Travis King case highlights North Korea's history of citing US racism
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[August 16, 2023]
By Josh Smith and Soo-hyang Choi
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's claim on Wednesday that U.S. soldier
Travis King fled racism and abuse in America comes as Pyongyang pushes
back on Washington's criticism of the North's human rights record.
North Korea broke nearly a month of silence on King, who is Black,
issuing a state media report that he had confessed to illegally and
deliberately entering the North, driven by "ill feeling against inhuman
maltreatment and racial discrimination within the U.S. Army" and
disillusionment with inequality in U.S. society.
King has not been directly heard from, but an uncle in United States
told media this month his nephew said he experienced racism during his
military service.
The state media report comes a day before the United Nations Security
Council is due to meet at the behest of Washington to discuss human
rights abuses in North Korea.
For decades Pyongyang has highlighted racial discrimination in the
United States as what it says is an example of Washington's hypocrisy,
and analysts said North Korea is likely to use King's case to resist
pressure over human rights.
"North Korea will likely highlight racism in the United States and use
it as a means to counter the United States' criticism of North Korea's
human rights situation, rather than engaging in negotiations with the
U.S.," said Lim Eul-chul, a professor of North Korean studies at South
Korea's Kyungnam University.
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North Korea highlights racism in the United States to cast a negative
light on it, and to make the point that the United States, which
regularly points to human rights conditions in other countries, is in no
position to do so, said Rachel Minyoung Lee of the U.S.-based Stimson
Center.
North Korea's foreign ministry cited racial discrimination, among other
ills, in a statement on Tuesday calling it a "mockery of human rights
and deception on the international community" for the United States to
call Thursday's meeting on human rights.
"Not content with conniving at and fostering racial discrimination,
gun-related crimes, child maltreatment and forced labour rampant in its
society, the U.S. has imposed unethical human rights standards on other
countries and fomented internal unrest and confusion," the statement
said.
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![](../images/081623PIX/news_r12.jpg)
U.S. Private Travis T. King (wearing a
black shirt and black cap) is seen in this picture taken during a
tour of the tightly controlled Joint Security Area (JSA) on the
border between the two Koreas, at the truce village of Panmunjom,
South Korea, July 18, 2023. Sarah Leslie/Handout via REUTERS/File
Photo
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Aug/16/images/ads/current/atlantabank_quarter_FAIR_2023.png)
In 2018, Pyongyang released a "White Paper on Human Rights
Violations in the U.S.", which accused the administration of Donald
Trump of aggravating the "racial discrimination and misanthropy"
already "inherent to the social system of the U.S.", citing white
supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
During the protests after the police killing of George Floyd in
2020, North Korean officials cited "extreme racists" in America and
criticised authorities' response for threatening to "unleash even
dogs for suppression".
In a report at the time, C. Harrison Kim, a professor at the
University of Hawaii, told NK News, a Seoul-based site that monitors
North Korea, that although the relationship had waned, Pyongyang's
"alliance with the Black Power movement was a very real thing".
In 1969 Pyongyang hosted American author and activist Eldridge
Cleaver, head of international affairs at the Black Panther Party (BPP),
who wrote that North Korea and its "great leader" had "heightened
our consciousness to a level that makes us equal to the task of
dealing with our number one enemy, the U.S. imperialist aggressors”.
North Korean state media has its own history of issuing racially
charged statements.
In 2014, the state news agency published a report saying then-U.S.
President Barack Obama "looks like an African native monkey with a
black face", among other quotes comparing him to an animal.
A landmark 2014 U.N. report on North Korean human rights concluded
that North Korean security chiefs - and possibly leader Kim Jong Un
himself - should face justice for overseeing a state-controlled
system of Nazi-style atrocities.
That report included allegations that North Korea conducts forced
abortions on women suspected to have been impregnated by men in
China, driven by an underlying belief in a “pure Korean race” in
North Korea to which mixed-race children are considered a
contamination of its “pureness”.
(Reporting by Josh Smith and Soo-hyang Choi. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
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