In North Korea’s ‘workers’ paradise,’ inequality is assigned at birth, human rights group says

WASHINGTON — In the supposed workers’ paradise of North Korea, inequality is assigned at birth, a study by a U.S.-based human rights group says.

Education, job, access to scarce food and health care, and even whom you marry all hinge on how loyal your ancestors are viewed to have been to the Kim dynasty that took power six decades ago.

The study released Wednesday by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea says all adults in the socialist state are categorized as one of three classes: loyal, wavering or hostile.

The nongovernment human rights group says it amounts to a caste system.

Despite the emergence of informal markets since the late 1990s challenging state control, the study says the class system persists and is behind the discrimination and abuses faced by the lowest echelons of the North’s closed society.

“Throughout its 64-year existence, the Kim regime has claimed that North Korea is an egalitarian workers’ paradise,” said the committee’s executive director, Greg Scarlatoiu. “Yet, inequality is assigned at birth, perpetuated throughout a person’s lifetime and cruelly enforced by those in power to benefit themselves and their supporters.”

The North Korean government denies such a discriminatory class system exists.

The study, titled “Marked for Life,” is based on interviews with 75 North Korean defectors, including as recently as 2011. It also cites a 1993 manual issued by North Korea’s Ministry of Public Security to guide its officials on how to investigate a citizen’s socio-political classification, or “songbun,” which translates in Korean as “ingredients.”

Lee Sung-min, a North Korean defector living in Seoul, said in an interview with The Associated Press that because his late grandfather was accused of collaborating with the Japanese during the 35 years Japan ruled South Korea as a colony, his family was stigmatized by North Korean authorities and he was blocked from joining the Workers’ Party or entering the school he wanted to attend.

“No one is free from songbun in North Korea,” Lee said.

The study says the ministry maintains a file on everyone from the age of 17 that is updated every two years.

Numerous defectors’ interviews show that those who are young when they leave North Korea see songbun as decreasingly important, while older defectors say songbun still matters, the report said.

The songbun system has its origins in social class restructuring enforced by the North’s communist founders, led by Kim Il Sung, that began even before the state’s formal creation in 1948, to elevate peasants and laborers at the expense of landlords, businessmen and religious leaders.

Those considered most loyal had fought alongside Kim against Japanese colonialists and then against U.S.-backed forces in the 1950-53 Korean War. Those deemed hostile collaborated with the enemy or had family members who fled to South Korea.

Moving up a songbun category is rare and requires a lifetime of devotion to the Kim family regime and ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. But songbun can be downgraded for political or criminal offenses or failing to cooperate with authorities.


(2012-06-07/Washingtonpost)