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The Existential Crisis of the North Korean Human Rights Community |
| March 12, 2025 |
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Peter WardResearch Fellow, The Sejong Institute | pward89@sejong.org
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On February 26, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Ms. Elizabeth Salmón released a statement in which she expressed grave concerns about the continued financial viability of North Korean human rights organizations in South Korea. Her intervention raised to public attention an ongoing financial crisis in the sector that started soon after the second Trump administration took office.
Since the Trump administration came to office, there has been near constant news about the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a new White House taskforce headed by Elon Musk. DOGE is tasked with finding savings in the US federal budget. One major area that has been targeted has been overseas development aid and support for democracy and human rights. The shutdown of USAID has attracted much attention, but the stop work orders for the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Affairs (DRL) and defunding of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) far less. On March 12, there was news that some NED funding had been resumed, but there is considerable uncertainty surrounding the funding situation.
The DRL and NED, while not household names, are a vital source of funding and support for human rights activist organizations and pro-democracy civil society organizations all over the world. The community of NGOs in South Korea and elsewhere that work on North Korean human rights advocacy, access to information activities, and accountability are no exception. This community now faces an existential crisis, with many organizations furloughing workers and ceasing much if not all of their work.
Without a resumption of funding from the US side or support from other sources, much of the work that has been by these organizations will cease and many organizations will likely close permanently. It would be fair to say that the North Korean human rights community faces an existential crisis. This points to the overreliance of the community on US government funding, and even if the present crisis passes with a restoration of funding, there is a need to seriously consider new ways to fund such activities going forward.
What it also could mean is that the quality and quantity of information available about life inside North Korea and on issues that face the North Korean people, as well as alternative sources of information that they have access to could suddenly and dramatically decline. It will make the life of people researching North Korea in the South Korean and global media, academy and government also far more difficult. Indeed, collapse of the North Korean human rights community, which currently looks increasingly likely, would be catastrophic for the welfare and future of the North Korean people, but also will make it far more difficult for policymakers, researchers and concerned citizens to obtain an accurate picture of what is going on inside the country. Hence, it is incumbent on policymakers to consider ways to save this vital community and the work it does. -
The agenda that the Trump administration is currently pursuing on many fronts can be partially traced back to planning that began during the Biden administration on the right of US politics. As part of such planning, the Heritage Foundation published its quadrennial agenda for the next Republican administration in April 2023.
The document it prsoduced, Project 2025 (Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise), did not set out an agenda to end the work of USAID – though it does include plans to reform and scale back the work of USAID – and specifically attacks the State Department for including “woke extremism” in US foreign aid programs. The DRL and the National Endowment for Democracy were not named, but another major funder of work related to access to information in North Korea, the Open Technology Fund (OTF), a major funder of work examining North Korea’s information ecosystem. As yet, the fate of the OTF is as yet unclear.
From all of this, it was quite clear that a vocal part of the American right wanted to radically shake up the way aid and grant making activities were conducted in Washington. The general approach to US overseas development and humanitarian aid, and democracy promotion reflects the considerable skepticism about both expressed either by Trump directly or by those associated with him. The skepticism stems from the America First outlook that is skeptical of foreign aid, while the latter is part of an interests rather than values, with the values-based approach being seen as a holdover from the failed attempts to spread democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere by the George W. Bush administration.
However, upon taking office, the program was far more radical than previously anticipated. Executive Order 14169, entitled "Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid", was signed on January 20, and froze all US foreign development assistance programs except those involving urgent humanitarian assistance (which were exempted on January 28).
This resulted in the near complete shutdown of USAID, but also of the DRL. Separately, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began to target the NED. The NED is not a government agency, but set up in 1983 legally as a private foundation that is exclusively funded by US Congress. The NED has subsequently operated as a bipartisan promoter of human rights and democracy worldwide, funding the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI), both of which are heavily involved in North Korean human rights work and affiliated with the US’s two major parties. It also provides funding to human rights organizations worldwide, including in South Korea.
However, the NED ran was targeted by DOGE, with Elon Musk claiming that it was corrupt and that it had committed “crimes” (though no specific allocations were made). The US Treasury subsequently began withholding funds from the NED on orders from DOGE. The apparent reason was the NED’s associations with opposition groups in Hungary and activities targeting Russia and other right-wing populist governments in Europe and around the world that are perceived by some parts of the American right as being friendly to Donald Trump and his agenda. -
The NED and DRL have been active in supporting and funding North Korean human rights-related work in South Korea and elsewhere for over two decades. As the extent of North Korea’s famine became clear in the mid-1990s, there was a growing interest in North Korea’s human rights situation across the world. Some organizations, like the Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human Rights were formed around this time, and soon began receiving some funding from the DRL and the NED to help facilitate and grow their advocacy work.
