The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights says that corruption and repression are widespread in North Korea and that ordinary people are forced to bribe state authorities for survival. 

The assessment came in a report titled “The price is rights: The violation of the right to an adequate standard of living in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” released on Tuesday. 

Based on interviews with 214 North Korean escapees between 2017 and 2018, the report finds extensive violations of the “most fundamental rights” of the North Korean people due to economic mismanagement and “endemic” corruption. 

The report says the state has failed to “uphold the right to an adequate standard of living for all its citizens,” and that people are forced to rely on “rudimentary market activity” to meet their basic needs.

The report quoted UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet as saying that “the rights to food, health, shelter, work, freedom of movement and liberty are universal and inalienable, but in North Korea they depend primarily on the ability of individuals to bribe state officials.”

The North Korean escapees interviewed for the report were primarily women who had fled from North Korea’s northern provinces across the land border with China and had resettled in South Korea.

[Photo : KBS News]