Impact of discrimination on economic, social and cultural rights

330. Discrimination results in unequal access to basic human rights including food, education, health care and the right to work. The Commission finds that the Songbun system leads to structural discrimination whereby generations become locked into disadvantage and social mobility is not possible. The Commission considers that discrimination on the basis of songbun, gender and ability has created many vulnerable groups. The effects of discrimination on the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights appear to vary across time and locations. According to diplomatic sources, discrimination is worst in the countryside.⁴⁰¹

331. Pyongyang is a city for the core class, with better infrastructure and services than elsewhere in the country. Residency in Pyongyang is considered a privilege, and one that has been revoked.⁴⁰²

• One witness who spoke to the Commission was born in Pyongyang, but after her father was executed in the mid-1950s under suspicions of having been a collaborator with the South during the Korean War, she and the rest of the family were expelled to the North Hamgyong Province because of their low songbun.⁴⁰³ 332. Many of the Koreans who came to the DPRK from Japan were not allowed to reside in Pyongyang or other cities.

• Ms Chiba explained to the Commission: “[A]mong the 93,000 people – people were classified into different ranks and classes, and depending on the classes people were

397 TJH004. A former State Security Department official reported rumors of these islands (TJH041).

Also, see Citizens Alliance on North Korean Human Rights, “Status of Women's Rights in the Context of Socio-Economic Changes in the DPRK”.

398 On alleged medical experiments, see also section IV.E.6.

399 Submission to the Commission: SUB060. Also,“North Korea's first Paralympian inspires the disabled”, Associated Press, 28 August 2012.

400 A/HRC/WG.6/6/PRK/1.

401 SUB060.

402 TJH041.

403 TGC001.

sent to mountains. Many Japanese people were sent to mountains, they were not able to live in cities.”⁴⁰⁴

333. The effects of food shortages are felt more keenly by more vulnerable populations, which was particularly the case during the famine of the 1990s. The public distribution system, which allocated all legal rations of cereals, determined people’s entitlements to food on the basis of their age or professional status. Another dimension of the famine was the geographic variance in availability of food. Pyongyang and the surrounding areas where most of the elite resided fared better than more remote areas, particularly the industrial northeastern region of the country.⁴⁰⁵

334. Although the Socialist Labor Law guarantees the right to choose one’s profession, in practice the state plays a predominant role in determining a citizen’s employment.

• For example, a prisoner of war from the ROK, was re-educated and then married a DPRK woman with low songbun. He had two sons. One died but his other son was not allowed to join the military or to go to university. He reported to the Commission that children of miners become miners and go to mining vocational school.⁴⁰⁶

335. For university graduates, the Bureau of Staff of the regional committee of the Korean Workers’ Party determines who gets placed in a managerial or technical post. In some cases, the Party’s Central Bureau of Staff must be consulted and the Secretariat must sign off. Factors that are considered include songbun, gender, physical ability, academic qualifications and other lifestyle matters.⁴⁰⁷

336. For high school graduates and discharged soldiers, the Labor Department of the regional People’s Committee determines work assignments. For manual labor jobs such as mining, road and railroad construction, group allocations are made. In 2003, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights expressed concern “that the right to work may not be fully assured in the [DPRK’s] present system of compulsory state-allocated employment, which is contrary to the right of the individual to freely choose his/her career or his/her workplace.”⁴⁰⁸

337. Discrimination impacts not only the designation of profession but also professional development and advancement. Songbun has also been a limiting factor for DPRK nationals who seek to progress in their careers.⁴⁰⁹

• For example, Mr Jang hae-sung, a former DPRK journalist, testified at the Seoul Public Hearing:

“I am a person of good songbun, good class in North Korea. My grandfather was also involved in anti-Japanese activities. And two of my father’s siblings died during the Korean War so I was one of those really privileged, high class, high songbun.

But I’m from China, but if I was not born in China, if I was born in North Korea, then I could have been able to work in the core institutions, but because I was born

404 Tokyo Public Hearing, 30 August 2013, morning (02:04:41).

405 For more detail on the impact of discrimination on access to food, see section IV.D.

406 TSH051 explained that people with low songbun cannot go to teachers college because they would be influencing children, but they can go to technical colleges which include medical school.

