Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (Human Rights)

I thank the Minister for that intervention and those reassurances, which will be helpful in all discussions with the Chinese. Finally, I wish to discuss briefly one aspect of human rights under the DPRK regime that is peculiar and possibly unique to it, and that is the use of the food supply to deny people their basic human rights. Regrettably, everything I have said so far has probably happened before in human experience—there is no doubt that interfering with the food supply has—but the DPRK has taken barbaric means to control its population through food. As I mentioned earlier, any visitor to the country will notice the contrast between Pyongyang and the rest of the country. Bear it in mind that even as a visitor one is allowed to go to only 10 or 20 per cent. of the rest of the country. One can only imagine what it is like, for example, in the far north around the borders with China. That area is strictly and totally out of bounds for all visitors. It is well known—the Minister referred to this—that about 1 million people, or 5 per cent. of the population, died in the famines in the DPRK in the mid to late 1990s. The estimates vary, but those are reliable estimates—it may have been fewer people or rather more. What is less well known is that the authorities used the deliberate withdrawal of food as a means of political and religious oppression. One of the odd features about the DPRK that has attracted some comment from Human Rights Watch in particular is the way that food is distributed through the PDS, or public distribution system, which is totally a command economy way of administering food and has been nothing short of disastrous in terms of ensuring that food reaches people. During and towards the end of the famine, it seemed—as with most things to do with North Korea, one always has to preface comments with ““it seemed””, as nobody can be entirely sure—that the rules of the PDS were relaxed somewhat and limited market forces were allowed to take hold. People were allowed to travel within small areas to small markets. Obviously, almost by definition, one has to travel to a market. Regrettably, since 2005, it seems that all the market forces that were coming in have been reversed. The World Food Programme has been expelled and it seems that North Korea is going back to the old PDS. The report that WFP published just before it was expelled in 2005 showed that following the full return of the PDS, some households that it surveyed were receiving far less than the average target ration of 500 g per person per day, which is an amount that nutritional experts regard as the minimum to maintain a normal level of health. As Human Rights Watch stated:"““Hunger in North Korea has a strong state policy dimension.””" Although the environment and the general poverty of the country certainly contributed to the famine, a critical factor has been the Government’s willingness to sacrifice the rights and lives of those whom they perceive as disloyal or class enemies, such as the families of defectors, dissidents and so on. I was planning to read some eye-witness accounts from Human Rights Watch, which put out an excellent publication on the use of food in the DPRK as a means of political restriction, but time is moving on. As I said, it has been reported that the PDS was reinstated in full on 19 August 2005. That will lead to more food disasters and repression. It appears that grain markets have been banned again since October 2005. What is important in the human rights context is that food rationing has been the single most important way of controlling the population in North Korea. Different ration levels are set according to age, but most importantly according to one’s loyalty to the regime. That must make it the most fundamentally pernicious regime today—the word ““bestial”” used by my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) is right. If any of us had the choice of speaking out politically, or on any topic, and having our food supply cut off, we would find that very difficult. The restrictions brought about by abolishing the small markets seem to have been a means to regain political control over the population. That is the strong feeling coming from escapees from North Korea. The small markets that were set up allowed a certain amount of social interaction across the country, which the DPRK regime strongly condemned. The regime has even made the official admission that prisoners—by which I think common criminals are meant—get a far lower daily ration of food than the regular population. I do not think that anyone in this House would say that common criminals should have the same privileges as the rest of us, but nevertheless a daily ration of 200 g of food, compared with the official ration of 700 g for regular workers, strikes me as being the thin end of the wedge of severe repression. I expect that all the hon. Members taking part in the debate will have seen repressive and horrible regimes at first hand. I have certainly seen a few. However, none of those other regimes of the recent past or present has anything on the regime currently in full sway in North Korea, where people are deliberately starved to death because of their political views or, even more bizarrely, because of the views of a member of their family at two generations’ remove. There can be nothing in the world today as evil, bestial or beastly as the regime in North Korea, or the DPRK.