Speaking before the General Assembly’s Third Committee, Prof. Muntarbhorn described a “fear factor” in the DPRK with conditions being as “dismal and abysmal,” due to the repressive nature of the ruling regime.

Despite such privations few people are able to escape from Kim Jong-il’s self-styled “paradise on earth.” Political prisons moreover, modeled on the dreaded Soviet gulag system, still form an integral part of the DPRK rule and control; the Special Rapporteur stated that a figure of 154,000 prisoners was an estimate and there is no way to confirm the number. As human rights officials such as himself are not surprisingly barred from North Korea, it is naturally difficult to gauge specific conditions.

According to the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea there are six major gulag-type complexes scattered across the country.

An equally pressing problem for North Korea remains constant food shortages. It is estimated by the UN that approximately a third of the population was going hungry and the World Food Program (WFP) could only cover over about 1.4 million people out of the six million who were starving. Prof. Muntarbhorn added that in the case of North Korea “monitoring of food delivery must be allowed.”

His concerns reflect the reality that in the past such regimes would divert humanitarian supplies to security forces or politically loyal regions at the expense of often targeted population or regions. During a catastrophic famine in the mid-1990’s North Korea suffered nearly a million deaths from hunger.

Importantly the Special Rapporteur stressed that “food aid alone was never adequate, and it had to accompanied by food security.” Plans by the Pyongyang regime to force people to work on farms for a “food battle” with intensive labor, did not insure either production or a sharing in the harvest.

The authorities regularly clamp down on civilians tying to privately grow or sell produce outside the confines of the state sanctioned system.

Despite the DPRK’s horrific human rights situation, diplomats for the most part have soft-peddled these charges and evidence as a not trying to antagonize Pyongyang over its sporadic cooperation on the nuclear weapons issues. Thus while the UN Security Council has tried to contain Pyongyang’s nuclear proliferation, there has been a reserved reticence to tackle the North on its vulnerable human rights record.

A few years ago a high profile effort was launched at the UN sponsored by the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and endorsed by former Czech President Vaclav Havel to bring the issue before the UN Security Council. Naturally this strategy while logical, is hindered by the fact that the People’s Republic of China has historically supported the DPRK despite disagreements in recent years. Thus the Security Council option could offer a dead end to any serious censure of Pyongyang over humanitarian issues.

While many democracies, including South Korea under its previous government, have politely averted their attention from human rights abuses in the North, the political rationalization was based not on sympathy, but on realpolitik in getting Kim Jong- il’s regime to offer minimal levels of cooperation on the nuclear issues, to offer some sort of limited openness of hermetically-closed country, and to encourage Seoul’s “Sunshine Policy” of subsidizing humanitarian aid to gain North Korea’s tacit cooperation.

Specific charges will be presented at the UN Human Rights Council in December. That’s not a moment too soon for millions of North Koreans who cannot speak for themselves.