407 TBG015.

408 E/C.12/1/Add.95.

409 According to TAP001, most people who came from Japan were highly-educated and able to get jobs but would still not get high level positions.

in China, I was not able to work [for the] BoAnBu or Bowibu [MPS or SSD]. That is why I had to work in the press.”⁴¹⁰

338. Military service is compulsory for all males in the DPRK, but those with low songbun or a disability are not able to serve. In the past, citizens wished to serve in the military for career purposes. However, since the 1990s, the military has been less attractive due to the risk of malnutrition, and many people actually attempt to escape conscription at great risk. Nevertheless, military service is a key way for securing a position as an official.

Most citizens enter the military for 10 to 13 years, although children of high-ranking officials appear to only need to serve for three years before they are eligible for Party membership or enrolment into university. According to first-hand information received by the Commission, professional advancement for officials requires four credentials: military service, membership of the Workers’ Party of Korea, university qualification and high songbun. Without all four qualifications, an individual would have limited chances of becoming a high-ranking official whether in the party, military or government. These qualifications are particularly important for jobs in the security bureau, foreign service and economic bureau.⁴¹¹

339. In 2012, the Supreme People’s Assembly extended compulsory education to 12 years from 11 years, promised more classrooms and said that teachers would be given priority in the distribution of food and fuel rations, according to the DPRK’s official Korean Central News Agency.⁴¹² Despite the DPRK’s commitment to universal provision of education,⁴¹³ access is hindered for some by systemic discrimination. Because of the collapse of the DPRK economy, students are generally required to provide resources to fund teachers and school operations.⁴¹⁴

• Mr Charles Jenkins, who lived in the DPRK for over 39 years, told of goods that his two daughters were asked to bring to school: “[T]he girls were always coming to me saying that school officials had requested a certain amount of supplies from every student’s family. Sometimes they would say their teachers told them they needed to bring in 2 kilograms of brass each by Monday. Or a kilogram of lead. Or a hundred meters of copper wire. They asked for coal, gasoline, even rabbit skins.”

These specific requests were in addition to the 60 kilograms of corn that he had to send every month to the school. “That’s 2.2 pounds per daughter every day, even though a student’s ration is only a pound per day, so you can see that someone, somewhere, was skimming more than half of what we sent.” He also noted that his daughters were attending the Foreign Language College, “supposedly a high-class place where the country’s elite were being educated”.⁴¹⁵

340. The Commission believes that if these practices prevailed in elite schools, those attending less privileged institutions may be subjected to similar requests to provide subsides that their families may not be able to afford.

410 Seoul Public Hearing, 22 August 2013, afternoon (00:46:31).

411 TAP011, TLC007.

412 Choe Sang-hun, “North Korea’s Leaders Promise Improvements to Educational System”, New York Times, 25 September 2012.

413 CRC/C/PRK/4, paras. 174-176; A/HRC/WG.6/6/PRK/1, para. 59.

414 TBG030.

415 Charles Robert Jenkins with Jim Frederick, The Reluctant Communist, My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-year Imprisonment in North Korea (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2008), pp.

129, 134-135; TSH054.

341. In addition, it appears that privileges in school – such as whether a student can be designated head of class – are also determined by songbun.⁴¹⁶ Furthermore, compulsory education does not apply to children sent to political prison camps, where an elementary level of instruction is administered under a different curriculum.⁴¹⁷

342. Where discrimination in education becomes most apparent is in the selection process for universities or the opportunity to even take the entrance examination. Numerous testimonies of witnesses interviewed by the Commission reported that those persons with low songbun were not even allowed to take the entrance exam or were not allowed to attend institutions appropriate to their level of academic performance and test scores.⁴¹⁸

• A witness told the Commission that, due to her hostile songbun, she was prevented from returning to Pyongyang where she was born. She was also rejected by the university where she had applied to study dance and instead was sent to work in agricultural projects.⁴¹⁹

343. Given the outsized role in determining one’s future, songbun also affects people’s opportunities for marriage.⁴²⁰ One prominent example is Ms Jang Kum-song, whose mother is Ms Kim Kyong-hui (the sister of Kim Jong-il) and whose father is the now-deceased Mr Jang Song-thaek. Ms Jang died in Paris in 2006, aged 26, as a result of suicide. Educated in Europe, she reportedly wished to marry a particular DPRK man but her parents opposed the union due to the difference in songbun.

