these terms:

“My grandmother was a member of the Communist Party for a long time, and she was instrumental, actually played a very important role in setting up the North Korean Communist Party in Japan…. My grandfather was doing business, so he was quite rich, so he was able to donate a lot of money to the North Korean government. So my grandmother was quite high up in the government. At that time, my grandmother was the vice chairperson to an organization which was headed by the wife of Kim Il Sung. And my grandfather was very high up in the business

299 Seoul Public Hearing, 24 August 2013, morning (02:05:00). Other testimonies in section IV.A.

300 The three broad areas appear to have shifted over time to where the wavering and hostile classes together have been condensed into a “complex” category and the middle category is characterized as the “basic” category. These figure from the Korea Institute for Nationa Unification, An Overview of North Korea (2009), p. 330.

301 “Because overlapping membership is common in public office, top-ranking office holders number less than 100”: Federal Research Division Library of Congress, Robert L. Worden ed., North Korea:

A Country Study (2009), p. 211.

302 Twenty-eight per cent of 23.3 million total population amounts to about 6.5 million.

303 See section IV.C.

network that included department stores. When I was born, I belonged to a very top class and I was born at the centre of Pyongyang, so when I was young, I think I was very happy. And compared to other North Korean residents, I think I was a very happy child. And then in 1977, my grandfather went to work and then he didn’t come back for one month. So we went to his workplace to find out why, and we were told that he went on a business. And then [someone] from the Bowibu, that is the State Security Department of North Korea, came to us and said that our grandfather committed treason to the state as well as the people, that he deserved to die, but that instead of giving him the death penalty, that he was taken somewhere else. Our properties were confiscated. On the 4^th of August in 1977, our families were brought into the Yodok political prisoner camp. I was 9 years old. It was [the] 8^th of August 1977, that’s when we were taken to the political prison camp.”³⁰⁴

• Another witness interviewed by the Commission, Kim Hye-sook,³⁰⁵ a 51-year old woman, was detained in Camp No. 18 from 1975 until 2001. In October 1970, her entire family was arrested. She only initially escaped arrest because she had been living with her maternal grandmother from the age of 13, but the authorities seized her five years later. Only after her release in 2001 did Ms Kim find out that her family was sent to the camp because her paternal grandfather had moved to the ROK during the Korean War, leaving Ms Kim’s father and grandmother behind.³⁰⁶ Ms Kim found that she could not reintegrate into society and decided to go to China in 2005.

284. Administratively, the Songbun system is based on carefully recorded information on every DPRK citizen and his or her family. The state authorities established a comprehensive resident registration file on every citizen aged 17 and older.³⁰⁷ These files contain biographical information including genealogy and indications of ideological steadfastness and political loyalty, which are ascertained through evaluations of a person’s performance in different circumstances such as acts at work and through the weekly

“confession and criticism” sessions.³⁰⁸ Information collected could include skills and talents, ambitions and health status, as well as the enthusiasm with which an individual dusts off the portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, pays tribute at their shrines, keeps up with revolutionary history studies, or carries out duties at construction projects.³⁰⁹

• A witness saw his own brother’s resident registration file in 2006, and described how it noted details about the family, including dates when people had moved around the country and details of the family’s connections since 1949. The file also noted the date when the witness’s brother had joined the military. The witness had heard that such files existed, but this was the first time he had seen one for himself.

The witness’s family was able to see the resident registration file when security officers came to their house asking about the whereabouts of the witness’s brother, who had fled the DPRK.³¹⁰

• Another witness saw songbun files because his father was a high-level official, and other people had brought over confidential papers that he was able to read. The files seen by the witness contained a photograph, the grandfather’s name, the person’s

304 Seoul Public Hearing, 24 August 2013, afternoon (03:06:30).

305 Ms Kim could not participate in the public hearings. The Commission conducted a video-conference-based interview with her, during which she agreed to have her name published in this report.

306 Also TBG024.

307 TJH004, TJH015.

308 See section IV.A.

309 TAP006.

310 TSH009.

good and bad activities (for example, fighting against the Japanese), in addition to three or four signatures of witnesses to these activities. According to the witness, these documents would be checked by officials in cases where an individual seeks a promotion or is accused of having committed a crime.³¹¹

285. Individuals’ resident registration files follow them throughout their life. If and when that individuals serve in the military, enters university or joins the workforce, their file is sent to the relevant overseeing authority. A continuing assessment of an individuals’ loyalty to the state would be reflected in the file. At any point when an individual’s loyalty “score”

appears low, that individual would be criticized harshly, monitored even more closely, and, in the worst cases, sent for training through labor.³¹² Low scores can affect applications to enter university or promotions at work. However, individuals are seldom informed of the actual reasons behind an unsuccessful application or lack of advancement at work, even though they can usually infer that the reason is poor songbun.³¹³

