북한의 재난관리 법제와 구조적 한계 : 인권문제를 중심으로

Abstract

Annual natural disasters threaten North Korea. In the mid-1990s, a series of natural disasters plunged North Korean society into famine. To overcome this, Kim Jong-un enacted the Disaster Prevention, Rescue, and Recovery Act, a comprehensive disaster management law to respond to natural disasters from the beginning of his administration, and established the National Emergency Disaster Prevention and Countermeasures Committee based on this law. However, climate change, degraded forests, inadequate and dilapidated infrastructure, lack of disaster management professionals, and formalism among officials make it difficult to respond to natural disasters efficiently due to weak structural conditions before they occur. In 2020, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, North Korea enacted the Emergency Prevention and Control Act and reviewed the crisis situation and enacted the Crisis Response Act. Despite the efforts of the North Korean authorities, natural disasters occurring in North Korea every year cause the same damage over and over again. This indicates the structural limitations of the disaster management legislation. The structural features of the political, economic, and social systems that North Korea has historically built inhibit disaster management legislation and create human rights issues. Therefore, it is advisable to understand North Korea’s natural disasters as complex disasters that combine with political, economic, and social factors to cause great damage, and the South Korean government should approach North Korea’s natural disasters as a “task” to solve human rights issues in North Korean society rather than as a “cooperation.”