A/HRC/25/CRP.1 115. In August 1956, the members of the Yanan Faction openly criticized Kim Il-sung during the Party’s Central Committee Plenum. According to a Soviet account, one official “attacked Kim Il-Sung for concentrating entire state and Party power in his hands”.47 The leaders of the Yanan faction who had tried to orchestrate the “August Conspiracy” were out-maneuvered by Kim Il-sung who isolated them before purging the rank and file of the faction members.48 116. In response to the criticism within the Party against his rule, Kim Il-sung expanded the Ministry of Internal Affairs to undertake what became one of the DPRK’s first large scale purges. On 30 May 1957, the Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea adopted the resolution “On the Transformation of the Struggle with Counter-Revolutionary Elements into an All-people All-Party movement” (May 30th Resolution) to evaluate the political background of every adult in the DPRK. These developments were to become a turning point for the DPRK. Earlier purges had differed in that they had targeted specific groups of people, such as landlords, Christians and highranking Party members who were potential rivals to Kim Il-sung.49 This purge, lasting until 1960, resulted in thousands of executions, often in public. Pang Hak-se, the Minister of Public Security, told a Soviet diplomat that 100,000 people were exposed as “hostile and reactionary elements” between 1958 and 1959.50 In 1959, the Ambassador of the German Democratic Republic to the DPRK also reported to his capital that, “In recent times, the persecution of comrades who express a different opinion has been increased. They are being sent to rural areas, mines, hydropower dams and also into prison camps.”51 In order to sustain the large-scale purges of the late 1950s, a system of secret political prison camps was set up, which was later expanded.52 117. The May 30th Resolution effectively launched the Songbun system. Songbun translates literally as “ingredient” but effectively means background. It is a system through which the state categorizes citizens of the DPRK into classes based on their perceived political allegiance to the regime, ascertained by reference to family background and 47 48 49 50 51 52 Record of conversation between the First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy G. Ye. Samsonov and the departmental head of the Korean Workers’ Party Central Committee Ko Hui-nam from Soviet archives. Andrei Lankov, From Stalin to Kim Il Sung, p. 169. According to the DPRK’s official biography of Kim Il-sung: “At a plenary meeting of the Party Central Committee held in August 1956, Kim Il Sung took resolute measures to expose and eliminate the anti-Party, counterrevolutionary factionalists who flew in the face of the Party. … The antiJapanese revolutionary veterans and other attendants at the meeting delivered a telling blow to this desperate challenge. The sectarian group subjected to exposure and destruction during the meeting was not a mere faction but an atrocious anti-Party and counterrevolutionary clique that attempted to overthrow the Party and the government in collusion with the US imperialists.” Kim Il Sung: Condensed Biography, pp. 200-201. Andrei Lankov, “The Repressive System and Political Control in North Korea”, English version of a chapter from Severnaia Koreia: vchera i segodnia (North Korea: Yesterday and Today), published in Russian in 1995 (Moscow, Vostochnaia literatura). Available from http://northkorea.narod.ru/control_lankov.htm. Andrei Lankov notes public executions became a customary practice in the DPRK in the 1950s. He cites Soviet archives for Pang Hak-se’s conversation with Counsellor V. I. Pelishenko. “Kim Takes Control: The “Great Purge” in North Korea, 1956-1960”, Korean Studies, vol. 26, No. 1 (2002), pp. 98-105. Cited from a diplomatic cable sent in 1959 by the Ambassador of German Democratic Republic (GDR). In 1957, the GDR Embassy already noted information according to which students who had returned from Poland had been sent to prison camps in Pyongyang that were guarded by soldiers. For a citation of the original German texts, which were found in GDR archives after reunification, see Liana Kang-Schmitz, “Nordkoreas Umgang mit Abhängigkeit und Sicherheitsrisiko”, pp. 225-226. See section IV.D.3. 29