Greg Scarlatoiu, Executive Director, Committee for Human Rights in North Korea
According to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), North Korea has the worst religious freedom situation in the world. In its 2024 annual report, the USCIRF recommended that the State Department designate North Korea as a country of particular concern for engaging in or tolerating serious religious freedom violations. In July, the commission visited South Korea and met with government officials, senior officials, human rights activists, religious leaders, defectors, and other civil society organizations working to promote religious freedom and other human rights in North Korea. Accordingly, on Thursday, the USCIRF will hold a virtual hearing on the religious freedom situation in North Korea, North Korean refugees, and U.S. government policy options.
The Committee’s Chair and Vice Chair will preside over the meeting. Ambassador Julie Turner, the U.S. State Department’s Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights, is scheduled to testify. The Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR), the Transitional Justice Working Group, the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB), the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), and civil society organizations from South Korea and the United States will all testify. Human rights experts will discuss religious freedom in North Korea and the refugee situation in South Korea, China, and other countries. They will also consider the U.S. approach to North Korea, including the intersection of human rights and national security.
Although Pyongyang was once known as the “Jerusalem of the East,” the Kim family regime has persecuted Christianity and other religions with extreme prejudice. In the run-up to this historic hearing, we must emphasize the importance of a “human rights-first approach” and the activation of information campaigns to empower North Koreans through the influx of information from the outside world to promote human rights for all North Koreans, especially religious freedom.
For the past 34 years since the Cold War, U.S. policy toward North Korea has focused on eliminating the production and proliferation of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. However, according to the report of the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Human Rights in North Korea in February 2014 and reports from numerous human rights and civil society organizations, the Kim regime has committed crimes against humanity, including the persecution of Christians and other religious people. There is a need to raise the level of human rights in North Korea to bring human rights in North Korea, especially religious freedom, to the same level as other important challenges surrounding North Korea, such as political, security, and military issues.
Promoting religious freedom in North Korea requires a North Korea policy approach that addresses human rights issues first, in addition to emphasizing other critical issues such as North Korea’s nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, exporting instability and violence to the Middle East and Ukraine through arms and ammunition sales to Iran and its proxy terrorist groups, and Russia.
The North Korean regime oppresses and exploits its people at home and abroad to finance its nuclear and missile development. The very nature of the Kim Jong-un regime, armed with nuclear weapons and committing crimes against humanity, poses a threat to regional and international peace and security. There is a direct link between North Korea’s human rights abuses and threats to international peace and security, and therefore the link between human rights and security must be emphasized.
A strategy to advance human rights in North Korea should involve the governments of the Republic of Korea and the United States, like-minded democratic UN member states, the private sector, particularly information technology (IT) and artificial intelligence (AI) companies, and international civil society organizations (CSOs) from the Republic of Korea, the United States, Japan, and the European Union (EU) that can develop content, information, and analysis critical to understanding and influencing the human rights and information environment in North Korea. Efforts should also be made to engage developing UN member states in the Global South to take active action on the human rights crisis in North Korea.
Going forward, the campaign to bring information from the outside world into North Korea must convey five fundamental stories to the North Korean people: the human rights of the North Korean people, especially the lack of religious freedom that the Kim family regime has abused for decades; the corruption of the North Korean regime’s top officials, especially the inner core of the Kim family; the outside world, especially the Republic of Korea, a free, democratic, and prosperous economic powerhouse; the fact that unification is not a matter of choice but of destiny for all Koreans who have shared the same language, culture, history, and civilization and lived under the same political system for a thousand years before the division in 1945; and the necessity of Korean unification, including the right of the North Korean people to self-determination. Religion, especially Christianity, was a distinctive feature of the nationalism and identity of the Korean people, especially during the tragic Japanese colonial period from 1905 to 1945.
North Koreans should remember that history did not begin with Kim Il-sung and the Korean Workers’ Party. The people of North and South Korea share a history of 5,000 years, and religion has been an important part of that history, and Christianity has been an important part of the national identity of both Koreas for 200 years.
*The contents of this column may not be consistent with the editorial direction of Free Asia Broadcasting*
Editor Park Jeong-woo, Web Editor Kim Sang-il
