The Assyrian Has Come Down . . .

. . . Like a Wolf on the Fold

There are few slave states left on the earth at the present time.  North Korea most certainly is one such state--one of the worst in recent history. 

If ever the world needed an an object lesson in how limited government, the rule of law, and private property rights can lead to rising standards of living one needs only to compare the trajectories of North and South Korea after the cease-fire in 1953.  People of the same ethnicity, history and cultural background were divided by an artificial border.  The only substantial difference since that time has been  in political, economic and legal systems.  South Korea is today an economic powerhouse, with rapidly rising living standards, and its people both industrious and vivacious.  North Korea is grindingly poor, with a starving population, and a government maintained only by means of fear and enslavement. 

Below is a summary of the UN indictment of the North Korean regime.  It charges the regime with "crimes against humanity" which means very little, except that when the regime finally collapses, as it inevitably will, North Koreans and others will be warranted sending their present tormentors to international courts for judgment. 

United Nations says North Korea should face ICC trial for crimes against humanity 

news.com.au

NORTH Korea’s leaders should be brought before an international court for a litany of crimes against humanity that include exterminating its population, the United Nations says.

A hard-hitting report on the nuclear-armed totalitarian state also strongly criticised its denial of basic freedoms of thought, expression and religion, and its abduction of citizens of neighbouring South Korea and Japan.

“Systemic, widespread and gross human rights violations have been and are being committed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, its institutions and officials,’’ said the report by the Commission of Inquiry on North Korea set up in March 2013 by the UN Human Rights Council.  “In many instances, the violations of human rights found by the commission constitute crimes against humanity. These are not mere excesses of the state; they are essential components of a political system that has moved far from the ideals on which it claims to be founded,’’ the report said.  “The gravity, scale and nature of these violations revealed a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.’’

Commission chair Michael Kirby said the world could no longer plead ignorance as an excuse for a failure to act.  “At the end of the Second World War, so many people said: If only we had known ... Now the international community does know,’’ he said.  “There will be no excusing of failure of action because we didn’t know.’’ . . .

Kirby wrote to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un — the third ruler of the communist dynasty founded by his grandfather in 1948 — to give him a last chance to put his country’s response.  In a January 20 letter, Kirby told Kim he could face justice personally for the crimes committed by the system he runs.  “Any official of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea who commits, orders, solicits or aids and abets crimes against humanity incurs criminal responsibility by international law and must be held accountable under that law,’’ Kirby wrote.

The report said options included the UN Security Council referring the country to the International Criminal Court or setting up an ad hoc tribunal. . . .

North Korea’s 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 report said. It condemned a system of throwing generations of the same family into prison camps under guilt-by-association rules, given testimony from former guards, inmates and neighbours. . . .

North Koreans’ daily lives were marked by constant “surveillance, coercion, fear and punishment to preclude the expression of any dissent,’’ the report said.  It estimated 200,000 people from other countries had been abducted by North Korea or disappeared after going there willingly.  Most were South Koreans stuck after the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War, and ethnic Koreans who arrived from Japan after 1959.  But hundreds of South Koreans, Japanese and nationals of countries including Thailand, Malaysia, Lebanon, Romania and France have also been pressganged as language teachers or even spouses.

North Korean defectors have also been kidnapped from countries including China, it said.  “These international enforced disappearances are unique in their intensity, scale and nature,’’ the report said.