344. The most vulnerable groups—persons of low songbun, women, children and persons with disabilities—are particularly disadvantaged in their access to health services and medicine. The state purports to provide free access to medical services for all citizens while providing special protection for special groups such as “revolutionary fighters, families of revolutionary martyr soldiers, families of patriotic martyr soldiers, families of North Korean People’s Army soldiers, and awarded soldiers”.⁴²¹ In reality, however, while patients may access hospitals for free, medical equipment and medication are unavailable to the masses and must be bought on the private market by those who can afford them.⁴²²

• A former nurse at a county hospital in North Hamgyong Province, the northern-most region of the country to which many of lower songbun have been banished, told the Commission: “Working conditions were difficult. There was always a shortage of medicine. It was distributed from high levels at the national level down to the county, and misappropriated by officials who sold it on the black market [for money]. Consequently, doctors did not have medicines to use and could only write prescriptions. A more alarming side-effect of the misappropriation of medicines was the sale of dangerous ‘knock-offs’ that flooded the markets. Entrepreneurs mixed liquid antibiotics with fuel and mixed pills with flour to make more money. As a

416 TBG024.

417 KINU, White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea (2012), p. 364; Kang Chol-hwan in his book, The Aquariums of Pyongyang, (New York, Basic Books, 2001), pp. 63-78, details the change in schooling when he was sent to a political prison camp at the age of nine.

418 TJH026, TAP008.

419 TGC001.

420 TSH051 explained that because of her songbun, no one would approach her to get married. A military doctor from Pyongyang came to see her on an arranged blind date and after several dates they were supposed to get engaged, but the engagement was called off when he found out about her songbun. It was a very embarrassing time, with the witness thinking that she was never going to be married. In the DPRK, songbun comes first, the witness said.

421 DPRK Constitution, articles 56 and 72.

422 TSH051, TSH004.

result, many people presented to hospital with infections and problems from using knock-off antibiotics. It was well known in the medical profession that bottles, lids and labels from the Suncheon factory for antibiotics were regularly stolen for the containment and sale of knock-off antibiotics. Although patients can technically go to the hospital at any time of day, the staff are rarely there after lunch as they had to engage in other business to make money to feed their families, or shop and do household chores”.

The witness further explained that the dire situation in regional hospitals is known to party officials: “Party staff carry out nominal inspections of the hospitals each year. They are fully aware of the deficiencies of the hospital and the health situation of the community, but are bribed by the head of the hospital not to report the conditions. Staff are also expected to give money so a party could be put on for the visiting officials. Bribery and corruption are the norm in the DPRK. The officials are also the ones siphoning off the supplies, so they are more than aware of the situation. Party officials always given priority in the hospital, treated in separate rooms; they have no interest in how the rest of the population is suffering.”⁴²³ 345. Women are particularly disadvantaged by the lack of access to health care. Tests for female diseases or screening for breast cancer do not exist. A survey recently conducted with women in the ROK originally from the DPRK found that almost half of the women surveyed did not see a doctor throughout their pregnancy and almost half delivered their babies at home regardless of whether they were from a major city or village. Women also reported that the death of the mother or baby during or after childbirth was not uncommon.⁴²⁴ Maternal mortality rates almost doubled in the decade from 1993 to 2003, largely due to inadequacies in emergency obstetric care.⁴²⁵ The maternal mortality rate in 2010 was estimated to be 81/100,000 live births.⁴²⁶

