North Korea’s conception of human rights is fundamentally different from the U.S. and the West. For the Kim regime, human rights means the protection of national sovereignty and independence. It wholly rejects the notion of inalienable rights and freedoms premised on the individual.

One of the standard tropes within North Korea’s human rights discourse is the DPRK government’s indictment of the historically poor treatment of minority non-white populations in the U.S. This is meant to expose double-sidedness regarding its promotion of human rights abroad.