Human Rights Record
See also: Human rights in North KoreaAccording to a 2004 Human Rights Watch report, the North Korean government under Kim was "among the world's most repressive governments", having up to 200,000 political prisoners according to U.S. and South Korean officials, and no freedom of the press or religion, political opposition or equal education: "Virtually every aspect of political, social, and economic life is controlled by the government."
Kim's government was accused of "crimes against humanity" for its alleged culpability in creating and prolonging the 1990s famine.
Read more about this topic: Kim Jong-il
Famous quotes containing the words human, rights and/or record:
“What persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology. One can understand well enough how human beings may struggle and murder for good material reasons—reasons connected, for instance, with their physical survival. It is much harder to grasp how they may come to do so in the name of something as apparently abstract as ideas. Yet ideas are what men and women live by, and will occasionally die for.”
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“A wellborn mind that is practiced in dealing with people makes itself thoroughly agreeable by itself. Art is nothing else but the list and record of the productions of such minds.”
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