286. The local branches of the Ministry of Public Security are tasked to prepare resident registration files based on information provided by the workplace, school, local neighborhood watches and mass organizations. Officials overseeing the mass associations, to which every DPRK citizen must belong, are responsible for collecting relevant information and including them in these files.³¹⁴ In addition, the Ministry of Public Security maintains a vast network of secret informants. ³¹⁵

287. Resident registration files record all available information on the background of family members, in some cases going back as far as the Japanese colonial period. The original files are kept in hardcopy by the Ministry of People’s Security.³¹⁶ Other security agencies and the Workers’ Party of Korea receive copies that are also accessible to relevant senior local cadres like the manager of a person’s workplace. In addition, files of family members are cross-referenced. This makes it virtually impossible to alter a file without risking eventual detection and subsequent harsh punishment.

• For example, a witness’s uncle disappeared into a political prison camp because of unfavorable remarks he made about Kim Jong-il. The uncle’s disappearance stained the songbun of the entire family. The witness graduated in 1994 and passed the entry level exam for political cadres. Only then did his father reveal to him the uncle’s fate and told him that he would be prevented from a political career and could at best reach administrative or technical positions. Through Ministry of Public Security contacts and bribes, the family was able to see the witness’s resident registration file, where two lines about the uncle had been added. They discussed with the Ministry agent whether the line could be removed against a bribe, but decided against it. Each file has cross-references to other files. If it was ever found out that the witness’s file was tampered with, the repercussions for the entire family could have been very serious. Eventually the witness took up a position as a technical expert. He was denied promotions and the chance to pursue further studies.

His older brother, who served with distinction in the military and was recommended

311 TLC035.

312 TAP007.

313 TAP002, TAP008.

314 TAP006, TAP015, TLC035, TSH009.

315 TSH051.

316 There is some information indicating that the resident registration file has also been computerized since the early 2000s, although it is not clear how far access is granted in consideration of the risk of leaks.

for the officer track, was denied entry to the military academy due to the family songbun. His younger brother and the father experienced similar problems.³¹⁷ 288. Individuals are not normally given official access to their own resident registration files.³¹⁸ Thus, they do not have the opportunity to contest or correct information contained in the files. The witnesses interviewed by the Commission who had seen their own resident registration files had all gained such access through informal connections and/or bribes.³¹⁹

• For example, a former SSD official who was frustrated with his lack of advancement at work sought to see his own resident registration file, which a colleague showed him. In it he found an element that made it clear to him that he would not be promoted.³²⁰

289. Most people have a general idea of the existence of the Songbun class system and where they fall in the order. Often, DPRK citizens became aware of their songbun when graduating from school, or when they experience barriers to gaining entrance to the military, university or preferred professions. Many former DPRK citizens interviewed by the Commission were aware of the types of considerations that would go into determining their songbun and the effects that their class may have had on their access to higher education or employment.³²¹

• For example, a witness was denied tertiary educational opportunities and was forced to work in a mine upon finishing secondary school. When he inquired of a security supervisor to whom he was close about the apparent discrimination against him, the supervisor showed him his file. He was classified as a “No. 43”, the classification of familes of prisoners of war, which made it clear to him why he faced such discrimination.³²²

290. Factors in determining social class include family origins. Koreans who had resided in Japan and emigrated to the DPRK between 1959 and 1980 (called “returnees”), together with their descendants are estimated to number between 100,000 and 150,000.³²³ These Koreans were drawn to the DPRK by propaganda and promises of opportunity, as well as widespread discrimination against ethnic Koreans in Japan. Upon arrival, they were not permitted to leave the DPRK. They were, however, allowed to solicit money transfers from relatives in Japan which provided much-needed foreign reserves for the DPRK. The government operated hard currency stores for luxury goods like televisions and refrigerators and other items not generally available to average DPRK citizens. These remittances provided former Japanese residents with better clothes and food, which fueled some degree of resentment amongst their less fortunate compatriots.

291. In 1960, the Hungarian Ambassador to the DPRK, Károly Práth, noted the situation of almost 31,000 Koreans from Japan who had arrived in the DPRK:

317 TJH007.

318 Songbun is not mentioned on the ID cards issued to people. Ordinary people will not be informed about their songbun (TCC014).

319 TLC018.

320 TJH041.

321 Witness TJH037 only learned why he had low songbun after fleeing the DPRK and being told by his mother in the ROK that his grandmother had been a landlord. His first attempt to flee when he was captured and repatriated had been because he did not want to undergo 10 years of military service as is the usual case for those people who do not have high songbun.

322 TBG021.

323 See section IV.F.