In the supposed workers’ paradise of North Korea, inequality is assigned at birth, a study by a U.S.-based human rights group says. The study released Wednesday by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea says all adults in the communist state are categorized as one of three classes: loyal, wavering or hostile. Education, job, access to scarce food and health care, and even whom you marry all hinge on how loyal your forebears are viewed to have been to the Kim dynasty. The study says the class system persists and is behind the discrimination and abuses faced by the lowest echelons of the North’s closed society.
The songbun (ingredients) system has its origins in social class restructuring enforced by the North’s communist founders to elevate peasants and laborers at the expense of landlords, businessmen and religious leaders. Those considered most loyal had fought alongside Kim against Japanese colonialists and then against U.S.-backed forces in the 1950-53 Korean War. Those deemed hostile collaborated with the enemy or had family members who fled to South Korea. Moving up a songbun category is rare and requires a lifetime of devotion to the Kim family regime and Communist Party. But songbun can be downgraded for political or criminal offenses or failing to cooperate with authorities. When an individual is sentenced to the North’s gulag of political prison camps — estimated to hold 150,000-200,000 people — family members are considered guilty by association and generally accompany them.
Today the loyal class, which makes up about a quarter of the 24 million population, still dominates the powerful military and the Korean Workers’ Party. They alone are entitled to live in the relatively prosperous capital Pyongyang and monopolize the prestige universities and best jobs. Many in the hostile class inhabit the most impoverished northeastern provinces, often in isolated mountain villages where they perform hard labor at mines and farms. They have been most vulnerable to failures since the 1990s in North Korea’s public food distribution system and resulting malnutrition. Marrying someone with poor songbun likely would exclude that individual from party membership, causing severe consequences for employment opportunities and quality of life, it says. The non-government human rights group says it amounts to a caste system.
Roberta Cohen, co-chairman of the rights group, says money, bribery and corruption recently have begun to erode the songbun system because of the emergence of informal markets and the scope for paying officials for favors. But she said songbun’s main elements remain in place. A slang has developed around the songbun system, wherein the loyal class are referred to as “tomatoes” that are red on both the inside and outside, so are good communists. Those of the wavering class are “apples” that are only red on the outside, and the hostile class is known as “grapes” — considered politically unredeemable.
“Throughout its 64 year existence, the Kim regime has claimed that North Korea is an egalitarian workers’ paradise,” said the committee’s executive director, Greg Scarlatoiu. “Yet, inequality is assigned at birth, perpetuated throughout a person’s lifetime and cruelly enforced by those in power to benefit themselves and their supporters.”
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The songbun (ingredients) system has its origins in social class restructuring enforced by the North’s communist founders to elevate peasants and laborers at the expense of landlords, businessmen and religious leaders. Those considered most loyal had fought alongside Kim against Japanese colonialists and then against U.S.-backed forces in the 1950-53 Korean War. Those deemed hostile collaborated with the enemy or had family members who fled to South Korea. Moving up a songbun category is rare and requires a lifetime of devotion to the Kim family regime and Communist Party. But songbun can be downgraded for political or criminal offenses or failing to cooperate with authorities. When an individual is sentenced to the North’s gulag of political prison camps — estimated to hold 150,000-200,000 people — family members are considered guilty by association and generally accompany them.
Today the loyal class, which makes up about a quarter of the 24 million population, still dominates the powerful military and the Korean Workers’ Party. They alone are entitled to live in the relatively prosperous capital Pyongyang and monopolize the prestige universities and best jobs. Many in the hostile class inhabit the most impoverished northeastern provinces, often in isolated mountain villages where they perform hard labor at mines and farms. They have been most vulnerable to failures since the 1990s in North Korea’s public food distribution system and resulting malnutrition. Marrying someone with poor songbun likely would exclude that individual from party membership, causing severe consequences for employment opportunities and quality of life, it says. The non-government human rights group says it amounts to a caste system.
Roberta Cohen, co-chairman of the rights group, says money, bribery and corruption recently have begun to erode the songbun system because of the emergence of informal markets and the scope for paying officials for favors. But she said songbun’s main elements remain in place. A slang has developed around the songbun system, wherein the loyal class are referred to as “tomatoes” that are red on both the inside and outside, so are good communists. Those of the wavering class are “apples” that are only red on the outside, and the hostile class is known as “grapes” — considered politically unredeemable.
“Throughout its 64 year existence, the Kim regime has claimed that North Korea is an egalitarian workers’ paradise,” said the committee’s executive director, Greg Scarlatoiu. “Yet, inequality is assigned at birth, perpetuated throughout a person’s lifetime and cruelly enforced by those in power to benefit themselves and their supporters.”
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