Documents from the archives of North Korea’s former communist allies, obtained, translated, and disseminated by the Wilson Center's North Korea International Documentation Project (NKIDP), were quoted from and cited ten times in the United Nations report on human rights in North Korea, released in February 2014.
The “Report of the Detailed Findings of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” (A/HRC/25/CRP.1) was written by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The Commission of Inquiry was established in March 2013 with the mandate to investigate the systematic, widespread, and grave violations of human rights in North Korea.
NKIDP materials cited by the Commission of Inquiry include Soviet, Polish, (East) German, and Hungarian reports on the start of the Korean War; North Korea’s treatment of South Korean prisoners of war (POWs) from 1950 through 1953; the institutionalization of North Korea’s Juche ideology and the growth of the Kim Il Sung cult of personality; the expansion of North Korea’s internal security system; and hardships faced by Koreans repatriated to North Korea from Japan in the 1950s and 1960s. These and other documents which bear on North Korea’s human rights record are made freely available through the Wilson Center’s Digital Archive (www.DigitalArchive.org).
The Commission of Inquiry found that systematic, widespread, and gross human rights violations have been, and are being, committed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and that crimes against humanity have been committed by officials of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The Commission of Inquiry will present a written report with its findings and recommendations to the United Nations Human Rights Council in March 2014.
The full 372-page report by the Commission of Inquiry can be viewed on the website of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.