NGO leader rules out any reform in NK

North Korean defector Park Sang-hak, left, and Human Right Foundation President Thor Halvorssen at the Korea War Memorial Museum in Seoul, South Korea, Jan. 20. / Courtesy of Human Right Foundation

By David Keelaghan

A global NGO leader ruled out any chance of the North Korean regime pushing for reform within the country, Thursday.

“It is highly unlikely you will see any kind of reform or change with a government that is willing to kill as many people as necessary to remain in power,” Thor Halvorssen, president of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), told The Korea Times.

His organization, based in New York, has been actively involved in assisting North Korean defector groups since 2009, with a primary goal of breaking the Kim regime’s information stranglehold over its people.

Recently, HRF, working alongside well-known defector Park Sang Hak, vowed to send 100,000 copies of the controversial movie, “The Interview,” into the North over the next year if the regime there did not come to the negotiating table.

“You have to consider that from birth until death it’s an ever ending loop about loyalty to the father of the nation and distrust of everyone in your family and your neighborhood. It is unimaginable cross between fascism, feudalism and fundamentalism,” Halvorssen said.

“Part of the reason the bible is not permitted there is because they have taken so much of the stories from the bible and replaced those figures with the Kims. Even the people that see themselves as more knowledgeable, if they leave North Korea it still takes years for them to be deprogrammed. It is absolute brainwashing; there is no other way to describe it.”

On Wednesday, the North’s National Defense Commission responded in typical fashion to critical comments made by U.S. President Barack denouncing “the most isolated, the most sanctioned, and the most cut-off nation on earth.” Pyongyang indicated that it was ready and willing to face off the most powerful military force in the world and bring about “the collapse of the U.S.”

The North’s grandstanding this week contrasts with the message sent out during Kim Jong-un’s New Year address last month. Then the young leader indicated he was willing to meet with his South Korean counterpart to discuss a normalization of relations between the two sides.

“The only thing that is genuine about Kim Jong-un is his massive appetite ― his appetite for power and his appetite for food that his people don’t have,” Halvorssen said when asked to assess the North’s behavioral pattern. “He will continue to talk about wanting peace with South Korea; meanwhile the North Korean government remains at war with its own people.”

Given that fact, the HRF head is not optimistic about any real progress in North Korea’s human rights conditions.

“Anyone that thinks the Kim family, who are nothing more than a criminal enterprise, will evolve into something better are out of their minds. Psychopaths running governments and violating human rights on mass don’t suddenly change their mind. It hasn’t happened in the history of humankind,” said Halvorssen.