April 19, 2024
Interviews

The North Korean take on human rights

Literature suggests the right to security outweighs individual freedom in the North

Book Review: Human Rights Discourse in North Korea, by Song Jiyoung, London: Routledge, 2010.

Not even North Korea says it’s against human rights, at least as they define them. It’s just that the North, on a war footing since the Korean War came to an unsatisfactory conclusion in 1953, believes that the threats to its survival mean suppressing individual rights in favor of promoting the right to survival. At least that’s what the literature suggests.

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