That was the message yesterday from geographer Associate Prof Bob Huish (38), of Dalhousie University, in Canada, who is visiting Dunedin as the Ron Lister Fellow in the University of Otago's geography department.
And at 5.15pm today he will give a public lecture on ``The world's darkest secret: Understanding geographies of corruption, conspiracy, and dissent in North Korea'' at Otago's Burns 2 lecture theatre, in Albany St.
Sanctions had been imposed on North Korea in response to human rights abuses, moves to develop long-range ballistic missiles, and continued nuclear testing, including a fifth underground nuclear blast a few days ago.
But sanctions needed to be rethought and more light should be shed on corruption and ``dark connections between offshore capital, sanctions and human rights abuses'', Prof Huish said.
Current sanctions had had no effect on changing the behaviour of Kim Jong Un's regime, or in improving human rights in North Korea. That was because the sanctions did not target the ``financial capital'' that supported the regime, and some overseas firms, including in the West, were profiting from their support.
North Korean defector testimony was ``haunting''.
``The narratives of abuse, degradation and extreme poverty are often beyond imagination.''
Any country that spent more than 25% of its gross domestic product on advancing nuclear weapons, that produced the most crystal methamphetamine in the world, and that locked up 200,000 of its own citizens in political prison camps, rightly deserved ``stern reprimand'' by the international community, he said.
Geographers found the secretive world of North Korea much more difficult to study than most other nations.
North Korean defector activists had an important role in potentially improving the country's ``grim'' human rights record and universities and citizens in other countries could raise awareness of what refugees from the North were saying, he said.
