Process Paper After learning about the 2014 National History Day theme: Rights and Responsibilities in History

our teacher gave us topics to choose from, but we had already something in mind, North Korean and its citizens rights. We chose North Korea because we know South Koreans and were interested in their countrys history, and they are not happy about North Korea. We ended up with the title: The Denial of Stated Rights and the Imposition of Harsh Responsibilities: Life under the North Korean Government Following the Rise of Kim Il Sung. As we researched North Koreas history, we learned its citizens were ruled under a communist dictator. We went to libraries to check out books on North Korea, the Korean War, and Communism. Furthermore, we visited the archives of Nixon Presidential Library, where we mostly found information on a spy plane shot down by North Korea during the Nixon presidency. We also found some good web sources and pictures even though North Korea is such a secluded country. We wrote annotations in our bibliography. We interviewed Daniel Jackson who taught a North Korean diplomats son English in Romania, Ralph Johnson, an infantry man after the Korean War who patrolled the DMZ, and Mr. D.H. a North Korean who escaped after the Korean War aged eleven with his sister. Their valuable information affirmed that North Korea has developed a system of government and ideological indoctrination that results in the denial of its citizens stated rights and imposes harsh responsibilities on North Koreans. We organized the sections of our web site. We designed the framework as follows: introduction, background, rights and responsibilities, and consequences. We focused on the religious and travel rights, and the peoples responsibility to the army and government, and the following three consequences: economic hardship, starvation in North Korea, and labor camps. Next, we searched for good quotes that were relevant to our point of view. Designing the website

wasnt as hard as we thought it might be, thanks to Weebly. Finally, we wrote our Process Paper and completed our Annotated Bibliography. Through our research we realized that North Korea is a failing communist dictatorship that has existed for about seventy years under the control of the Kim family. The trauma of the Korean War brought about a "garrison" mentality in North Korean society, in which its citizens have very few rights and a heavy responsibility to maintain it as a "garrison state." Their constitution guarantees certain rights such as freedom of religion, travel, and of speech, but in reality the citizens are very restricted in travel and get arrested or executed for any speech that opposes the government. They also spend a large amount of their life serving or supporting the large military and their main responsibility is to honor their leader as their religion. Presently, the people of North Korea continue to endure the denial their stated rights, are imposed with harsh responsibilities, and continue to suffer the human rights abuses that will take many years to heal.