Acts in N Korea deprive youths of freedom of choice

Muhammad Muzahidul Islam :
North Korean young people do not have any freedom to associate with the culture they love. Since 2020 a series of legislative and administrative measures have been brought to prevent the young people from getting absorbed into the culture they like.

Some young people have already been tried and punished under the new laws. And they have been victims of these measures. Are these measures compliant with the international human rights instruments? Are they justified under the legal and moral standards?

In North Korea, South Korean TV shows, movies and using South Korean speech have been popular among the North Korean youth. However, North Korean young people have been growing in a culture or environment where they have no liberty to enjoy the things they like. They have no freedom to learn or receive information about a foreign culture.

Let me share with you the relevant portion from the report (World Report 2024, North Korea) of the Human Rights Watch. The report on the ‘freedom of expression and information’ provides that “The government does not permit freedom of thought, expression, or information.

All media is strictly controlled. Accessing phones, computers, televisions, radios, or media content that is not sanctioned by the government is illegal and considered “anti-socialist behavior” that is punished, including through the use of torture and forced labor.

The government regularly cracks down on those accessing unsanctioned media. It also jams Chinese mobile phone services at the border and targets for arrest people for communicating with contacts outside the country.

In January 2023, the government enacted the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act, banning the use of language that is South Korean in style or appears to have foreign influence.

The law criminalized communications “in the puppet language,” a reference to the South Korean language style, setting punishments of six years or more of forced labor and even the death penalty in some cases. It also encourages the authorities to use public trials and executions to “awaken the masses.”

North Korean regime does not like what the North Korean young people like. According to DAILY NK (Public struggle session carried out against 10 people in Hyesan, by Mun Dong Hui, June 7, 2023) “In March, North Korean authorities publicly condemned around 10 young people in Yanggang Province who engaged in anti-socialist and non-socialist behavior, Daily NK has learned.

“A public struggle session was carried out against 17 young people who were caught watching impure videos or using South Korean speech at a stadium in Hyesan, Yanggang Province in mid-March,” a source in Yanggang Province told Daily NK on Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“The young person who was the ringleader was given 10 years of forced labor.” The other young people were given seven years of forced labor, while several minors who were caught using South Korean speech were given two years of juvenile reeducation.”

The said article further provides that “In fact, North Korea has been cracking down especially hard on young people through the adoption of a series of laws, including the 2020 Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act, the 2021 Youth Education Guarantee Act and the 2023 Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act.

With the authorities adding struggle sessions on top of all these legislative efforts, the state appears intent in instilling fear among young people to prevent them from getting absorbed into capitalist culture.”

One could raise a question whether it is possible to eradicate the South Korean culture in North Korea completely.

According to rfa (North Korea sentences 20 young athletes for ‘speaking like South Koreans’, by Jieun Kim for RFA Korean, 2023.04.13) “With so much South Korean popular culture accessible to North Koreans, any efforts to eliminate capitalist influence is futile, the first source said.

“They can call it a ‘puppet language’ all they want, but for all their crackdowns on speaking ‘like a South Korean,’ close friends are still going to keep watching South Korean movies and dramas in secret,” he said. “How is it possible to eradicate it completely?”

North Korean young people should have the rights to express themselves in the ways they like, and to receive or collect the information they want. The rights to freedom of expression and information are guaranteed under the article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and under article 19 of the International Covenant on the Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to which North Korea is a party. These instruments are the parts of International Bill of human rights.

North Korean legislative and administrative measures do not go with the provisions of the international human rights instruments mentioned above. States are supposed to observe the three-part test given under article 19(3) of ICCPR in relation to the imposition of restrictions on the freedom of expression.

Further, in support of the North Korean youths who have been the victims of State-measures, and respecting their rights I would like to mention here few verses of a song that have attained popularity in Bengali community: Bar my arms and bar my legs, But how will you bar my heart? Bar my eyes and bar my mouth, But how will you bar my soul?

(The writer is a barrister-at-law, human rights activist and an advocate at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh).