About
(c) UN Photo/WFP
Dear World Community:
The world’s worst nightmare. Human rights abuses in North Korea have spiraled into the “world’s worst nightmare,” the worst human rights situation in the world today.82 North Korea’s food deficit is one snapshot within a longstanding and intricately layered humanitarian catastrophe of which headlines only whisper mentions of nuclear weapons and sacks of rice. Cycles of famine and hunger in North Korea are the standard, the expectation – for the North Korean people, for the state, and for those who understand the country’s politics. The mass-starvation of the North Korean people is intimately married to the state’s autarkic extremism, unforgiving authoritarianism, its nuclear arms program, and its systematic and widespread violations of fundamental human rights.
Food is politics in North Korea, dictating life and health, silencing citizens, and demanding adherence and subservience to the omnipresent state. Hunger in the DPRK is leveraged as internal and international collateral: to simultaneously feed domestic oppression and global threats of a nuclear holocaust. Lifelong imprisonment without charge or trial, torture, national surveillance, restrictions on inter- and intra-state movement, crimes against humanity, the alleged genocide of the Chinese-North Koreans, and the systematic persecution of any action thought to oppose Kim Jong Il’s regime of terror are also political – and fatal. North Koreans struggle for survival under a dictator who, in order to maintain power, commands utter control and oppression and demands the flagitious violation of basic human rights including the ultimate right to life.
Unparalleled power for change. We have started this site because we believe that the world public possesses an unparalleled power for change. Where world leaders and their bureaucracies are paralyzed in the face of atrocity, the world’s 6.7 billion global citizens have a responsibility to band together, speak out, and mobilize our communities, leaders, and nations.
Our action now will never bring back the more than 3 million that have already died in North Korea. However, we can act to support the thousands of refugees that seek shelter and life outside of North Korea’s borders and to preserve the lives of the 26 million that remain in the DPRK.
In peace,
North Korea Now
info@northkoreanow.org
Acknowledgments: With great gratitude, NKN would like to thank the North Korea Freedom Coalition for your outstanding advocacy and support. We thank the Commission for Human Rights in North Korea, Amnesty International, the International Crisis Group, Freedom House, and all of the individual authors and teams who have contributed to the ongoing investigation and monitoring of human rights in North Korea. We thank the North Korea Genocide Exhibit, United Nations Photo, the World Food Programme, A. Macy, and Honggoon for your support and for the exceptionally powerful images that you have contributed to this campaign. We would also like to thank our chivalrous web designers for their generosity and artistic savvy.
Last, but most importantly, to the many North Korean Refugees who have shared their stories and have enabled the world to understand North Korea’s human rights crisis — we would like to thank you for your unparalleled strength, courage, and spirit. We stand with you.
