Reports

The 82-page report, “‘Worth Less Than an Animal’: Abuses and Due Process Violations in Pretrial Detention in North Korea,” provides a unique and detailed description of the country’s opaque criminal justice system. It highlights North Korea’s weak legal and institutional framework, and the political nature of the courts and law enforcement agencies under the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea.

This report documents unwanted sexual contact and violence that is so common in North Korea it has come to be accepted as part of ordinary life. Many North Koreans told Human Rights Watch that when an official in a position of power “picks” a woman she has no choice but to comply with any demands he makes, whether for sex, money, or other favors. Women interviewed said that the sexual predators include high-ranking party officials, prison and detention facility guards and interrogators, police and secret police officials, prosecutors, and soldiers. Fearful of social disgrace and retaliation, and with few, if any, avenues for redress, North Korean women rarely report abuse.

This 23-page report documents how such children live without legal identity or access to elementary education. These children live in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in eastern Jilin Province, northeast China (near its border with North Korea). Some are from North Korea while others were born in China and have Chinese fathers and North Korean mothers.

China must end the forcible return of North Korean asylum-seekers and the arrest and harassment of aid workers who assist them, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.