My Speech- Aaron Moseley

Oppression in North Korea

North Korea. When we think of this country, what do we see? For most of us, all we can imagine is a small, militant, isolationist country that poses a threat to our democracy. And that stigma is well earned. But, we rarely consider that while our opinions about this country may be true, we only think about the government of North Korea, not the people living in it. These people are being oppressed on a massive scale, and many of them hate their government almost as much as us. But, because of the actions of their leader, Kim Jong Un, many people seem to not care about the well-being of normal North Korean people.

In 2011, when Kim Jong Il died, North Koreans heard that Kim Jong Un would take his father’s place and were very hopeful that their lives would improve because of their new leaders young age and perceived progressiveness. But they were wrong. Even years after Kim Jong Un’s reign started, North Koreans are still deprived of basic rights, food, and even the freedom to leave. The government controls everything its citizens do and say, with dissenters being punished harshly. Many who voice their disagreement are sent to labor camps, while the unlucky could be executed. In an article by the Washington Post, many escapees from North Korea describe their experiences, with one stating that if you didn’t believe Kim Jong Un could ride a horse at 5 years old and shoot a gun at 3, you would be shot. Just take a second to think about how insane that is. If you don’t believe obviously false information, you will most likely be executed.

Similar to this, many North Koreans are sent to labor camps for arbitrary reasons. Whether it be trying to leave the country or talking about the government in a bad light. In a different article written by NBC News, an escapee named Hyuk Kim recounts his experience in a labor camp. Within this camp, prisoners are only fed with soya beans and cornmeal. If prisoners wanted meat, they would have to kill rats and eat the meat raw. Attempting to cook the meat would alert guards and trigger a severe beating. In recent years, escapees have informed the world that these labor camps are distributing less food than they were when Hyuk was imprisoned.

That brings us to how to solve this humanitarian crisis. Many ideas have already been attempted, but none have produced the desired result of human rights in North Korea. The UN and other humanitarian groups have sent medical teams into North Korea to provide care that would otherwise not be possible in the country. While this does help, it doesn’t elicit a large benefit other than to the specific people that received care. The UN has also attempted to provide aid to North Korean citizens, mostly through food. But, this solution has the same problems as the last one, by not helping the entire country to an acceptable degree.

A potential solution that does show promise is negotiating with North Korea to encourage them to become less hostile and isolationist. While this solution could work, it has been hindered greatly by name calling and immaturity on both sides, with the United States’ president calling North Korea’s leader “little rocket man” and Kim Jong Un calling Trump a “mentally deranged US dotard.”

Something that has been suggested and has not been tried is a full invasion of North Korea. This would never be a good solution. North Korea is assumed to have nuclear missiles that could target the US mainland in retaliation and this would anger China, one of North Korea’s few allies and one of our largest trading partners.

The best way to solve this problem has three parts. The first would be to encourage ongoing unification efforts by North and South Korea. During the Olympics, they both competed under the same flag. If these sentiments continue, the two countries could possibly become one, allowing the rights of North Korean citizens to infinitely increase. The other part is for the US to continually negotiate with North Korea to allow more aid into the country. The last would be to negotiate with China so they could pressure North Korea to allow more aid to come in, and give more rights to the North Korean people. While this solution is not guaranteed to work, it has the best chance of doing so when compared to other solutions, and the civil rights of millions of people are worth taking this chance.