Exploring the Right to Life in North Korea with Visual Atlas

The right to life, by definition, provides the foundation for where all human rights begin. The right to life is the right of people to have their lives protected and guaranteed by the government under the constitution. As it is a basic right, the constitution of many states protects the lives of citizens with their humanitarian value to a large extent, even to criminals. Unlike the right to life in liberal states, North Koreans are under constant threat by government officials through summary execution, legal execution, murder by government officials, and mass murder. The North Korean government, instead of protecting the citizens, implement laws to execute citizens. In particular, the North Korean Constitution has been amended to expand the crimes under which civilians can be executed to the commission of general crimes.

In this short brief, the issue of right to life in North Korea will be highlighted using the Visual Atlas, created by the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB). The main features of the website will be introduced, and some of the findings from the given data will be explained through the lens of human rights.

To begin with, the statistics section is comprised of 16 different human rights categories. The first category, the Right to Life, has subgroups to distinguish different types of incidents. The text to the left of the graph provides a brief summary of the right to life, the history of changes in the North Korean Constitution in regard to the right to life and the different categories of incidents of death. The number of right to life violation cases collected by NKDB are also available.

According to Scale Incidents graph, legal execution is the most common violation of the right to life, followed by death by other direct acts. While legal execution indicates that the deaths are caused by the government officials, death by other direct acts leaves room for elaboration. The subcategory, death by other direct acts, explains that deaths that occurred in detention facilities are identified as incidents of death by other direct acts. The sum of these two major types of incidents make up 92.8 percent of the total violations of the right to life, which means that the government is the main perpetrator of violations of the right to life. About 5,200 reported cases of executions or death happened in public spaces, prisons, and detention facilities. The gap between the number of deaths that occurred in public spaces and prisons exhibits the prevalence of death in public areas. The number of cases by decades graph displays the drastic increase in violations of the right to life in the 1990s and a slight decrease in the 2000s. The given data provides us the insight that amendments to the Constitution and the Arduous March during those time periods may have contributed to the dramatic increase in the number of cases.

The right to life of North Koreans is often at risk not only due to the lack of legal protection, but with due to legal threats. By searching “right to life” using the search bar in the top right corner, using the “Rights Category 1” option, the list of related cases populates and can be browsed, with some summaries of cases providing evidence for why the government was threatening people with legal means instead of using the law to protect. For example, take the case of victim 131869, who was “publicly executed by firing squad at a public sports field in Riwon County, South Hamgyong Province in the 2000s for not being present to swear an oath following a birthday celebration for Kim Jong Il.” The unfortunate case of the stories and vivid excerpt of interviews with North Korean defectors allows one to assume the Arduous March is the main reason for increase in the number of violations of the right to life in the 1990s. In one defector’s testimony, they said that "A person ate 11 men at a farmers market. He was executed by hanging there. I saw it myself. A person like that will resist so he was beaten half to death before he was executed.” With the given testimony, the severity of the famine and hunger during that time period may have led to political riots and dissatisfaction with government. The North Korean government responded with harsh measures to punish those who committed an array of different crimes.

The Visual Atlas has a special visualization feature which displays the concentration of human rights violation cases in the DPRK. Using the Density feature of the Visual Atlas depends on the number of violation cases reported by North Korean defectors through their interviews with NKDB. By setting “Right to life” as the Crime Type, it is noticeable that right to life violations occur more frequently in the northern part of North Korea, particularly in North Hamgyong Province as opposed to Pyongyang and the southern parts of the DPRK. By changing the time period associated with the right to life, we can see that the density of this specific human rights violation does not substantially change throughout time. The unchanged human rights situations in the region implies that the residents of the northern provinces of the DPRK can be considered the most marginalized, oppressed, discriminated against, impoverished, and vulnerable people across generations of North Koreans.

For more information, you can visit the Visual Atlas at: http://www.visualatlas.org/eng.do