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Learning from Central Europe: The Struggle for Human Rights in North Korea
Welcoming Address to the 4th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees
Carl Gershman, President
The National Endowment for Democracy

Prague, The Czech Republic
March 2, 2003

Before I begin, I want to pay tribute to the two NGOs that have organized this important conference. The Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, under the leadership of Benjamin Yoon, has not only created the international movement for human rights in North Korea and led it with vision and selfless devotion to the cause, but it also provides a model of service and caring for the people of North Korea that hopefully will be emulated by individuals and NGOs throughout South Korean society.

We are especially fortunate to have the People in Need Foundation as our local organizer and host. It is one of the pre-eminent organizations that has emerged in post-communist Central Europe to carry forward the struggle for freedom wherever it is under attack. It is drawn particularly to the most desperate situations, Chechnya among them, and it has joined the movement for human rights in North Korea with characteristic effectiveness and with a spirit that is inspiring to us all.

We gather today in liberated Prague with the firm intention that within some reasonable period of time, the length of which we cannot precisely know, we shall meet in a liberated Pyongyang, welcoming the end of the long night of totalitarianism that has engulfed the people of North Korea for more than half a century. Meeting here in Prague calls to mind the seminal events of the Cold War that are associated with this city: The communist coup d'etat of February 1948 that deepened the East-West conflict and inaugurated the Cold War; the reform movement of 1968 called Prague Spring that was quickly crushed by Soviet tanks and the promulgation of the Brezhnev doctrine threatening intervention against any East Bloc state seeking to escape Soviet control; and finally the Velvet Revolution of 1989 that swept the democratic dissidents into power and signaled the end of the Cold War.

To meet in this city, where the echoes of these events still resonate, underlines both the awesome obstacles we face in trying to help liberate the people of North Korea from an inhuman totalitarian system; and the realistic possibility symbolized by the Czech experience that this cruel system can be brought to an end.

But let us be clear at the outset. We are under no illusion that North Korean totalitarianism bears any significant resemblance to the communist system that was imposed on the peoples of Central Europe. The unreconstructed Stalinist system in North Korea is more repressive, more insanely cruel, more isolated from the world and from the scrutiny of international media and human rights organizations than almost any other form of communism that has ever existed, save perhaps for the Soviet Union at the height of Stalin's rule, or China under Mao, or Cambodia under the murderous Khmer Rouge.

This is a totalitarianism that systematically murders the infant children of female prisoners, presumably in the belief that such women are subhuman and are thus not entitled to give birth. It is a totalitarianism that has used famine as a weapon against its own people, murdering in this manner some one to three million North Koreans who are deemed insufficiently loyal to the regime. It is a totalitarianism that maintains a system of prison camps where the treatment of inmates is so harsh, and the survival rate consequently so low, that it is really more like a system of death camps. And yet the regime in Pyongyang denies that a gulag exists at all.

There is literally no political space in North Korea today for the emergence of a dissident movement similar to what existed in Czechoslovakia and other countries of the Soviet Bloc during the decades preceding the revolutionary events of 1989. But that doesn't mean that such a movement can never emerge, or that the totalitarian system in North Korea is immutable and permanent. It is not. But for change to come from within, it must first be stimulated from without.

While conceding the differences between North Korea today and the countries of the Soviet Bloc during the decades after Stalin's death, I nonetheless believe that there is something useful we can learn from the struggle against communism in Central Europe and the Soviet Union. The West's principal concerns during the Cold War always had to do with avoiding a hot war and advancing security through deterrence and disarmament. The principal concern of the Soviet regime, on the other hand, was to consolidate its control over its own territory and population and those of its satellites.

A similar situation exists today on the Korean peninsula, with Pyongyang engaging in nuclear brinkmanship in order to force negotiations on security issues leading to an international agreement guaranteeing the survival of its regime. During the Cold War, the West responded to the security challenge by agreeing to the Helsinki Final Act that recognized the post-World War II borders of Central Europe. But in doing so it also introduced a new element into the discussion by insisting that all 35 signatories of the Act including, that is to say, all of the Communist states agree to respect a comprehensive set of human rights principles, including freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief; as well as to increase human contacts in a wide range of fields; promote the reunification of families; and improve the circulation of information and the working conditions for journalists. In addition, the Act included provisions for follow-up meetings at which the implementation of these so-called "basket three" human rights and humanitarian provisions would be reviewed and monitored.

When the Helsinki agreement was signed in 1975, many human rights activists treated it with cynicism, feeling that the Soviet Union had secured its political objectives and would simply ignore the basket-three provisions of the Act. But something entirely unexpected happened. The human-rights provisions of the Act sparked the creation of Helsinki Watch committees throughout the Soviet Bloc and ignited a broad movement of dissent that was one of the key factors leading to the fall of Communism. In Czechoslovakia, it led to the creation of Charter 77 that inaugurated a human rights campaign with a founding declaration signed by 243 intellectuals, journalists, and reform communists who had been purged from the party following the crackdown in 1968.

I have already conceded the differences between Czechoslovakia and North Korea. But the pressures for change are building in North Korea, and we can give them some momentum by helping to fashion the moral equivalent of the Helsinki Final Act for the Korean peninsula. The refugees who are fleeing North Korea in ever growing numbers are a sign of the breakdown of a closed system. A Helsinki agreement for North Korea would insist that Pyongyang cease criminalizing the act of leaving, and that China cease forcibly repatriating refugees in violation of its obligations under international treaties.

The satellite photos that have recently been published of a camp in Hoeryong County that holds 50,000 prisoners are also a sign that the closed and impenetrable system in North Korea is breaking down. A Helsinki agreement for North Korea would insist that these camps be abolished, and that journalists and human rights monitors be given access they need to confirm their abolition and to investigate charges of gross human rights violations.

The economic collapse that has occurred in the North is yet another sign of the erosion of the totalitarian system and a key factor that has contributed to the famine. A Helsinki agreement would insist that humanitarian organizations be allowed to monitor the delivery of food relief in all provinces to ensure that the needy are fed, and that individuals who have been marginalized in the political system are not targeted for elimination through famine.

North Korea's nuclear brinkmanship is intended to force a security settlement without conditions. But as a bankrupt dictatorship across the border from a thriving new democracy, it is in no position to dictate terms. South Korea, the United States, and the countries in the region that are likely parties to any security agreement should insist upon a full basket of human rights provisions. It is fitting that they be pressured to do so by concerned people throughout the world, especially by those in Central Europe who have been the beneficiaries of similar international pressures in the past.

In time, these pressures will open spaces within North Korea for dissidents to write and speak, if not freely then at least in a way that will be heard in the rest of the world. For now, the only voices we can hear are from those who have had the tenacity and good fortune to escape from North Korea. We can at least take some satisfaction in the knowledge that these voices have greater resonance than ever before, and that their impact is continuing to grow stronger.

It was in this country that an isolated individual named Vaclav Havel wrote of the "power of the powerless" to confront oppression with truth. Let the word go forth from this conference that the people of North Korea are not alone, and that their suffering will eventually translate into a message powerful enough to transform North Korea, this remnant of Stalinist oppression, into a country on the road to reconstruction and freedom.