Human Rights in North Korea: Maintaining Domestic Consent and Legitimacy without use of Violence/Terror

NK has been a very stable,repressive regime for the last 40 years despite external calls for democracy, transparency, freedom and openness. In 2009 the constitution was revised to make a clear reference to human rights for the first time. Article 8 of the revised constitution states; "The State respects and protects the human rights of the workers, peasants and working intellectuals who have been freed from exploitation and oppression and have become masters of the State and society”. Is this only a lip service or an indication for a deeper ongoing change? The spiral model developed by Risse et al (1999) presumes that states who repress human rights go through a five stage model of transformation from initial brute repression to a superior stage of rule compliance under the joint pressure of transnational advocacy groups and domestic opposition groups. The theoretical model is be applied to NK and the premises verified by looking at the NK activities of the National Human Rights Commission of (South) Korea and analyzing NK’s active participation in the international December 2009 human rights review with a willingness to consider 117 recommendations from the international community. The paper questions if and why North Korea has been immune to international criticisms regarding its human rights records, explores if NK is an outlier to the model and investigates the reasons for this. One key premise advanced is that every authoritarian regime needs to rely on some form of non-violent legitimation if it wants to remain permanently in power and receive consent from the ruled. The use of state violence/terror and manipulation mechanisms such as state media alone cannot explain why regimes such as NK can claim and maintain legitimacy in the eyes of the ruled. The paper investigates the internal mechanisms employed by the regime in NK to negate/control/suppress human rights and analyzes the role of the military and militarization of security that work against civil rights and civilian improvements towards rule of law. Risse, Thomas, Ropp, Stephen C., Sikkink, Kathryn, Eds,The Power of Human Rights. International Norms and Domestic Change, Cambridge University Press, 1999