"In 1988, the North Korean Ambassador to the United Nations wrote to the Minnesota Lawyers International Human Rights Committee that violations of human rights do not take place and are ‘unthinkable' in North Korea. In 1994, an official publication, The People's Korea, proclaimed, ‘...there is no human rights problem in our Republic either from the institutional or from the legal point of view.' North Korean diplomats at the United Nations in Geneva continue to deny that there are any -any - violations of human rights in Korea."

Hawk goes on to list sources that say the opposite, including his own detailed research. He documents the "wholesale denial of fundamental rights and freedoms," and points readers to:

• the 1988 Minnesota Lawyers/Human Rights Watch Report
• the annual human rights reports by the U.S. Department of State..
• various reports by Amnesty International and
• Human Rights Watch
• Chosun Journal, http://chosunjournal.com/
• the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights, http://nknet.org/
• Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (http://nkhumanrights.or.kr/)
• the annual White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea published by Korea Institute for National Unification.

Believers will want to add to that list the findings of Christian organizations like Voice of the Martyrs and Open Doors, that continue to list North Korea as the place where, in all the world, Christians are most oppressed.