Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland

  U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea , 2005

   North Korea is well into its second decade of chronic food shortages. A famine in the 1990s killed as many as 1 million North Koreans or roughly 5 percent of the population. Millions more were left to contend with broken lives and personal misery. Particularly worrisome are the long-term effects, including irreversible ones, on the human development of infants and children. But North Korean claims that the famine was due primarily to natural disasters and external shocks are misleading in important respects.

The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) is a bi-partisan, not-for-profit human rights organization that has obtained 501(c)3 nonprofit status. Launched in 2001, the Committee was created to generate a broad base of interest about conditions in North Korea and to conduct and publish research focusing U.S. and world attention on human rights abuse in that country.

The Committee's work is laying a foundation of current and comprehensive information that will enable it to shine a spotlight on the abuses being perpetrated in North Korea, and also to help individuals, NGOs and policymakers seek ways to improve the treatment of the North Korean people. In particular, the Committee is focusing on the prison camp system, the question of access to food, and the plight of North Korean refugee populations.

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