COVID-Related Famine Hits North Korea

Disturbing reports have emerged from North Korea – officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) – that people have starved or been executed because of COVID-19 restrictions, a leading rights expert said on Wednesday.

Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Tomas Ojea Quintana, highlighted “deaths by starvation” linked to a “drastic” decline in trade and commerce, as well as an increase in the number of children and elderly people forced to beg.

Severe containment measures had also led to “a number of concerning consequences” that further isolate the country’s people from the outside world, Mr. Quintana said in a report to the Human Rights Council.

No record of infection

Although the country has no recorded cases of infection, the pandemic has worsened an already deteriorating economic situation in DPRK, the rights expert insisted.

Almost all humanitarian work has stopped as the country’s authorities have been effectively isolating their people from “social, political, economic” and even diplomatic engagements, including with the United Nations, Mr. Quintana told the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Executions

Several cities had been locked down to prevent coronavirus transmission, while several individuals who were caught breaking anti-epidemic prevention measures were reportedly executed in public, he said.

This included a man in his fifties, in December 2020, was allegedly involved in illicit trade with China, along with a moneychanger who was allegedly executed

in Pyongyang the same month.

Prison misery

Detainees in the country who rely on family visits to access decent food and medical care were among the most vulnerable, the rights expert explained, as families “are currently unable to visit them because of COVID restrictions”.

The paucity of information on the human rights situation in the country is worse than ever – Special Rapporteur Quintana

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Another clear result of pandemic movement limits was the arrival of only 229 escapees in South Korea last year.

More than four times that number fled to DPRK’s southern neighbour in 2019, the Special Rapporteur explained, adding that escapees have continued to be reportedly repatriated from China.

Lack of information

“The paucity of information on the human rights situation in the country is worse than ever”, Mr. Quintana said in his report, before supporting the Council’s previous calls for an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into crimes against humanity in DPRK.

As in previous reports, the rights expert highlighted the damaging impact of international sanctions imposed against the country’s development of nuclear weapons, describing them as “the most comprehensive and prohibitive regime of sanctions ever put in place”.

He also pointed to repeated natural disasters and the deteriorating human rights situation for the country’s people, who “for decades (have) had to suffer or fear grave abuses from State institutions that are supposed to protect them”.

Testing

Citing information from the World Health Organization, Mr. Quintana said that DPRK had tested 13,259 people for COVID-19 as of 31 December 2020.

All the results were negative, he noted, adding that the authorities had applied to join the UN-partnered COVAX equitable coronavirus vaccine distribution initiative and expected to receive 1,992,000 doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford jabs in the first half of 2021.

Representatives from DPRK chose not to attend the session, to respond to the rights expert’s report.

Special Rapporteurs, part of the Special Procedures of the HRC, are neither paid for the work, nor are they UN staff and they operate on a fully independent basis.

Photo: Commuters travel to work by bus in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. (UNOCHA/David Ohana)

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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