The State Department team plans “to increase the flow of independent information into” North Korea, even as President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un work to arrange an historic summit aimed at dismantling Kim’s nuclear weapons program.
“For more than 60 years the people of North Korea have faced egregious human rights violations in virtually every aspect of life,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Wednesday. “[W]e will continue to press for accountability for those responsible. We are also going to continue our efforts to increase the flow of independent information into, out of, and within this isolated state to present everyday North Koreans with a more realistic picture of the outside world.”
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Nauert issued that pledge to commemorate North Korea Freedom Week, an annual spotlight on the regime’s human rights abuses organized by human rights groups in South Korea and elsewhere. The State Department’s focus on information operations follows on the heels of South Korean President Moon Jae-in decision to stop those broadcasts from his country after meeting with Kim.
“[W]e must not forget the millions of North Koreans who continue to suffer under one of the most repressive and abusive governments in the world,” Nauert said.
South Korean officials dismantled loudspeakers at the Demilitarized Zone on Monday, implementing a concession that Moon made last week after hosting the first visit to his country by a North Korean leader since the war that divided the peninsula.
“South and North Korea agreed to completely cease all hostile acts against each other in every domain, including land, air, and sea, that are the source of military tension and conflict. In this vein, the two sides agreed to transform the demilitarized zone into a peace zone in a genuine sense by ceasing as of May 1 this year all hostile acts and eliminating their means, including broadcasting through loudspeakers and distribution of leaflets, in the areas along the Military Demarcation Line,” the two Korean leaders said in a joint statement.
A high-ranking defector from North Korea told Congress that the dissemination of “basic concepts of freedom and human rights,” paired with biographical information to undermine Kim’s god-like public image, could lead to the collapse of the regime. “We have many things to tell to the North Korean people, that it is not a paradise, it is not a socialist welfare system, it is [the] worst, inhuman system in human history,” former diplomat Thae Yong-ho told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in November.
Nauert said that the information operations will take place alongside the U.S. sanctions campaign, which President Trump’s team has vowed not to alleviate apart from concrete concessions by North Korea.
“Those trying to flee this oppressive environment, if caught, are often tortured or killed,” she said. “We remain gravely concerned and deeply troubled by these abuses.”
