Still repressive, but easing

A recent report by Amnesty International has said that the number of prisoners in North Korea has increased considerably. The report says that roughly 200,000 North Koreans are now incarcerated for political crimes (either committed by themselves or by their immediate family members). The report also states the area of the prisons camps in the North has increased.

By Andrei Lankov

A recent report by Amnesty International has said that the number of prisoners in North Korea has increased considerably. The report says that roughly 200,000 North Koreans are now incarcerated for political crimes (either committed by themselves or by their immediate family members). The report also states the area of the prisons camps in the North has increased.

Amnesty International is a respected organization and it does it best when it tries to make sense of the incomplete and contradictory data coming from North Korea. However, in this case, the present author is skeptical about the recent AI findings.

I am skeptical because my own personal observations indicate that over the last two decades the North Korean state has become less, not more, repressive.

There should be no misunderstanding ― North Korea remains the world’s most repressive society. The ratio of political inmates to the population in general is higher in North Korea than in any other state on Earth and is roughly similar to the ratio which existed in the Soviet Union in the last years of Stalin’s rule.

Nonetheless, my frequent interactions with North Koreans make clear: it’s less common to be arrested nowadays for a political crime than it was in the days of Generalissimo Kim Il-sung… that is prior to 1994. The above statement is based on anecdotal evidence, to be sure, but this evidence is quite varied and abundant.

The more lenient treatment of border crossers is one of many examples. Prior to the mid-1990s, every North Korean who went to China for whatever reason and was then extradited back would be sentenced to three to five years of imprisonment. Since the mid-1990s, the vast majority of North Koreans who have been extradited from China were sent to prisons for merely a few weeks. After being released, many of them flee the country again, but even the second or third extradition usually does not lead to a harsh punishment. Only interaction with Christian missionaries and/or South Koreans is likely to lead to long-term imprisonment nowadays.

One of the most notorious features of North Korean justice (well, quite a misleading word) system was the family responsibility principle. It meant that in case of a political crime not only the criminal himself but his/her entire family should be sent to a prison camp. However since the late 1990s, this principle is no longer applied unconditionally and universally. Now only families of the most dangerous people are dispatched to camps, whilst in most cases family members remain free. Of course, their career chances (if they had any) are ruined forever, and they might be exiled to a remote area if they happen to live in major cities. I know that this is the case even with some families of politically active refugees who are now involved in working with anti-Kim groups in Seoul.

The case of one such activist Yi Yeong-guk is quite typical. Once an officer in Kim Jong-il’s bodyguard unit, Yi Yeong-guk began to listen to foreign broadcasts in the late 1990s and, having learnt a great deal about the outside world, decided to defect to the South. He was intercepted and kidnapped in China as a result of a quite sophisticated (and obviously quite expensive) sting operation. Under Kim Jong-il’s father, both Yi and his family would almost definitely suffer an extremely painful death. But he spent just a few years in prison and was then released, only to wisely use this opportunity to defect again (this time successfully).

It’s quite clear for people who visit North Korea that the atmosphere in both the streets and offices of Pyongyang has changed over the last years. North Koreans are clearly less afraid of interacting with foreigners. Back in the 1970s, a foreigner (usually a Soviet or Eastern European) would find it almost impossible to strike up a conversation with a Pyongyangite ― the object of his interest would cut the conversation short or in some cases would virtually run away from the dangerous encounter. In the 1980s, North Koreans would, in most cases, not mind talking about non-political subjects with a Korean speaking foreigner for a couple of minutes. From the late 1990s, they have started to initiate interactions themselves.

North Koreans have also become far more relaxed during these interactions. Of course, one should expect them to tell jokes about Kim Jong-il and his family, but in some cases North Koreans can express some displeasure about minor life difficulties. For instance they might express their envy at the fact that foreigners can travel abroad as they like and displeasure with the botched currency reform of 2009, they could complain about the situation in rather sharp terms.

Certainly a great number of people remain in prison camps and no large scale releases of long-time inmates have happened so far. However, the present author has slight misgivings in accepting the estimates of Amnesty International about significant increase in the number of the prisoners. But of course North Korea is a strange place, so only time will tell.

Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com.