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Date: November 25, 2024 Mon
Time: 8:22 pm
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Results for human rights (north korea)
1 results foundAuthor: Gause, Ken E. Title: Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment: An Examination of the North Korean Police State Summary: Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment lifts the curtain on North Korea’s three main security agencies—the State Security Department, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Military Security Command. Established with Soviet assistance in the mid to late 1940s and modeled on the Soviet secret police apparatus, North Korea’s internal security agencies rely on constant surveillance, a network of informants in every neighborhood, and the threat of punishment in North Korea’s notorious prison camps to ensure the Kim regime’s total control. Following the death of Stalin in 1953, Kim Il-sung refused to follow the de-Stalinization campaigns that took place in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and instead continued to adhere to the Stalinist interpretation of law as an indispensable tool in the arsenal employed to implement state policy. While rejecting both the Chinese Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as “left opportunism” and the post-Stalinist Soviet inclination towards a more collective style of leadership as “bourgeois revisionism,” Kim Il-sung put in place his own version of nationalcommunism, centered on his cult of personality. To enforce his rule, he employed methods of oppression rooted in four decades of Japanese occupation of Korea, and especially in the 500 years of the Chosun Dynasty, which preceded the 1905 annexation of Korea by Japan. Yeon-jwa-je—guilt by association—imprisonment in political prisoner camps of up to three generations of those suspected of wrongdoing, wrong-knowledge, wrong-association, or wrong-class-background, and Songbun, North Korea’s discriminatory social classification system, both originate in the Chosun Dynasty’s feudal practices. Ken Gause’s unprecedented report draws on extensive research to reveal the key role played by North Korea’s security agencies in the establishment and preservation of the Kim regime through two hereditary transmissions of power. From Pang Hak-se—also known as the “North Korean Beria”—to Kim Pyong-ha and U Dong-chuk, the reader learns about the dark eminences of North Korea’s repressive apparatus and their merciless purges of those perceived as “enemies of the revolution,” then “enemies within the revolution,” and finally of those eliminated as scapegoats for the systemic failures of the regime. As North Korea’s security agencies ruled over an all-pervasive system of coercion, control, surveillance, and punishment, within their own ranks, competition for favors from the ‘Great Leader’ and the ‘Dear Leader’ often resulted in conspiracy, intrigue, and the rise and fall of even the most powerful of officials. Despite strict surveillance, dissent has also existed in North Korea, especially within the ranks of the military. The report addresses two instances when, in the 1980s and 1990s, what could have become organized dissent was brutally eradicated by North Korea’s internal security agencies. Through overseeing the In-min-ban system— the Orwellian neighborhood watch— North Korea’s security agencies ensure that privacy doesn’t exist, and everyone is under strict scrutiny. Not only criticizing authority, but also unauthorized stays, adultery, absenteeism, or watching South Korean videos are punished with prejudice. The security agencies play a primary role in restricting the flow of information and ensuring strict ideological conformity through harsh surveillance and coercion. North Koreans must participate in self-criticism sessions or face punishment, even time in a political prison camp. State security agents conduct routine checks to ensure that radio sets remain perpetually tuned to the state frequency, and “109 squads” roam border towns at night, arresting smugglers and confiscating South Korean TV shows and dramas that have entered the country via portable media storage devices. Nevertheless, the report also notes that the advent of post-famine small-scale private economic activity, cell phones, DVDs, USBs, smuggled radios and increased access to foreign broadcasting and bribes are beginning to erode some of the information blockade and political controls. Those North Koreans who assume great risks to gain access to information from the outside world and to impart information show courage, whether their actions are an act of dissent or just the result of wanting to learn more about the world. What might ultimately bring change to North Korea is the increased inflow and outflow of information. The security agencies, however, continue to enforce North Korea’s information blackout, by increasing border surveillance and cracking down on marketplaces, unauthorized phone calls, and foreign broadcasting. Having ensured the survival of the Kim family’s dynastic regime for six decades, North Korea’s complex and ruthless internal security apparatus will no doubt continue to be a key element of Kim Jong-un’s political control. Greater awareness of how it operates is essential to understanding how the Kim regime remains in power. Details: Washington, DC: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2012. 288p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 14, 2013 at: http://www.hrnk.org/uploads/pdfs/HRNK_Ken-Gause_Web.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Korea, North URL: http://www.hrnk.org/uploads/pdfs/HRNK_Ken-Gause_Web.pdf Shelf Number: 127614 Keywords: Human Rights (North Korea)Security Forces |