When the United Nations Commission on Human Rights began formulating an encompassing definition of human rights in 1946, the American Anthropological Association submitted a statement addressing the inapplicability of the declaration in different cultures. The critique acknowledges the importance of culture in advancing human rights, and that all rights and values are defined and limited by cultural perceptions.
So whenever the international community rebukes the state of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea, the despotic state adheres to cultural relativism. North Korea claims the Universal Declaration reflects predominantly Western culture and values, which cannot be superimposed onto Asian traditions. In response to heavy international criticism, Pyongyang claims human rights to be fully guaranteed under “our way” (woorisik) based on the socialist and political contexts.
North Korea has called for the international community to respect its national sovereignty and not to interfere in domestic affairs, highlighting that the issue of human rights is within its domestic jurisdiction. The sociopolitical culture of North Korea does reflect the Asian concept of human rights. Economic development comes before any flowering of political and civil rights, and greater value is placed on maintaining the harmony of community than on individual freedoms.
North Korea’s political culture was formed within the concept of Juche, or self-reliance, as an ideological tool to justify the Kim family’s monolithic dictatorship and hereditary grasp of the country. Under Juche, North Korea’s political system centers on the Supreme Leader, where Kim’s words and ideas become legal grounds of the country’s political infrastructure. The guiding principle of Juche prevents any forms of dissent through political indoctrination. Citizens are expected to respect and follow his teachings with a blind obligation to the state.
To maintain the legitimacy of the Kim regime, the state institutionalizes Kim’s teachings and emphasizes collective responsibility toward the regime. In short, a concept that a human being is entitled to salient and natural rights does not exist. Human rights are understood not to protect individuals’ rights but to restore social order and punish those that may threaten its socialist systems.
Socialism could be structurally better adapted to realize fundamental human rights and to foster economic development, especially where resource constraints exist. However, there exists a blatant discrepancy between the stated “Asian values” and a potential for improvement of human rights in North Korea. The state’s collectivist culture with a focus on national sovereignty and self-determination deprives citizens in all aspects of social, economic, cultural, and political rights.
The “Asian” value of human rights is a diverging representation of values advanced by different political regimes and philosophies. A state does not need to deprive citizens of political rights to provide health or education benefits. North Korea has simply failed to provide an adequate standard of living to the people.
One approach the international community has yet to take is to initiate a dialogue with the state that recognizes the legitimacy of its ideological foundations. This could begin by recognizing the importance for Pyongyang to interpret international standards on human rights in accordance with the nation’s history, culture and political systems. Also, beginning the dialogue with issues that envelop human rights, such as economic or cultural frameworks, may be more effective.
North Korea’s current political system, with its centralized authority, tends toward intransigence. However, a more nuanced discussion on the divergent interpretation of human rights could encourage the isolated state to take measurable steps to create internal judicial systems or provide an adequate standard of living for its people.
North Korea’s position is simply a rationalization of a system where a small minority, a family, tied in with a well armed military starve, degrade, and intimidate their entire civilian population in order to ensure a rich life for the leaders. It is pure exploitation. This is not socialism but slavery. Any pretense to the contrary is absurd.
There are a couple of reasons that North Korea is not able to provide an adequate standard of living for it´s people. One is a national drought that has devastated food production. The second is the US refusal to sign a peace agreement with North Korea although the North Korean Government repeatedly has asked for such a peace treaty to be signed. North Korea needs to ´and has need to be on a war footing ever since the American invasion in the 1940s. There are still 35,000 American troops in South Korea threatening that country with attack and invasion. The American Government enforces that threat with it´s constant blustering war talk to bomb that country back to the stone age. Also the US is the biggest stumbling block against reunification of North and South Korea. The next is the sanctions that the West led by the US has imposed on North Korea because they will not go down on bended knee to Washington.
I am sure that North Korea would like to spend more of it´s national treasure on improving the standard of living of it´s people but so long as a state of war exists between it and the USA they are unable to do so. And how could anyone say that the US is not a real and present danger to North Korea given it´s penchant for bombing countries back to the stone age, invasions and occupation of third world countries all over the planet. North Korea does not have an alternative posture that it can safely turn to in the face of the ongoing US threat to it´s national existance.