Database Center for North Korean Human Rights

Description

The Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB) is a nonprofit, non-governmental organization based in Seoul, South Korea, working on human rights in North Korea. It was founded in 2003 to address North Korean human rights, redress for past wrongs and support for victims. It aims to heal the conflict, wounds and hatred caused by Korea’s division and to build a rights-based community between North and South Koreans.

NKDB conducts large-scale surveys and interviews with North Korean defectors, documenting human rights violations they experienced or witnessed. Its Unified Human Rights Database now records more than 88,000 violations and over 57,000 related individuals, drawn from testimonies, official data and published sources. It publishes annual white papers on North Korean human rights, religious freedom and the resettlement of defectors, and runs a North Korean Human Rights Archive.

The organization provides psychological counseling, social work and resettlement support to torture survivors, trafficking victims, former prisoners of war and abductees, and runs an education institute offering academies on human rights, unification and counseling. It advocates internationally, monitoring Universal Periodic Review and Sustainable Development Goals commitments, presenting to UN human rights mechanisms, and sending reports to governments and North Korean missions abroad. It works with civil society groups, the United Nations and foreign governments to press for accountability and victims’ rights, while aiming to remain a non-political, non-religious, non-profit body funded mainly by public donations.