From 1948 through 1987 the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was ruled by Kim Il-sung, an absolute communist dictator who has turned his country into an Orwellian state. People were so tightly controlled in all their activities, and those visitors that were allowed in were so managed, that comparatively little independent information about the regime's purges, executions, and concentration and forced labor camps filtered out of the country. Nonetheless, through defectors, escapees, agents, Korean War refugees, and analyses of Korean publications and documents, a hazy picture emerges of systematic democide little different than that carried out in the first decades of the Soviet Union or early communist China.
Perhaps from 710,000 to slightly over 3,500,000 people have been murdered, with a mid-estimate of almost 1,600,000. But these figures are little more than educated guesses. In this case Kim's thought control over all his people and their foreign and domestic communications has protected him and his party from nothing more than deep suspicion about having committed democide so enormous as to be megamurder. But given the nature of his society and what bits and pieces have come out about his purges, labor camps, and executions, there is enough evidence to at least indict him and his party for this crime against humanity.
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