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the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. North
Korea is also required to abide by international obligations
enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant
on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) as
well as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Convention
on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the Convention on
the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD). Despite the
obligations North Korea has assumed, the Kim family regime
ignores and violates all conceivable civil, political, economic,
social, and cultural rights.

The Constitution of North Korea and its other laws
supposedly protect rights such as the freedom of religion
and freedom of assembly. None of these rights are observed
in practice. Only the Ten Principles of Monolithic Ideology
(TPMI) and Kimilsungism matter.

Information campaigns coming in from the outside world
need to enable North Koreans to understand that there is a
very deep rift between their Constitution and the regime’s
ideology. There is also a deep rift between the international
obligations that North Korea has assumed and the TPMI.

There are “three economies” of North Korea: the bankrupt
state-run economy; the “royal palace economy;” and the
“people’s economy,” reliant on markets created since the
great famine of the 1990s. North Korea’s “people’s economy”
is a rather peculiar hybrid. Entrepreneurship coexists with
totalitarian regime control. Private property is not allowed in

Chapter Nine : Addressing the North Korean Conundrum 159