What is wrong with north korea

North Korea. North Korea stages artillery firing drill in latest show of strength. Kim Jong Un, 37, is noticeably thinner. A South Korean spy agency says he's healthy. North Korea confirms submarine launch of new ballistic missile. North Korea fires submarine-launched ballistic missile, South Korea says.

North Korea Videos. Man in blue spandex jumpsuit grabs attention at Kim Jong Un photo shoot More North Korea Videos. Those other things are essentially economic. So, what negotiating strategy should be adopted in dealing with North Korea? First, should it be a multilateral or a bilateral US approach? Second, should it be narrowly focused on the nuclear and missile issues or on a broader agenda? The Bush administration says that this is a regional problem which must be settled in some multilateral fashion.

The administration also says that the first step must be for North Korea to correct the problem that caused the crisis. Pyongyang must destroy its uranium enrichment equipment, restore the arrangements established by the Agreed Framework, and according to some spokespersons, eliminate any vestige of a nuclear weapons manufacturing capacity.

The latter goes beyond where the Agreed Framework requires North Korea to be at this stage, but some penalty should be paid by the North for its flagrant violation of the agreement, many influential Americans argue.

The minimum that would be necessary, many suggest, would be to take out of North Korea the spent fuel rods that North Korea could use to derive plutonium. Another step would be to destroy the reprocessing plant at Yongbyon. North Korea has said that its nuclear programmes are negotiable, but only if the United States formally undertakes not to attack North Korea.

A letter from the president is insufficient, they say, when that possibility has been raised. Most of them have significant economic interests that are involved. Adding Russia and perhaps some other countries to its membership would make sense. A multilateral security mechanism also may be required to oversee the transition to a more peaceful order in and around the Korean peninsula.

So the Bush administration has it right when it says that a regional solution is needed. But American leadership is necessary to achieve that and the United States has been surprisingly passive.

The European Union has an important role to play in a peace settlement. North Korea enjoys a better relationship with the European nations than it does with the United States. Sweden, which has had an embassy in Pyongyang for decades, has some particularly well-informed experts on North Korea and has shown an active interest in Korean issues. Not only financial and commercial relations are necessary.

North Korea has almost no expertise in how to run a modern economy that could be integrated, at least partially, into the regional and global economy. North Koreans have been supported by the European Union with training programmes that help to correct this deficiency. This should be done on a larger scale. Japan also could help enormously in the economic area but reunification of the families of its abducted citizens will be necessary before any major programmes could be launched.

Aside from food, trade, and investment assistance, the United States is well-positioned to extend Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction assistance to help convert military programmes to civilian programmes. A freeze, at least, would be necessary if a growing North Korean nuclear weapons arsenal is to be stopped in its tracks.

And that cannot wait. But the problem in the past has been that the United States has been too unidimensional in its approach. Naturally enough, it has been focused like a laser on its own problems with North Korean missiles, nuclear bombs, and dangerous military exports and has neglected the less interesting business of dealing with issues in which North Korea has an interest.

The ROK has not made the same mistake, having focused on economic programmes and family reunification, but both countries face the problem of political support for assistance to the DPRK in the absence of some clear reciprocity from Pyongyang. A strategy of engaging North Korea in programmes which really are important to it in return for substantial, not just token, reciprocity is what is needed.

Otherwise, the episodic North Korea crises will continue, until someday, one of them erupts into all-out war. In addition to economics and advanced weaponry, the legal framework that has, technically, governed the North-South-U. The Armistice Agreement of that year needs to be replaced at some point by a formal treaty ending the war and establishing a new relationship among the three primary actors. In , the government invoked Covid to put in place extreme and unnecessary measures that further isolated the country, blocking information into and out the country, closing its border with China, and harshly controlling food and product distribution.

Hundreds of Thousands Prevented from Returning to Japan. Get updates on human rights issues from around the globe. Join our movement today. Human Rights Watch. Donate Now. Take Action. Join Us. Give Now. Women and girls in North Korea suffer widespread gender discrimination, high levels of sexual violence and harassment, and constant exposure to government-endorsed stereotyped gender roles, in addition to the abuses suffered by the population in general.

Human traffickers and brokers, often linked to government officials, subject women to forced labor, sexual exploitation, and sexual slavery in China, including through forced marriage. While in detention, the women experienced food deprivation, sexual violence, infanticide, and forced labor and were held in overcrowded prisons with dangerous conditions.

In , the North Korean government imposed various restrictions in response to the Covid pandemic. While some measures that limited rights were justified by public health exigencies, others were not necessary or not proportionate and permitted grave abuses under the pretext of protecting against the spread of Covid The government also implemented drastic quarantines for anybody arriving from overseas at border cities, ports, and airports.

North Koreans reentering the country through northern border cities did not have the option to quarantine at home and reportedly were quarantined in government-designated facilities with little food three meals a day consisting of a bowl of boiled rice and crushed corn and some soup , inadequate medical treatment, and lack of basic needs products like electricity, some for up to 40 or 50 days.

North Korea maintains there are no Covid cases in the country, but South Korean media with sources inside North Korea reported several deaths featuring coronavirus-like symptoms. Schools delayed their scheduled start from March until June. The government did not respond. North Korea has ratified five human rights treaties , but it has ignored its obligations under all of them.