A Pyongyang citizen walks on a street in the North Korean capital on April 15, the birthday of founder Kim Il Sung and the country's most important holiday. The sign at right reads "celebrations."
North Korean defectors prepare to release balloons carrying leaflets and a banner denouncing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in 2016 in Paju, South Korea, near the border with the North.
South Korean soldiers stand facing North Korea last year at the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom, in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.
A Pyongyang citizen walks on a street in the North Korean capital on April 15, the birthday of founder Kim Il Sung and the country's most important holiday. The sign at right reads "celebrations."
Cha Song Ho/Associated Press file photo
North Korean defectors prepare to release balloons carrying leaflets and a banner denouncing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in 2016 in Paju, South Korea, near the border with the North.
Ahn Young-joon/Associated Press file photo
South Korean soldiers stand facing North Korea last year at the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom, in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.
Chang W. Lee/New York Times file photo
Students wearing face masks during lessons at Kim Song Ju Primary School in Pyongyang, North Korea, in 2020.
In the U.S., the freedom to openly choose and celebrate parts of our identity, like what religion we practice and how we express our politics, is considered a fundamental right.
It’s a different story in North Korea, where a dictatorship strictly controls the country’s population. The secrecy and strict outward image of North Korea make many people curious about what really goes on in the east Asian country.
North Korea formed in 1948 after the U.S. and the Soviet Union had divided the Korean Peninsula during the Cold War. The North, which had been occupied by the Soviet Union, was communist. The South, which had been occupied by the U.S., was capitalist and is what we now know as South Korea. North Korea had held a “one-nation, one-state” reunification policy since its creation. It wasn’t until January that Kim Jong Un gave a speech declaring the constitution of North Korea should remove references to reunification, according to the United States Institute of Peace.
North Korea today remains a totalitarian dictatorship — where there is no individualism or freedom — according to Britannica. The country’s dictatorship role is a hereditary position, and the country has been kept under the rule of Kim Jong Un since 2011. Like his predecessors, Kim is strict and imposes many laws and rules intended to prevent North Koreans following the West or to prevent individualism that could threaten the dictatorship and socialist system, according to Human Rights Watch.
Some of these rules include that all people can only have one of 28 government-approved haircuts; all other hairstyles are prohibited. North Korea’s citizens remain largely confined within its borders. And the country follows its own calendar, separate from the rest of the world. Citizens have been kept under strict laws like this since 1949, according to Human Rights Watch. And while North Korea does have elections, most recently regional elections in 2019, there is only one regime-approved candidate on the ballot for each region, according to Financial Times.
In 2014, the U.N. estimated more than 120,000 North Koreans were incarcerated in political prison camps for violating the country’s strict laws. Many of them face torture, starvation, sexual assault and death, CNN reported last year.
Additionally, North Korea has a “kin punishment” rule declaring that if somebody commits a crime, not only will they be punished and sent to a camp, but their children and grandchildren will be as well. The Global Slavery Index ranks North Korea among the highest in the world for its percentage of population in modern slavery.
Some organizations seek to directly help defectors — or people who have escaped from North Korea. For instance, the nonprofit Liberty in North Korea rescues refugees from the country using a 3,000-mile “secret rescue route,” according to its website.
Because government permission is required for citizens to leave the country, the only way out of North Korea for many is to escape. The number of defectors went down dramatically at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic as already tight borders became stricter in the country. But now those numbers are gradually increasing. South Korea’s Unification Ministry recorded 196 defectors entered last year, nearly triple that of 2022.
It’s likely some citizens who were allowed to live abroad did not return as expected after pandemic-era border restrictions have eased.
“Many must have found it unacceptable after experiencing what [it] was like to live in the free world, knowing that the economic situation even worsened and internal controls strengthened in North Korea,” one ministry official told CNN.
The deadly consequences of North Korea’s strict regime appear to be intensifying. In August, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned at a U.N. Security Council meeting that North Koreans were facing severe economic difficulty alongside government repression.
According to Elizabeth Salmón, the U.N. special investigator on human rights in North Korea, the country’s “military first” policy has resulted in fewer resources distributed to North Koreans and more funneled into nuclear and missile projects.
It’s hard to say when or how North Korea’s repressive regime will change. At some point, Kim Jong Un may be succeeded by his daughter, identified by South Korean officials as Kim Ju Ae. Kim Ju Ae, estimated to be 10 years old, is the only child of the leader to be publicly identified. If Kim Ju Ae were to take over, she would be the country’s first female ruler in a deeply patriarchal system.
Emily J. Aguirre is a sophomore at Santa Fe Prep. Contact her at emjazz19@gmail.com.
The Santa Fe New Mexican observes its 175th anniversary with a series highlighting some of the major stories and figures that have appeared in the paper's pages through its history. The collection also includes archival photo galleries.
