A long-awaited UN report on North Korea accuses the hermit kingdom of “unspeakable atrocities” including using food to control the population, causing the deaths of “hundreds of thousands” of people; arbitrary detention and torture qualifying as atrocities; widespread and systematic discrimination based on class, caste, and gender. 

People who spoke to the panel relayed stories of a woman forced to drown her own baby; children imprisoned from birth and starved; families tortured for watching a foreign soap opera.  Torture included handcuffing prisoners behind their backs and hoisting the arms up high so the victim is unable to stand or sit, the so-called “pigeon torture”.

Here’s a quote from the 372-page report:

“These crimes against humanity entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.”

“At the end of the Second World War so many people said ‘if only we had known.  If only we had known the wrongs that were done in the countries of the hostile forces’,” said Michael Kirby, the retired Australian judge who served as chairman of the independent Commission of Inquiry.  “Well, now the international community does know.  There will be no excusing of failure of action because we didn't know.”

North Korea refused to take park in the investigation, and says it “categorically and totally rejects” the conclusions.

Despite Kirby’s advice to the United Nations to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC), and to hold Kim-Jong-Un and his confederates responsible for their crimes, it is doubtful that will happen.  China, North Korea’s only friend on the world, would likely veto any such recommendation.