To describe his new term as ‘re-election’ and prepare his daughter for succession is an absurd parody
By Benedict Rogers in UCA News
Last week in Pyongyang, the Workers Party of Korea wrapped up its ninth party congress by “re-electing” Kim Jong-Un as its general secretary, and platforming his teenage daughter Kim Ju Ae as his likely successor,
Also outlined was a new five-year plan and the dictator was declared the “greatest person in the world,” while being praised in state media for “unimaginable achievements.”
In the world’s most Orwellian and repressive dictatorship, language and terminology often have a different meaning.
To describe Kim Jong-Un’s new term as a “re-election” is an absurd parody, given that absolutely no dissent, debate or opposition to his regime is tolerated in the country.
To describe his daughter — believed to be about 13 years old — as North Korea’s “most beloved child” is a propaganda exercise designed to prepare her for succession, enhanced by symbolic gestures such as presenting her with a rifle and parading her wearing the same outfit as her father.
To Kim Jong-Un’s followers, it may mean one thing, fueled by the regime’s brainwashing and propaganda. But to the rest of the world, he can only be called the “greatest” in terms of his wickedness and evil rule.
His “unimaginable achievements” include the incarceration of between 80,000 to 200,000 people in prison camps, the near starvation of much of the population, and the entrenchment of an entire prison state that is now the world’s most closed and most repressive. In effect, all North Koreans live inside a prison state.
Kim Jong-Un used the Covid-19 pandemic to seal North Korea’s borders, making it even more difficult for North Koreans to escape and for information and aid to enter the country.
Kim Jong-Un has also deepened his alliance with Vladimir Putin, sending thousands of North Koreans to fight and die in Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine.
And let us not forget that 12 years ago, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry report found that Kim’s regime is committing crimes against humanity against its own people, “the gravity, scale and nature” of which “reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.”
That brutal reality has not changed one bit.
That UN report documented a catalogue of atrocities including extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, severe religious persecution, enforced disappearances and starvation.
All this should, in the inquiry’s recommendation, lead to a referral to the International Criminal Court.
For almost two decades, I have worked on North Korea’s human rights crisis, documenting the atrocities, shining a light on the situation, and seeking accountability for the regime’s crimes.
In 2011, I co-founded the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea — launched in Tokyo, which contributed in large part to the establishment of the UN Commission of Inquiry less than two years later.
I also visited North Korea in 2010 with two British parliamentarians — Lord Alton of Liverpool and Baroness Cox of Queensbury — and helped write their report, Building Bridges, Not Walls: The Case for Constructive, Critical Engagement with North Korea.
I have spent many hours with survivors, escapees, victims of Kim’s brutal regime, hearing their testimonies of torture, slave labor, religious persecution and cruel abuse.
So yes, Kim Jong-Un, his father Kim Jong-Il and grandfather Kim Il-Sung, have indeed made “unimaginable achievements” — if one can call their unparallelled brutality “achievements.” More accurately, they have plunged the northern part of the Korean Peninsula into unimaginable misery, poverty, repression, terror, and tyranny.
And yes, if measured in a poll of most repressive, depraved, cruel, tyrannical and brutal dictators, Kim Jong-Un, like his father and grandfather, ranks among the world’s “greatest” dictators.
But now, as it looks to the future, we have to ask, as human beings, what kind of father presents his 13 year-old daughter with a rifle? Where is Kim Ju Ae’s Barbie doll, or violin, or guitar, or high heels, or new dress?
The abuse of Kim Jong-Un’s people is also an abuse of his own daughter.
Amidst the world’s multiple crises, we must not forget North Korea. Right now, understandably, our focus is on Iran and the Middle East. But we must not lose sight of other, decades-long human rights crises.
We must think about how to open up the world’s most closed regime, to hold the world’s most repressive dictatorship to account, and to ensure a better future not only for ordinary North Korean people, but also for teenage girls like Kim Jue Ae, who shouldn’t be playing with guns for the rest of her life.
Instead, her father should be held to account for his crimes, and she and her people should be free.
This article was originally published in UCA News.