Both funders have long grown integral to the field. The NED has funded a wide range of projects since 1998, with funding growing from around $750,000 in 1999 to $1,350,000 in 2009, and thereon upward to almost $5 million in 2023. The size of grants can be small (less than $50,000) to much larger (under certain circumstances).
The DRL’s funds programs designed to promote human rights and accountability in North Korea, as well as access to information. Recent grant listings indicate that grantees were able to apply for grants between $100,000 and $1,000,000. The overall size of DRL funding for the field is not public information, but it is believed to be within the region of $5 million.
Alongside them, the Open Technology Fund has funded a range of projects related to North Korean surveillance technology and digital devices. The North Korean government has invested considerably in developing its own mobile and tablet PC hardware and software ecosystem that allows the regime to monitor the media consumption habits and block the use and sharing of unauthorized files.
When added together, the North Korean human rights field worldwide receives around $10 million in annual support from two US government (or government affiliated) organizations – the DRL and NED. The size of funding from OTF is unclear, but probably adds hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional funding, though perhaps less. The $10 million figure involves a wide range of investments in programs and capacity aimed at advancing a broad range of goals.
The DRL and NED fund advocacy at the UN, and in other national and international forums. NGOs that go to the UN to work with the UN Human Rights Council including during regular sessions and the Universal Periodic Review, and the Special Rapporteur on North Korean human rights. They provide valuable information about life in North Korea right now and advocate for the rights of the North Korean people to concerned stakeholders including UN member states and UN institutional actors.
They also support policy-oriented research regarding the structure of North Korea’s information ecosystem, both mobile phone hardware and software used in the North. They finance research regarding the country’s human rights abuses, including prison camps, repression within North Korean society more generally, and kidnapping of foreign nationals. Much of our understanding about topics as diverse as everyday surveillance, the criminal justice system and its many abuses, forced labor, and much else besides is thanks to the pioneering work of NGOs funded by the NED and DRL.
Finally, they finance information access activities, both inbound and outbound – getting information out of North Korea and sending it in (via radio, USBs or other means). There are range of radio stations that broadcast into North Korea, with their own programming designed to inform the North Korean people about what is going on both in their country and in the outside world. There are other NGOs that develop digital content, software and hardware solutions designed to get around North Korea’s extensive information and digital controls. NED and DRL funding has proved vital for both.
There are also news outlets who specialize in acquiring information from inside North Korea through a network of correspondents operating there. These correspondents risk their lives to provide information, including regular market price data, stories about what is going on within their localities, photos from on the ground, and even documents. It is thanks to such reporting that texts like the Reactionary Culture and Ideology Exclusion Act and numerous North Korean government-issued lecture materials have been made available to the outside world. Indeed, much of what we know about what is going on inside North Korea is thanks to NGO work like this funded by the NED and DRL.
On top of this, the NED has funded extensive programs aimed at building capacity within the North Korean refugee community. These include support for civics and democracy education that involve field trips to other democracies, and opportunities to meet democracy and human rights activists from across Asia. The NED has also funded conferences that bring the human rights and North Korean refugee community together to discuss the state of field and ways to boost its impact.
Arguably given the scale of the problems that this funding is designed to address, the field was already woefully underfunded. North Korea has an estimated 200,000 prisoners in its brutal prison camps, its population of over 20 million do not have political rights, have no freedom of expression, movement, association, or worship. They also do not have right to choose where they work or live. Even of those not incarcerated, many are routinely subject to forced labor in the countryside, on construction sites, and under harsh conditions. What is more, the country’s information environment is closed, and most North Koreans do not have access to information about what is going on in the outside world (or in their own country).
Therefore, to raise awareness, sympathy and solidarity for the need for change in North Korea, much more funding is no doubt needed. The same also goes for access to information in the country. The entirety of the media is owned and controlled by the state, and access to foreign media outside of select films and sports events broadcast on state TV and the like is strictly prohibited. The passage of the Reactionary Culture and Ideology Exclusion Act in 2020 marked a growing crackdown on the consumption of foreign media and culture, particularly from South Korea.
