A/HRC/25/CRP.1 • One witness who spoke to the Commission was born in Pyongyang, but after her father was executed in the mid-1950s under suspicions of having been a collaborator with the South during the Korean War, she and the rest of the family were expelled to the North Hamgyong Province because of their low songbun.403 332. Many of the Koreans who came to the DPRK from Japan were not allowed to reside in Pyongyang or other cities. • Ms Chiba explained to the Commission: “[A]mong the 93,000 people – people were classified into different ranks and classes, and depending on the classes people were sent to mountains. Many Japanese people were sent to mountains, they were not able to live in cities.”404 333. The effects of food shortages are felt more keenly by more vulnerable populations, which was particularly the case during the famine of the 1990s. The public distribution system, which allocated all legal rations of cereals, determined people’s entitlements to food on the basis of their age or professional status. Another dimension of the famine was the geographic variance in availability of food. Pyongyang and the surrounding areas where most of the elite resided fared better than more remote areas, particularly the industrial northeastern region of the country.405 334. Although the Socialist Labor Law guarantees the right to choose one’s profession, in practice the state plays a predominant role in determining a citizen’s employment. • For example, a prisoner of war from the ROK, was re-educated and then married a DPRK woman with low songbun. He had two sons. One died but his other son was not allowed to join the military or to go to university. He reported to the Commission that children of miners become miners and go to mining vocational school.406 335. For university graduates, the Bureau of Staff of the regional committee of the Korean Workers’ Party determines who gets placed in a managerial or technical post. In some cases, the Party’s Central Bureau of Staff must be consulted and the Secretariat must sign off. Factors that are considered include songbun, gender, physical ability, academic qualifications and other lifestyle matters.407 336. For high school graduates and discharged soldiers, the Labor Department of the regional People’s Committee determines work assignments. For manual labor jobs such as mining, road and railroad construction, group allocations are made. In 2003, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights expressed concern “that the right to work may not be fully assured in the [DPRK’s] present system of compulsory state-allocated employment, which is contrary to the right of the individual to freely choose his/her career or his/her workplace.”408 403 404 405 406 407 408 94 TGC001. Tokyo Public Hearing, 30 August 2013, morning (02:04:41). For more detail on the impact of discrimination on access to food, see section IV.D. TSH051 explained that people with low songbun cannot go to teachers college because they would be influencing children, but they can go to technical colleges which include medical school. TBG015. E/C.12/1/Add.95.