South Africa's apartheid & North Korea's songbun : parallels in crimes against humanity
Robert M. Collins (Author)
"The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, held under the United Nations General Assembly, found apartheid to be a crime against humanity in 1973. Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court lists apartheid as a crime against humanity, defined as "inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime." In a parallel finding, the practices and policies of songbun (North Korea's social classification system) were also found by the United Nations Human Rights Council's Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (COI) to constitute crimes against humanity. The COI came to the conclusion that "These crimes against humanity entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation." The COI further found that "crimes against humanity are ongoing in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea because the policies, institutions and patterns of impunity that lie at their heart remain in place." While apartheid focuses on racial discrimination, songbun focuses primarily on family background and individual political actions, with some racial aspects as well. However, the parallels between the two sets of crimes against humanity are stark"-- Provided by publisher
Print Book, English, 2021
Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, Washington, DC, 2021