A Critical Examination of the Legal Legitimacy of North Korea’s “Crowd Reporting Law”: Focusing on the Case of Overseas Dispatched Workers

This study examines how North Korea’s Crowd Reporting Law infringes upon the fundamental rights of residents, including overseas dispatched workers, and whether it contradicts the North Korean Constitution as well as international human rights and labor standards (ICCPR, ICESCR, ILO core conventions). Since the “Arduous March,” North Korean authorities have successively enacted or revised legislation aimed at suppressing anti-socialist thought and external ideological influences, and as a consequence, the Crowd Reporting Law institutionalized inter-resident surveillance and penalized failures to report. By defining “abnormal phenomena” in overly broad and vague terms, this law fundamentally restricts freedom of expression, association, and privacy, leaving overseas dispatched workers perpetually vulnerable to charges of “anti-state” activity and punishments for non-reporting. Such practices stand in direct conflict with the “people’s freedom” provisions under the North Korean Constitution and seriously undermine key rights protected by international norms (ICCPR Articles 19, 21, and 22; ICESCR Articles 6 and 7; ILO core conventions). Moreover, North Korea’s “absolute priority on regime security” legal culture exacerbates these constitutional violations, highlighting an urgent need to reform the Crowd Reporting Law.