| dc.description.abstract | In this dissertation, I systematically study whether the arguments of the North Korean government regarding its protection of domestic human rights and its adherence to international human rights treaties in the DPRK Official Reports are accurate. My starting point is the analysis of the sharp conflict of argument on the human rights issue between North Korea and the liberal democratic camp, which includes the U.S., U.K., and South Korea. In the DPRK Official Reports, North Korea uses a theoretical approach, focusing on the presence of Fundamental Rights Articles of its Constitution, to argue that the fundamental rights of the people have been protected internally, and that the particular rights prescribed in the international human rights treaties are guaranteed successfully. In contrast, the liberal democratic camp, in their reports on North Korean human rights compliance, contend that the government of North Korea has seriously infringed the fundamental freedoms of its people and has severely violated the international human rights treaties to which it is party. To make their arguments about North Korea's human rights practices, the U.S., South Korea, and the U.K. use a factual approach, centering on the analyses of testimony by North Korean refugees in the report. This situation leads the North Korean government to aggressively rebuff the arguments of the U.S., U.K., and South Korea by denying and discounting the contents of their annual reports. North Korea especially concentrates on casting doubt on the credibility of the testimony. Notably, the LDC Annual Reports do not thoroughly analyze the core implementation mechanism of the Fundamental Rights Articles of the North Korean Constitution and contain very few logical rebuttals. However, considering that North Korea has attempted to deceive the world under the guise of claiming to provide human rights protections through its core implementation mechanism, the methodology of the liberal democratic camp in dealing with North Korea's claims in defense of its human rights practices is inarguably unsuccessful. Thus, in such a debate, a neutral third party, who does not possess actual information regarding the human rights situation in North Korea, may not only believe that North Korea's arguments are true, but may also believe that the liberal democratic camp's demand for an improvement of North Korea's human rights practices are merely politically-motivated fabrications. Additionally, the fundamental difference in the method of argumentation between the North Korean government and the liberal democratic countries means that there are necessarily few points of direct collision within their arguments. That is to say, these two opposing sides do not actually collide but run parallel, and are left without the real opportunity to challenge each other's arguments as to the fundamental difference between their methodologies. The most effective way to solve the problems inherent in the overreliance by the LDC on a factual approach is to form an opposition structure of a theoretical approach to match the theoretical approach of North Korea. To remedy this failure, I developed and formulated my own detailed theory to refute the assertions of North Korea in its official reports. The heart of the theory proposed by this dissertation is the incapacitation mechanism model of the Juchist and Marxist-Leninist Articles against the core implementation mechanism model of the Fundamental Rights Articles. The incapacitation mechanism model proves that all of the claims of North Korea in the DPRK Official Reports--that it guarantees the fundamental rights of its people or that it complies with the major international human rights treaties--are totally unrealizable, given its constitutional structure, from a theoretical standpoint. Additionally, the mechanism model proves that the liberal democratic countries' arguments about North Korea's violation of the fundamental rights and the international human rights treaties in the LDC Annual Reports, which are based on a factual approach, are true. Thus, we can draw an objective and logical conclusion to the central issue of this dissertation through the new refuting theory and its theoretical mechanism model proposed by this dissertation. I expect the arguments of the new refuting theory and its incapacitation mechanism model presented by this dissertation to be useful reference material, which will enable the liberal democratic camp to make more effective responses against North Korea's specious arguments grounded in the core implementation mechanism of the Fundamental Rights Articles in the DPRK Official Reports and official Implementation Reports to be released in the future. | |
