Contact:

Documents

North Korea slavery

Rhoda Howard-Hassmann

published: 2012 | Working paper | unpublished work

This article discusses North Korea as a case of state-induced famine, or faminogenesis. A famine from 1994 to 2000 killed three to five per cent of North Korea’s population, and mass hunger reappeared in 2010-12, despite reforms meant to address the shortage of food. In addition, a prison population of about 200,000 people is systematically deprived of food; this might be considered penal starvation. There seems little recourse under international law to punish the perpetrators of state-induced famine and penal starvation. State-induced famine does, however, fit some of the criteria of genocide in the United Nations Convention against Genocide, and could also be considered a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. There would seem, then, to have been a case for referral of North Korea’s recently deceased leader, Kim Jong Il, to the International Criminal Court, and it is still a case for referral of Kim’s successors. However, strategic concerns about North Korea’s nuclear weapons outweigh humanitarian concerns about North Korea’s citizens.

Download: PDF (350k)    slavery_dr8_FINAL__march_16_2012.pdf

revised Apr 3/12

View all Rhoda Howard-Hassmann, FRSC documents