Security issues have been at the center of the discourse on North Korea, which possesses nuclear weapons. Mikyoung Kim's book makes a valuable contribution to this discourse with a sophisticated analysis of political stances of four major regional countries, including China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States. She thoroughly explores the reactions of these countries and the background of these reactions with a focus on the human rights of North Korean refugees.
Regardless of much attention paid to human rights issues in North Korea within academia and without, the discourse is often colored with a bias due to the lack of a deeper understanding of North Korea. To deal with this potential problem, Kim starts her book with a discussion of North Korean human rights, which is in line with the old debate on Asian values and human rights. Rather than giving a direct answer to whether this debate is mere rhetoric that justifies the establishment of a dictatorial regime or not, she describes how that discourse was formed and how it functioned in the philosophy of governance in North Korea.
Kim elaborates on various issues concerning refugees before getting into the cases of major regional countries in chapter 3. Adopting a more people-centered approach, this section of the book illustrates testimonies of North Korean refugees collected from Internet blogs, autobiographical books, and in-depth interviews. The approach from a socio-psychological perspective enables the readers to understand refugees directly before considering diverse political issues around them. However, as Kim illustrates throughout the book, the rights of the refugees are often dismissed in the interests of various parties.
China is the country with the highest number of North Korean refugees. Yet being a traditional ally of Pyongyang, it does not officially accept North Korean refugees. This has caused the pursuit of refugees by local police and the repatriation of refugees to North Korea. Defining North Korean escapees as “illegal economic migrants,” China escapes “legal, moral, and ethical obligations” (p. 48) to protect the refugees according to the principle of refoulement. Kim states that such a reaction is derived from China's prioritization of its domestic politics over international norms.
Meanwhile, North Korea has been regarded as a threat to security in Japan for a long time, and Japan takes a hostile approach toward North Korea. Kim finds the reason for the antagonism in the subconscious of Japanese who recognize North Korea's resemblance to Japan during the colonial period, which they do not want to remember. The issue of Japanese abduction is at the core of North Korean human rights issues in Japan. Kim contends that Japan's position on North Korean human rights is contradictory, as it hardly accepts asylum seekers who enter into Japan.
In the section on North Korean human rights in South Korea, Kim gives more attention to women refugees and analyzes their situations. Amidst the complexities of inter-Korean relations, North Korean women in South Korea have become subject to certain stereotypes. These women are romanticized, represented either as asexual beings who need basic aid for their survival, or as sexual objects who are licentious and cunning. Kim shows that such stereotypes will work as barriers to peaceful coexistence between two peoples with different backgrounds. Further, she also implies that they could be detrimental to the social integration of North and South Korea in the future, especially when one considers the experience of Germany.
Exploring the moral construction of North Korean human rights in the United States, Kim attempts to focus on U.S. political leaders. She examines how their belief system and perception of North Korea influenced U.S. actions toward North Korea. In this section, Kim illustrates President Clinton's choice to focus on Middle East issues over North Korea due to his political calculation and religious beliefs and President Bush's religious fundamentalism that led him to regard North Korea as an enemy. Partly due to the fact that the United States has relatively fewer interests in North Korea with regard to international politics and partly due to defiant acts by North Korea that exclude it from international politics, the relationship between these two countries has been severely strained. Under these conditions, the human rights of North Koreans have been marginalized.
This book is distinct from other books, as it tries to explore its main theme with consideration for the “people factor.” While many other studies on North Korean human rights approach them through macro frames, such as social structures, this book includes personal factors that affect North Korean human rights issues. This book is also distinct due to the author's deep understanding about the cultural values of East Asian countries. While the human rights discourse has a tendency to shun this idea because many leaders have used Asian values as expedient rhetoric to justify their dictatorship, it still has relevance for understanding the governing philosophy of East Asian countries, and Kim did a wonderful job elucidating it.
However, the “people factor” she mainly used to analyze the relevant phenomena raises a question of objectivity. This is particularly the case when it comes to Kim's explanation of the reason for Japan's antagonism toward North Korea and her attempts to link political leaders' religiosity to their foreign policy decisions. Nevertheless, it is an untouched area with much potential to be explored, and her work has value for being a pioneer in the subject.
