Kim Jong-Un's succession as North Korea's supreme leader after the death of his father, Kim Jong-Il, in December 2011 had little impact on the country's dire human rights record.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) systematically violates the rights of its population. The government has ratified four key international human rights treaties and includes rights protections in its constitution, but does not allow organized political opposition, free media, functioning civil society, or religious freedom. Arbitrary arrest, detention, lack of due process, and torture and ill-treatment of detainees remain serious and pervasive problems. North Korea also practices collective punishment for various anti-state offenses, for which it enslaves hundreds of thousands of citizens in prison camps, including children. The government periodically publicly executes citizens for stealing state property, hoarding food, and other “anti-socialist” crimes, and maintains policies that have continually subjected North Koreans to food shortages and famine.

In April, the International Coalition to Stop Crimes against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK), which includes Human Rights Watch, filed a comprehensive submission on political prison camps to 11 United Nations special procedures operating under the mandate of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), and called for the creation of a UN commission of inquiry to investigate crimes against humanity in North Korea.

On November 2, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the DPRK recommended that the UN General Assembly and the international community should consider setting up a “more detailed mechanism of inquiry” into the egregious human rights abuses in the country.

Food Shortages and Famine

North Korea continues to face serious food insecurity in 2012, following a major famine in 2011. In November 2012, the World Food Program (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that 2.8 million vulnerable people, equal to slightly more than 10 percent of all North Koreans, face under-nutrition and a lack of vital protein and fat in their daily diet. The troubling food situation is the result of several factors, including a dry spell that heavily impacted soybean production in the first half of 2012; economic mismanagement; and the government's blatantly discriminatory food policies that favor the military and government officials.