CHILDREN'S RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

IN NORTH KOREA

By: Ella

THE SITUATION IN
NORTH KOREA
Although the North Korean government claims
to have terminated child labor 70 years ago, the
ruling Workers’ Party of Korea and other
government agencies still require students and
other children to take part in forced labor on
behalf of the state. For many children in North
Korea, forced labor is sadly a normal hazard in
everyday life. Other human rights violations in
North Korea include government
discrimination regarding access to educations,
corporal punishment at schools, and children
compelled to work extended hours without pay.
Children have to work in prison camps, clean
snow with pickaxes, work on farms, repairing
railways, hauling logs, constructing buildings,
etc.
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The conditions in prison camps, schools, etc., are
terrible. In prison camps, all prisoners, including
children, are subject to forced labor, including logging,
mining, and farming for long hours under harsh
conditions. Artisanal mining has immediate and long-
term effects on a child's health because they absorb
and retain heavy metals in the brain more easily, as
children's enzyme systems are still
developing. Conditions inside North Korean prison
camps are unsanitary and life-threatening. Prisoners are
subject to torture and inhumane treatment. Public and
secret executions of prisoners, even children, especially
in cases of attempted escape, are commonplace., and
infanticides also occur often. 
CHILDREN'S RIGHTS BEING VIOLATED

-The Right to Food

-The Right to Health
-Freedom of Speech
-Right to Protection
-Right to Life
 LAWS IN PLACE TO
PROTECT CHILDREN

North Korea has some laws to protect

children from exploitation. Article 43
of the Children's Rights Protection Act
prohibits abuse or violence against
children within the family. Article 27
states that parents have a duty to bring up
their children in an
intellectual, moral, and healthy way.
 WHY THE LAWS ARE
BEING IGNORED

The laws are not being ignored because

they just do not exist in that society, as
the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un
is corrupt.
 ORGANIZATIONS
TRYING TO HELP

•ChildFund Korea - ChildFund Korea provides

financial, physical, and emotional support for
children with mental and physical damage, and
actively works to make the world a happier place for
children. (https://childfundalliance.org). 
•UNICEF - The overall goal of UNICEF's work is
to support the Government of the
DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) in
enhancing self-sustaining national capacities so that
all children in the country enjoy their rights for
survival, development, protection and participation.
•Save the Children - Save the Children works to
ensure children have healthcare, food, and shelter, as
well as learning and child protection services when
children need it most.
 We can support an organization trying to help,
like ChildFund Korea or UNICEF by making
donations. We can spread awareness about how
WHAT WE CAN children’s rights are being violated in North Korea
and raise money with other people. We can
DO TO HELP also become a monthly donor for Save the
Children. When you buy something, think about how
that item was made; if it was made through
child labour or forced labour.
 THE RIGHT TO PLAY

The Right to Play has helped Jayden, a seventeen-year-old find his love for
photography, has helped Samantha practice her way of Ojibway life, and has helped Daniyal cope
with the trauma of the Beruit explosion. “Right to Play is an international non-profit organization
that empowers vulnerable children to overcome the effects of war, poverty, and disease around the
world through play.” (en.wikipedia.org)  The countries that the organization helps are as
follows: Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and has national offices in Canada, Germany, Norway, the
Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. I believe that the Right to
Play was formed because sometimes children need a bit of fun to distract them from serious
situations, like war, plague etc. The Right to Play organization was formed to help children
worldwide in another way; mentally instead of physically. Mental health is as important as
physical health, and that is why the Right to Play is important.
 Yeonmi Park described her childhood as occasional comfort but
mostly deprivation with extreme cold and hunger at times and
spotty electricity. She fled North Korea at the age of thirteen,
crossing the partly frozen Yalu River into China in 2007. Once
across the border in China, Yeonmi says that one of the brokers
tried to rape her, but her mother offered herself and was
raped instead. Eventually, her mother was sold as a bride to a
Chinese farmer in the countryside. In 2007, Yeonmi’s older
sister, Eunmi, who was sixteen at the time, escaped to China with
YEONMI PARK'S the help of a smuggler. Yeonmi and her mother made the crossing
STORY soon after, hoping to reunite there. Yeonmi submitted to repeated
rape and participated in the smuggling enterprise as a shepherd for
other female North Korean defectors. He bought back her mother
and smuggled her father into China, but her father died of colon
cancer weeks later. Nearly seven years after separating, she was
finally reunited with her sister in South Korea. In 2014, Yeonmi
delivered a widely watched speech at a largely watched summit in
Dublin, Ireland, and then moved to America to write her memoir
and enrolled in the Columbia School of General Studies, which
caters to nontraditional students, focusing on human rights.
Thank you for your time.
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