Indoctrination is relentless and pervasive. This starts in early childhood, as children enter school. They are taught explicitly to idolise the Kim dynasty, to rote learn and internalise the regime’s position of history while fostering a militaristic outlook. This is across all subject matter, from history to the formulation of mathematics exercises. Extreme even by the standards of authoritarian countries, the extent to which North Korea has been successful in this indoctrination is remarkable. Besides this, the country runs a system of kwanliso, penal camps – to use a more common descriptor, its gulags. It is into these that presumed enemies of the state – men, women and children alike – are deposited; A report by the International Bar Association claimed that the camps perpetrated ten out of eleven of the crimes against humanity listed in the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
