Violations of the Human Rights of Disabled Citizens in North Korea

Violations of the Human Rights of Disabled Citizens in North Korea

Olivia Grace Galloway Pollard

25-2 Yonsei PSCORE

https://assets.korearisk.com/uploads/sites/4/2023/11/2023-06-02_kcna_international-childrens-day-869x500.jpg

It is mostly common knowledge that North Korea has a consistently terrible track record for human rights violations overall. Despite this, there is a concerning tendency from the international community to overlook the state’s particularly horrific treatment of disabled people. 

In order to understand exactly how disabled people are harmed within the country, however, we firstly need to look at the little number of rights that they are actually granted. Surprisingly, North Korea has been a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities since 2016, as reported by Catalina Devandas Aguilar (the Special Rapporteur on disabled rights) after her trip to the DPRK in 2017. This decision means that North Korea is required to ensure that disabled people’s rights are maintained and that extra measures are taken to avoid any possible discrimination this group may face. As mentioned in both her standard and EasyRead report, North Korea has indeed enacted some laws to abide by the convention, including the declaration that disabled North Koreans have the right to: receive an education, work, and get “free medical care and material assistance [if they] are no longer able to work because of old age or disability” (Standard Report, p.6).

Thanks to the enactment of similar laws, it appears that disabled people are gradually seeing progression in terms of accessibility; North Korea has worked to found “a national organization” and “center” for disabled people, aiming to facilitate disability benefits such as provision of “free taxis” since 2017 (EasyReport, p.15). While these institutions are notably based only in Pyongyang, meaning those with disabilities in rural areas are still “disproportionately affect[ed]” due to the “strictly regulated…travel” within the DPRK (Standard Report, p.5), an outsider may still see the very limited implementation of laws and accessibility services as at least a huge step in the right direction for the state.

Not only has accessibility seemed to have improved, but we are also seeing much more representation for disabled people both within the country and on the global stage. For example, in both 2012 and 2016, North Korea sent at least one disabled athlete to the Paralympics, with swimmer Rim Ju-Song making history as the first North Korean Paralympian in 2012 (via Independent). Although, similar to later athletes sent by the state, Rim had no prior training and – according to archived records of the Men’s 50m Freestyle – his ‘qualifying’ time was 35,3 seconds slower than the actual slowest qualifier, his appearance undoubtedly set a precedent for North Korea slowly becoming a more inclusive country. On a similar celebratory note, the DPRK also hosts an International Day of Persons with Disabilities, on which several performances by disabled people take place in Pyongyang (as reported in NK News), ultimately promoting the skills and talents of these people in a society where they would usually be looked down upon. Unfortunately, most North Koreans outside and even within Pyongyang are still not aware of this day, and so any benefits of representation that disabled people may gain from it are still extremely minimal – one defector, for example, whose mother is “unable to walk” mentioned how “when [her] family escaped the country, on June 27, 2018, with [her] father carrying [her] mother on this back, none of [them] even knew the country had the National Day for Persons with Disabilities” (as quoted in The Korea Times). Regardless, the fact that disabled people are even given such a platform to participate in sporting events and national days must be at least a sign of improvement to come for the community.

Then are violations of disability rights not as terrible as rumours may have suggested? Sadly, the slight additions in laws to support disabled citizens are vastly outweighed by horrific abuse and neglect towards the minority population. To start with, although disabled people are given some rights by the Convention signed in 2016, the state simultaneously fails to comply with “articles 12, 23 and 29” by ruling many disabled people in court as not having a “legal capacity” to make decisions for themselves and are subsequently stripped of “the right to vote and be elected, to act as a guardian of a child, or to adopt a child, with no recourse for appeal and review” (Devandas Aguilar’s Standard Report, p.7). This sentiment of disabled people being incapable and burdensome is also perpetuated throughout the general population, with the UN Special Rapporteur noting on her trip that the perceived weakness of disabled people is “despised”, resulting in these citizens often being “easy targets of stigma and discrimination…[and are] neglected” (Standard Report, p.9). Backing up this claim, a report from the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights in 2020 also observed how “North Koreans often reported that the person / family is ‘cursed’ if a disabled child is born into the family. [They believe] the person…committed a crime in the ‘previous life’ and thus the disabled…is being punished in ‘present life’”. As a result, through damaging notions spread throughout society and reinforced through law, many disabled people are hidden away in their homes in shame and robbed of opportunities, connection, and free will.

Outside of the legal and social sphere of violations, discrimination against disabled people does not show signs of improvement, despite the surface-level performative shows of representation to the public. In reality, disabled people continue to suffer extreme physical and mental brutalisation at the hands of the North Korean government. While there are some smaller (yet still highly important) scale examples of this, such as a lack of mobility devices that cause disabled citizens to be left stranded in their own homes (Jung p2-3), there are much more terrifying instances of violence. Most notably, the UN Special Rapporteur uncovered sickening cases of forced experimentation and surgeries performed on disabled people, such as involuntary sterilisation of disabled women and unfathomably dangerous tests on “little people to try to make them taller” (EasyRead Report, p.25-26). The fact that this was something the rapporteur was able to find out is disgusting in itself, but then to consider that she was also met with secrecy from authorities around other people with autism or severe disabilities (including little people past the height experiments) is an extreme concern in itself – if this is the kind of information the state is willing to reveal, just how atrocious are the cases that they are guarding so privately?

With this knowledge now at hand, it is vital that we look past the surface; no matter how hard North Korea throws superficial representation in the international community’s face and ‘diplomatically’ signs international conventions, they will never be able to wash the blood from their hands when it comes to the horrific crimes they’ve committed against their disabled citizens.