North Korean Human Rights Activists and Networks

The evidentiary weight of North Korean defectors' testimony depicting crimes against humanity has drawn considerable attention from the international community in recent years. Despite the attention to North Korean human rights, what remains unexamined is the rise of the transnational advocacy network, which drew attention to the issue in the first place. Andrew Yeo and Danielle Chubb explore the 'hard case' that is North Korea and challenge existing conceptions of transnational human rights networks, how they operate, and why they provoke a response from even the most recalcitrant regimes. In this volume, leading experts and activists assemble original data from multiple language sources, including North Korean sources, and adopt a range of sophisticated methodologies to provide valuable insight into the politics, strategy, and policy objectives of North Korean human rights activism.

1. Adaptive activism: transnational advocacy networks and the case of North Korea Danielle Chubb and Andrew Yeo; Part I. Domestic Discourse and Activism: 2. A prisoner's dilemma of movement nationalization: North Korean human rights in South Korea, 1990–2016 Jacob Reidhead; 3. North Korean human rights discourse and advocacy in the United States Andrew Yeo; 4. Linking abductions activism to North Korean human rights advocacy in Japan and abroad Celeste L. Arrington; 5. North Korean human rights discourse and advocacy: the European dimension Rajiv Narayan; Part II. Transnational Networks: 6. NGOs as discursive catalysts at the United Nations and beyond: an activist's perspective Joanna Hosaniak; 7. Human rights diffusion in North Korea: the impact of transnational legal mobilization Patricia Goedde; 8. The politics of networking: behind the public face of the transnational North Korean human rights movement Danielle Chubb; Part III. North Korean Voices: 9. The emergence of five North Korean defector-activists in transnational activism Jiyoung Song; 10. North Korea responds to transnational human rights advocacy: state discourse and ersatz civil society Sandra Fahy; 11. Breaking through: North Korea's information underground and transnational advocacy networks Jieun Baek; 12. Conclusion: the contentious terrain of North Korean human rights activism Andrew Yeo and Danielle Chubb.

Andrew Yeo is an Associate Professor of Politics and Director of Asian Studies at Catholic University of America, Washington DC. He is the author of Activists, Alliances, and Anti-US Base Protests (Cambridge, 2011) and co-editor of Living in an Age of Mistrust: An Interdisciplinary Study of Declining Trust and How to Get it Back (2017). He received his Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University.
Danielle Chubb is Senior Lecturer in International Relations and member of the POLIS research network at Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. She is the author of Contentious Activism and Inter-Korean Relations (2014). Before arriving at Deakin University in 2012, she worked as a Research Fellow at Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu, and completed her Ph.D. in International Relations at the Australian National University.