DPR Korea: Isolation deepens even as the country changes, says UN rights official

This article is published in association with United Nations.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is building factories and hospitals, rolling out smartphones and mobile banking, and passing new laws at an unprecedented rate. But its people are more cut off from the outside world than at any point in the country’s history.

That is the picture painted by James Heenan, head of the UN human rights office (OHCHR) in the South Korean capital, Seoul. His team monitors the DPRK from beyond its borders because, as he puts it, “almost no one” can get in.

Speaking to UN News in New York, Mr. Heenan described a country where hunger remains a constant, forced labour touches every family and the border with China is so tightly sealed that even illegal crossings have all but stopped.

Yet he warned against seeing the DPRK – more commonly known as North Korea – as frozen in time. “The country is constantly changing, like every country in the world,” he said.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

UN News: How does your office monitor human rights in the DPRK without direct access?

James Heenan: Well, it’s a tricky situation because we don’t have direct access to the country. Almost no one does at the moment. It’s very closed. In fact, historically, it’s never been more closed. We monitor, therefore, from outside.

We prioritise information from direct witnesses, so people who have suffered violations themselves, or who have witnessed them, or whose family members have suffered violations.

We also rely increasingly on Government information because the Government of the DPRK publishes more and more information, particularly over the past eight or nine years. We use other sources such as satellite imagery.

UN News: How many people have you interviewed?

James Heenan: Well, we’ve interviewed about a thousand people. That might not sound like much when you’re coming from some other parts of the world, but when you are dealing with what is possibly the most closed country in the world, that’s quite a lot.

UN News: How does the country’s isolation affect ordinary people?

James Heenan: There are very few people coming in or out of the country. There is very little information coming in or out of the country. That has a pretty serious impact on people.

They do not have access to the internet. They don’t know what’s going on outside or even inside the country.

The international humanitarian community, including the UN, has not had access for five or six years now, so when there’s a disaster, they don’t have access to that sort of support.

For average people, I think another impact is that there’s no access to certain types of medicines or treatment. There’s no access to certain types of food and so forth.

UN News: What is daily life like for an average family?

James Heenan: It depends very much on your status in society, your Songbun, as they call it, whether you are – essentially – in the loyal class, a wavering class or a hostile class.

For everyone, there’s a very high level of surveillance from the earliest years, both at home, in the workplace and at school. You have the risk of Government working groups arriving at the house at any time of the day or night to check electronic equipment to see whether there’s any forbidden information.

Food has always been a problem in the DPRK. Every single person we’ve spoken to has talked about hunger at some point.

We’ve had people tell us that one of the ways they realised things were different outside the country was when they escaped to China and saw that everyone was eating white rice. White rice is a luxury in the DPRK.

I think forced labour is also part of everyone’s life. You have mobilisations. They call them shock brigades, where people are essentially required to provide free labour for public works.

You might be sent away for days, weeks, months or even years to work on difficult projects for no pay. It’s classic forced labour, and it affects the whole country.

In many places, schoolchildren are sent to the fields, particularly during harvest, to work. Our information and analysis indicate that it’s a form of forced labour involving children.

UN News: Harvests have reportedly been good. Why is there still concern about food?

James Heenan: There was a drought earlier this year, but the harvests have been okay.

When you add to that an unreformed production and distribution system, you can very quickly end up in a situation that may not be famine but certainly involves widespread nutritional problems across society.

During COVID, we saw starvation. We saw people starving to death. Not as badly as in the 1990s, but it still happened.

UN News: The government has emphasised economic development. Is it bringing relief?

James Heenan: The flagship programmes include things like the 20-by-10 project, which is to construct factories in 20 counties every year for 10 years. You also see a large amount of hospital construction.

This is welcome. Anecdotal evidence suggests that it is creating more jobs for people, and jobs that pay. There have always been jobs, but traditionally they often paid nothing.

The challenge is that we don’t know exactly what impact this is having on people because we can’t get into the country to monitor it.

We are concerned because we know from the weight of historical evidence that many of these large infrastructure projects can involve forced labour during construction.

UN News: What is happening with digital technology?

James Heenan: Our latest report talked about thousands of 3G telephone masts across the country. There are more than 20 types of smartphones available in the DPRK.

But the issue is that it all exists within a restricted environment, meaning there is no access to the internet. It is clearly also being used to, if not increase surveillance, at least make surveillance more efficient. So, technology is a two-sided coin.

At the same time, we know that people are very happy to be able to use their phones for mobile banking, which is now widely used in the DPRK.

UN News: What is your single biggest concern right now?

James Heenan: I think I would have to say that there is a real concern about isolation and the restrictions of people’s ability to move freely.

People cannot move in and out of the country, even illegally, which was always something of a pressure valve that allowed people to go to China, for example, to earn money and come back. That’s not even possible anymore.

If I may add a second concern, it is the issue of separated families. We still have many families separated between DPRK and the Republic of Korea, and to some extent Japan as a result of enforced disappearances by the DPRK in the past.

Those families are getting older and older. Hundreds or thousands of family members have died over the years because this is a long-standing issue.

The survivors are elderly, and we’re pushing for progress among all those countries, if for no other reason than as a confidence-building measure that would allow these families to meet.

It’s something that happened up until 2018, and we’re pushing for it to happen again.

UN News: Is there anything else you want to emphasise?

James Heenan: I think the situation in the DPRK is one where people sometimes think it’s unchanging, but it’s not.

The country engages with the UN. It engages on human rights issues. In that way, the situation there should not be forgotten.

We can’t just talk about the Korean Peninsula in terms of peace and security. We also have to remember the human rights dimension, which is the focus of the United Nations.