2025 is shaping up to be an annus horribilis for the dedicated community of North Korean human rights activists. The past two months have seen U.S. funding sources and programs decimated in the wake of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s aggressive federal cost-cutting initiative. Now support from the Korean government in Seoul threatens to be short-lived, if odds-on favorite Lee Jae-myung wins the special presidential election and brings back the Democratic Party’s traditional hands-off stance on North Korean human rights issues.
The first serious challenge faced by North Korea human rights advocates is the U.S. government’s virtual shut-down of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), formerly one of the largest funders of North Korean human rights NGOs. At the beginning of February the NED had its funds frozen, leaving some of the most respected North Korean human rights groups in “survival mode.” According to one leading activist, the entire field of North Korean human rights advocacy groups was left at risk of imminent shut-down without this key source of support.
Important quasi-governmental think tanks that have worked on North Korean issues were soon put under similar threat. The U.S. Institute of Peace, with its programming on peacebuilding in North Korea, has been effectively shut down, its website rendered inaccessible. The Wilson Center is also in the process of being closed. It hosts the North Korea International Documentation Project, and provides highly valuable analysis, including by highlighting the plight of North Korean refugees in China.
Meanwhile, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia are on the brink of survival, with their grants terminated by an executive order that is currently being challenged in the courts and most staff placed on unpaid leave. These two organizations have played an outsized role in delivering outside information into North Korea for decades through Korean-language radio broadcasts. They also regularly publish articles highlighting North Korean human rights violations. They are bodies that cannot easily be replaced. China’s state media has been unsurprisingly gleeful at the prospect of these outlets’ imminent demise, and the Kim regime no doubt feels the same way.
This collapse in U.S. support is mystifying. Support for North Korean human rights was until recently a bipartisan concern, one of the few remaining issues to command support among both Republicans and Democrats. In fact, current U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio used to be a particularly outspoken opponent of the Kim regime. Yet in two short months that support has utterly dissipated amid the disruptive cost-cutting and America-first nationalism of Trump and Musk.
With Yoon’s impeachment, a new – if far less unprecedented – threat is also looming. Polls show Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung with an overwhelming advantage in the upcoming presidential election, set for June 3 following the final impeachment of President Yoon Suk-yeol. If Lee wins the election, the North Korean human rights community will face a further challenge. In the South Korean context, left-wing politicians have long tended to soft-pedal the North Korean human rights issue and erect barriers for advocates.
Lee is no different in this respect. Like his left-wing predecessors, he clearly favors engagement rather than confrontation with the North. If elected, he would be expected to resume the policies of previous President Moon Jae-in: prohibiting leaflet drops, failing to appoint personnel to focus on North Korean Human Rights abuses, and refusing to condemn North Korean human rights abuses in international fora. In the wake of Trump’s withdrawal of official support, North Korean human rights activists would experience a similar withdrawal of support from Seoul.
All this is happening while the suffering on the ground in North Korea continues undiminished. In recent years, the treatment of North Korean escapees in China has deteriorated, with hundreds of North Koreans being repatriated in the last few years. Returnees often face imprisonment, torture and other forms of abuse. The Kim regime’s control of the population has become increasingly repressive, while the economy continues to stagnate, with many struggling to access sustenance and medical care.
Even with political support in Seoul and Washington, D.C., it would be hard for advocates to maintain a spotlight on North Korea’s abuses in the current period of global conflict and disruption. With the U.S. withdrawing from the field, and – if Lee is elected president – South Korea reverting to the Democratic Party’s engagement-oriented norm, the challenge will be that much greater. New ideas, new strategies, and new objectives will be needed. Above all new sources of funding will also be required for organizations to survive.