5. Principal findings of the commission

346. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has presented itself to the world as a state where equality, non-discrimination and equal rights in all fields have been fully implemented.⁴²⁷ In reality, the Commission finds that the DPRK is a rigidly stratified society with entrenched patterns of discrimination, although these are being modified to some extent by the transformative socio-economic changes introduced by market forces and technological developments in the past decade. The Commission finds that state-sponsored discrimination in the DPRK is pervasive but shifting. Discrimination is rooted in the Songbun system, which classifies people on the basis of social class and birth and also includes consideration of political opinion and religion.⁴²⁸ Songbun intersects with gender based discrimination, which is equally pervasive. Discrimination is also practised on the

423 TSH051.

424 Citizen’s Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, “Status of Women’s Rights in the Context of Socio-Economic Changes in the DPRK”, p. 37.

425 UNICEF, “2003 Country report”, pp. 47-50.

426 WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA and The World Bank Estimates, “Trends in Maternal Mortality: 1990 to 2010”, 2012.

427 The State report for the DPRK’s first Universal Periodic Review in 2009 stated the following: “In the DPRK, equality is fully ensured based on unity and cooperation between persons. No citizen is discriminated on the basis of his/her race, sex, language, religion, education, occupation and position and property, and all citizens exercise equal rights in all fields of the state and public activities”

(A/HRC/WG.6/6/PRK/1, para. 32).

428 Discrimination on the basis of religion is addressed in section IV.A.

basis of disability although there are signs that the state may have begun to address this particular issue.

347. The state sponsors and implements a system of official discrimination based on social class, deriving from perceived political loyalty and family background as manifest in the Songbun system. The concept of songbun was originally conceived as a means to re-engineer the fabric of society, so as to replace the pre-1945 traditional elites with new

“revolutionary” elites loyal to the leadership and the new state. In this regard, the DPRK remodeled pre-existing hierarchies in Korean society that were deeply rooted for centuries.⁴²⁹

348. The Songbun system used to be the most important determining factor in an individual’s chances of livelihood, access to education and other services including housing and the opportunity to live in favorable locations, especially the capital Pyongyang. This traditional discrimination under the Songbun system has been recently complicated by increasing marketization in the DPRK and the influence of money on people’s ability to better access their economic, social and cultural rights. Money and heightened levels of corruption increasingly allow newly emerging business elites and others able to obtain resources to circumvent state-sponsored discrimination. Moreover, new information technologies, including mobile phones, help to facilitate the operation of the market system and the exchange of knowledge and information. However, whether an individual has the necessary access to make money in the most lucrative sectors of commerce is to some degree determined by songbun. At the same time, significant segments of the population that have neither the resources nor favorable songbun find themselves increasingly marginalized and subject to further patterns of discrimination, as basic public services have collapsed or now require payment.

349. Discrimination based on songbun continues to articulate itself today through the stark differences in living conditions between larger cities, in particular the capital Pyongyang, where the elites of the highest songbun are concentrated, and the remote provinces, to which people of low songbun were historically assigned. Discrimination remains a major means for the leadership to maintain control against perceived threats, both internal and external.

350. Early reforms aimed at ensuring formal legal equality have not resulted in gender equality. Discrimination against women remains pervasive in all aspects of society.

Arguably, it is increasing as the male-dominated state preys on both the economically advancing women and marginalized women. Many women, driven by survival during the famine in the 1990s began operating private markets. However, the state imposed many restrictions on the female-dominated market, including prohibiting anyone other than women over forty years of age from trading. Gender discrimination also takes the form of women being targeted to pay bribes or fines. There is recent evidence that women are beginning to object and resist such impositions.

351. The economic advances of women have not been matched with social and political advancements. Entrenched traditional patriarchal attitudes and violence against women in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea persist. The state has imposed blatantly discriminatory restrictions on women in an attempt to maintain the gender stereotype of the pure and innocent Korean woman. Sexual and gender-based violence against women is prevalent throughout all areas of society. Victims are not afforded protection from the state, support services or recourse to justice. In the political sphere, women make up just 5 per cent of the top political cadre, and 10 per cent only of central government employees.

429 See section III.