ABSTRACT
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is an oddity in contemporary international relations. Ruled by a brutal, yet highly idiosyncratic, regime whose authority derives from a fusion of personality cult and dynastic succession, North Korea is in many respects a failed state. It may be the world’s newest nuclear power, but ordinary North Koreans confront basic hardships in their everyday lives that have more in common with poverty-stricken parts of Africa than with anything experienced by citizens across the rest of Asia. Acutely dependent on external aid for its economic survival, North Korea is ruled by a regime that has pariah status in the international system. North Korea has no allies to speak of, possesses the dubious record of broken commitments to a host of international agreements, and the treatment of its own citizens is probably the worst of any country on the globe. The profound human rights abuses perpetrated by the Pyongyang regime have most recently been documented in painstaking detail in a landmark 2014 report by the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council, which concluded that ‘systematic, widespread and gross human rights abuses have been, and are being, committed by North Korea, its institutions and officials. In many instances, the violations of human rights entail crimes against humanity’ (UNHRC 2014: 23).
