[3] Life for the other disabled under Kim Il Sung was "sad, if not horrible", according to North Korea scholar Fyodor Tertitskiy.
Under Article 2 of the CRC, "States Parties shall respect and ensure the rights set forth in the present Convention to each child within their jurisdiction without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the child's or their parent's or legal guardian's race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status" (emphasis added).
[7] In May 2017 the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of people with disabilities made a first official visit of eight days to North Korea.
[8] At a news conference at the end of her visit, the rapporteur, Catalina Devandas Aguilar, called for more attention to be given to disabled people in the country.
Since 2006 the General Assembly has consistently decried "continuing reports of violations of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons with disabilities, especially on the use of collective camps and of coercive measures that target the rights of a person with disabilities to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children."
[5] Disabled people, with the exception of veterans, have been relocated to places far away from cities since the rule of Kim Il Sung.
[4] In the early 2000s, it was reported that persons with disabilities in North Korea were locked away in camps, and "subjected to harsh and sub-human conditions".
Diagnosing pre-school aged children with hearing disabilities is very difficult because parents are unwilling to get them into testing.
[23] There is also a culture of families "hiding" their disabled children from the public lens, so the information that is available may not be accurate for every Deaf resident.
In 2003, a German man named Robert Grund came to North Korea as a representation of the World Federation of the Deaf.
His slogan is "nothing about us, without us", meaning that Deaf citizens of North Korea deserve to have a say in policies made for people with disabilities.