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2024.11.13
Seoul
Digital Activism in North Korea's Case
Jaqueline Perez Gamboa
Human rights aim to recognize, protect, and guarantee the dignity and freedom of all people without any distinction. In today’s world, there are still groups lacking the recognition of their fundamental rights. This is the case of North Koreans inside and outside their country. But questions remain in the air: are people far away from that reality able to do something about it? How can people’s voices help North Koreans around the world?
Digital activism is the process of the population making collective demands to an authority or governmental institution through internet platforms (Özkula, 2021). Because of internet use, the population's demands gain a more extensive scope and a diverse audience worldwide. The scope given by the internet platforms is not reachable by any other mass media communication tool.
In today’s democratic systems, digital activism is an essential mechanism for citizens to impact and affect the governmental decision-making processes. Through digital activism, people’s demands are being heard, and actions toward the protection of human rights are visualized.
Around the world there has been a huge impact when the digital media means are used for a socio-political objective. For instance, in 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign to the presidency of the United States used the existing digital social networks to increase his scope to a younger generation (Aeker 2009). Since then, internet use in politics and social issues has potentially increased, not only to benefit the groups in the power spheres but also the population can get visibility to the problems they are sharing.
Over the last decades, the internet and digital activism have transformed the ways the world interacts with human rights problematics. Due to the restrictions of the North Korean government, and the lack of information about the country’s current situation, the internet is fundamental to getting to know a reality that for decades has been difficult to share with a bigger audience.
The use of websites and social network platforms like YouTube, X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn is how the global population can know the reality North Koreans face within their frontiers and outside them as refugees, allowing the claims and defense for North Korean human rights to become a global movement.
The Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, the first NGO working toward North Korean human rights, is an example of the importance of digital activism. This organization, founded in 1966, using social media and websites has been able to share its work and impact more people while creating more international networks to collaborate.
The organization Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), for example, is actively using Instagram and YouTube to spread information about North Korea and its activities towards North Korean human rights. Through their posts, the audience is able to know testimonies from North Korean people and learn several facts about North Korea, by this means they are creating a space of empathy and connection to the problematic and its principal victims.
Another form of digital activism is using websites to share research and reports about the North Korean case. The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) is an experts’ organization that promotes the awareness of North Korea’s situation through the publication of research and reports done by its members. For this organization, social networks like X or LinkedIn are the most useful ones because of the audience target they have.
In a democratic system, citizens’ participation and influence in the decision-making process are not only realizable, but also provide the government with legitimacy (Silva, 2022). Digital activists’ use of the internet as a mass communication tool represents, not only the possibility of influencing governmental actions, but of creating a bigger community to actually get to influence the government agenda.
The signing of digital petitions has had a significant impact on some countries around the world. This is the case of the Petition 431-00129 sent to the House of Commons of Canada in which Canadian citizens are pledging for the human rights of two North Korean fishermen deported by the ROK government to North Korea in 2019. In the petition, the activists asked their representatives to express their concerns to both Koreas’ governments. The petition was accepted by the House of Commons and invited both governments to a respectful dialog towards the importance of the vigilance and defense of human rights.
Digital activism has proved to be an essential tool in the North Korean human rights’ defense. The use of online platforms is giving North Koreans a voice and a vast scope to express their claims to the world. Social networks (SNS), websites, and online petitions are breaking down the barriers imposed by the North Korean regime allowing the world to know the difficulties North Korean citizens face everyday not only in their country, but as refugees too.
Through digital activism the world is not only visualizing the problems, but citizens worldwide are also creating networks to demand their own governments to do something about the situation within the political system. It is important for all citizens to join this cause, and digital activism is a good starting point for the younger generations to impact and be vigilantes of the governmental duty of guaranteeing human rights to all people.
Written by Jaqueline Perez Gamboa for Yonsei GSIS Human Rights Hub
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