SPRING 2014
A
recent U.N. report released in February 2014 documented the extensive human rights violations occurring in North Korean labor camps. In order
to answer the question of what the international community can do to resolve the hermit kingdom’s periodic bouts of warmongering and systemic abuse of human rights,
many analysts point to the special relationship that North Korea enjoys with China.
Initiatives should not be taken to instigate
regime change in North Korea. Such a
strategy will likely backfire and do far more
harm than good. Instead, the international
community should include China in a plan
to push for further economic integration.
This will inevitably increase the quality of
life for North Korea’s citizens, bring about
greater openness, and put pressure on the
government to reduce human rights abuses.
North Korea operates one of the world’s
must brutal prison systems. These camps
have survived twice as long as Stalin’s gulags and much longer than the Nazi concentration camps. The living conditions within
the country are so terrible that many people
are willing to risk even death to escape
across the norther