By Kang Seung-woo
Most North Koreans, including children, are being forced to work, a European human rights agency said Friday, in urging the international community to take action to address the issue.
“Domestic and international legislation, which should provide North Korean laborers with basic protections against the excesses of the state, are reviewed and measured against the experiences of the victims,” said the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea (EAHRNK).
The report was based on interviews and discussions with North Korean refugees over a period of one year and focused on four social groups: students, the adult workforce, prisoners and “exported” laborers.
As for young laborers, the EAHRNK said that the nature and duration of the work assigned to children breaks numerous domestic and international laws.
“During the school term, students commonly worked between two and four hours during the week and from dawn to dusk on Saturdays. Students over the age of 12 were also required to engage in forced labor during their summer holidays, with many spending up to six weeks on farms in local areas or in neighboring provinces,” the report said.
The forms of labor included logging; transporting coal; repairing railway tracks; maintaining school facilities; cleaning Kim family monuments and public spaces; planting and harvesting crops; and quarrying.
It added that children who work after school receive no compensation and they face punitive action if work is incomplete, including corporal punishment.
The EAHRNK expressed concerns over “the effects of forced labor on students that include physical injuries, malnutrition, exhaustion, growth deficiencies and lasting psychological problems.”
Consistent with the North Korean government’s failure to uphold legislation governing the rights of children, it’s also failing to enforce the laws for the adult workforce.
“Employment is compulsory and assigned by the government, suggesting that the right to work is not assured and that it is state-allocated employment,” the report said.
“State-directed propaganda, surveillance and indoctrination contribute to working environments where psychological abuses are normalized. Self-criticism sessions, in which every adult must participate, encourage a climate of fear and allow authorities to pursue policies of forced labor where workers have no evident recourse to justice.”
With regard to laborers in the North Korean prison network, the human rights report also found that countless inhumane acts, which range from sexual violence to psychological abuse, serve to regulate prison behavior and extract labor from inmates.
Finally, North Koreans deployed abroad face total isolation from their surroundings and have their wages deducted in the form of Korean Workers’ Party membership fees, loyalty payments to the Kim family and so on.
In the wake of the exploitation of the North Korean population, the EAHRNK calls for international measures to stop such acts of inhumanity.
“The international community should encourage the newly established U.N. field office in Seoul to actively investigate forced labor and to include the matter in all follow-up reports to the U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI),” it said.
The COI report, issued in February of last year, said that the North’s leadership is committing crimes against humanity on an unprecedented scale.
Based on the report, the U.N. took a critical and symbolic step on the issue as the General Assembly adopted a landmark resolution in December that calls for the U.N. Security Council to refer the North’s situation to the International Criminal Court.