Hence, the need for activities that help to boost awareness and solidarity for the plight of the North Korean people, and also help them gain access to alternative sources of information is all too necessary. And the funding, even as it stood prior to 2025 was probably far too small to really make a difference to the lives of most North Koreans.
Some organizations began receiving funds from both the NED and DRL, and the North Korean human rights sector is highly reliant on US government funding generally. This is partially a consequence of the limited funding opportunities available elsewhere. By comparison, the Ministry of Unification committed to increase funding in its most recent budget to 2.9 billion KRW, or around $2 million, with individual organizations being able to receive up to 150 million KRW. The 2.9 billion figure represents an increase of 1.1 billion from the previous year – i.e., a 61% increase. While this is no doubt welcome, the increase is less than 10% of annual U.S. funding. -
Given the current situation, there is a reasonable possibility that much of the North Korean human rights NGO community will cease to exist in the coming months and years. Capacity is liable to be lost as more workers are furloughed and forced to seek employment elsewhere. The projects funded by the NED and DRL have ceased and this will leave a large gap that is unlikely to be filled by the funding provided by the South Korean government as it currently stands.
This means that much of the advocacy, information dissemination activities, conferences and events, not to mention education activities and capacity building in the NGO and North Korean refugee communities has stopped and may not restart any time soon. Many NGOs will likely be shut down and this will mean a crucial source of expertise, information and a powerful voice for change and accountability inside North Korea disappears.
In the immediate term, the South Korean government should consider assisting NGOs with emergency funding to ensure that they are able to continue their core work. Some of the projects that were previously funded by the NED and DRL will have to be wound down, should those organizations be unable to restart funding. But the South Korean government could smooth the path to a transition away from US government funding with financial support that ensures NGOs can continue to function and perform core activities – like radio broadcasting into North Korea, and getting information out of North Korea.
It should be remembered that a significant portion of the NED and DRL’s spending has been directed toward organizations in the United States and Europe. Hence, if the MOU were to step in to provide emergency funding, they could choose whether to just support organizations in South Korea – which would obviously be cheaper – or also to help organizations internationally – which could significantly expand the influence of the South Korean government globally on a crucial issue.
Beyond the immediate term, there is a need to restructure the funding base of this community of NGOs. The need has always been far greater than what was available, and the community was always excessively dependent on the US government, and it will be necessary to build a more diversified funding base to support it going forward. This could be done with seed money provided by governments across the world, as well as private individuals and foundations.
The South Korean North Korean Human Rights Act mandated the creation of a foundation to support more work in this area, but due to political divides in the National Assembly it has never been set up. The MOU has previously said that it will set up a new fund to support human rights work (the North Korea Freedom and Human Rights Fund), but the size of the fund is liable to be far too small to support anything like the scale of work previously funded by the US government.
Hence, it would make sense to consider the creation of a much larger foundation that is seeded by funds from both South Korea and other concerned countries. This foundation could support projects globally, and maintain offices and support staffs not only in South Korea but in other major countries where NGO work is ongoing. If it were a private foundation, it could also avoid being captive to domestic politics and funding cycles in any one country, and be more able to make long-term investment decisions to maximize efficacy.
In these efforts, and alternative transnational efforts to support North Korean human rights work, there are opportunities to include Japan as a partner and potential funder. The kidnapping of Japanese citizens by the North Korean regime, and the migration of Zainichi Koreans back to North Korea under false pretenses are major human rights issues of concern in Japan. Hence, there is scope for significant cooperation between the South Korean and Japanese governments on supporting North Korean human rights work.
Beyond such a global approach, there is also a need for NGOs in South Korea and elsewhere to diversify away from government funding entirely. Some NGOs especially from the church community do not receive government funding, and a donor-based approach may work for some NGOs that have previously subsisted largely off government grants. As an intermediate step, involving larger private foundations to help plug funding gaps may be appropriate. But many NGOs will need to build up their own communities of small donors, concerned citizens in South Korea and elsewhere who want to support North Korean human rights with their own money. The South Korean government can help by helping to build fundraising capacity in the community so that it might become more self-sufficient going forward.
| Background
| North Korean human rights community and what could be lost
| Conclusions and Policy Recommendations
※ The opinions expressed in 'Sejong Focus' are those of the author and do not represent the official views of Sejong Institute
