Country Information

The population of North Korea is estimated at 23.3 million, with a population growth rate of 0.8%. North Korea is racially and linguistically homogenous. While there are no indigenous minorities in North Korea, there is a small Chinese population and some Japanese, mostly wives who accompanied Korean returnees to the North from Japan during the late 1950s and early 1960s. North Korea is traditionally Buddhist and Confucianist; however, there are some Christians and syncretic Chondogyo (Religion of the Heavenly Way). Because the government exercises tight control over religious practice, autonomous religious activities are now almost nonexistent. Government-sponsored religious groups, however, do exist to provide the illusion of religious freedom.

North Korea is a highly centralized Communist state under the rigid control of dictator Kim Jong-Il, who also heads the communist Korean Workers’ Party (KWP), to which all government officials belong.

Political and Economic Environment
Following the surrender of Japan, at the end of World War II, Korea was liberated from Japanese occupation, but this led to the immediate division of the Korean Peninsula into two occupation zones at the 38th parallel. The U.S.S.R. controlled the north, while the U.S. administered the south. In 1948, the division was made permanent establishing two separate countries of South and North Korea with diametrically opposed political and economic systems. North Korea (The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) declared independence on May 1, 1948, with Kim Il Sung as president. The invasion of South Korea by the North in 1950 has made the Korean Peninsula the center of geopolitical tension and power politics. Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994 intensified tensions over international inspection of North Korea’s nuclear sites introducing a period of uncertainty, as his son, Kim Jong Il, assumed power.

North Korea has limited natural resources, and its industrial economy was heavily dependent on aid and trade relations with the Soviet Union. The latter’s collapse has been a prime factor in the economic difficulties that North Korea has been experiencing over the past decade. The end of Soviet assistance and poor economic management led to the catastrophic famine in the mid-90s that killed between one and two million people.

In recent years an increase in military and nuclear spending has depleted the resources needed for investment and civilian consumption. While the government experimented with small-scale private farming in 2004 in order to increase economic output, it reverted to a policy of centralized food distribution and restrictions on the activities of humanitarian organizations in 2005, thereby re-emphasizing the government’s desire for strict political and economic control.

Humanitarian Situation
Until December 2005, the World Food Program (WFP) ran 19 food factories throughout the country, providing subsistence rations to 2.7 million children, 300,000 women and three million other poor people in the country. The WFP temporarily had to halt humanitarian food distribution during the first half of 2006 when the North Korean government insisted that it had enough food to feed its people. After several months of negotiations the North Korean government signed an agreement in May 2006 that sanctioned another WFP program, albeit one on a much smaller scale, serving only about 1.9 million people. Outside observers believe that the country continues to suffer widespread food shortages due to poor technology, crop failures, lack of arable land, shortages of inputs, and restrictions on private markets.

These food shortages --- exacerbated by political repression and economic mismanagement --- have led people to flee to neighboring China. While numbers are difficult to determine precisely, as some of the flow across the border consists of Koreans seeking temporary employment and then returning, the US Committee on Refugees’ 2007 World Refugee Survey estimates that there are currently some 30,000 North Koreans in China. The high profile attempts of Koreans seeking asylum at embassies in Beijing starting in March 2002 have led the Chinese to crack down on North Korean migrants. North Koreans who are caught and forcibly returned during flight are subjected to brutal treatments, including torture, and placement in work camps.

The purpose of the 1951 Refugee Convention is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees, to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe haven in another state with the right not to be forcibly returned. The arrest and instances of refoulement of North Koreans by the Chinese government raise serious questions about China’s compliance with the 1951 Convention. As an addendum to article 33 of the Refugee Convention, the 1975 UN Declaration on Torture (Art. 3.1) enjoins all states party to the convention not to expel, return or extradite a person to another state where he or she would be subject to torture. Because of Chinese restrictions on international organizations, notably the Offices of the High Commissioners for Refugees and Human Rights, it is difficult for the international community to maintain a dialogue with China on their compliance with these international covenants.

Sources
US Committee on Refugees 2007 World Refugee Survey

CIA Factbook

WFP North Korea

Updated August 2007