What can anyone do to change the world? Can any of us, for example, strike a blow that matters against a repugnant regime such as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or its Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un? Must sensible people patiently await the March of History? One Australian who has not been prepared to wait patiently is Michael Kirby, formerly of the High Court and now president of the Commission of Inquiry established by the Human Rights Council of the United Nations to investigate crimes against humanity in North Korea.

Kirby recently delivered a report on his inquiry to the Lowy Institute. He found that the North Korean government’s crimes against humanity are ‘without parallel in the contemporary world’ and can only be compared with the Nazi Holocaust. They entail enslavement, torture, imprisonment, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and knowingly causing prolonged starvation. Kirby’s UN report describes how every North Korean home is fitted with a speaker through which government propaganda is blared. Children are forced to make weekly confessions of their political failings and to denounce the failings of other children. Hundreds of thousands of political prisoners have died in prison camps.

The report revives the almost forgotten word ‘totalitarian’ to describe North Korea. It is far more than merely authoritarian. It aims to control every detail of life. It purports to change human nature and create a New Man. The report also explores the extent to which it practises genocide. The UN definition of genocide is the destroying of national, ethnic, racial or religious groups. Accordingly the Kirby report considers the destruction of Christianity to have been genocidal. (In 1950 about 50 per cent of the population of North Korea was Christian. In 2002 it was 0.016 per cent.) But the principal targets of the regime have been political. The report suggests a new word, politicide, to cover the extermination of political groups.

One of the most shocking details was the forced famines in which at least a million, and possibly twice as many, died. Twenty-seven per cent of babies are born with stunted brains through lack of nutriment. Meanwhile the regime has concentrated on its nuclear programme (it has some 30 nuclear warheads.) If some sceptical critics found the report exaggerated, they did not include readers from the old Soviet satellites. We understand perfectly, they told Kirby. It’s worse in North Korea than it was in the Soviet empire but it’s a matter of degree only. If you want to understand Stalinism, read the Kirby report.

The North Korean responses to Kirby were predictable. The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) declared that he had made up his so-called evidence, that the supporting ‘witnesses’ were ‘human scum’, and that Kirby himself was ‘a disgusting old lecher’ and homosexual. Other critics questioned the usefulness of the Kirby report. Yes, the regime is monstrous, but what can be done about it? It is all very well for the report to pronounce: ‘These crimes must cease immediately’. But the North Korean leaders do not look to Kirby for advice. When Kirby wrote to the Supreme Leader warning him of his liability for his crimes under international law, Kim Jong-un simply ignored the letter. Kirby also asked the UN Security Council to refer the North Korean leaders to the International Criminal Court. But China vetoed the proposal, as Russia had vetoed a similar resolution to refer the Syrian government to the ICC. One critic wrote in the Australian press that intelligent people simply don’t know where to look in their embarrassment when Kirby rants on against North Korea. The same critic even questioned Kirby’s integrity. Kirby, he said, tells us passionately what we already know to be true but has nothing practical to say about how to change North Korea protected by China.

Kirby is not so sure. Many learned experts (‘Sovietologists’) told us that the Soviet Union was here to stay and that no exposure of what Solzhenitsyn called ‘The Lie’ on which it was based would make any difference to it. These experts kept repeating this mantra until the moment the Soviet Union collapsed. They dismissed other views as the ravings of anti-Communist nutters. There are already many indications of radical instability in North Korea. How else to describe the execution as counter-revolutionary of the Supreme Leader’s uncle Jang Song-thaek and the purge of his ‘factional filth’? One recommendation in the Kirby report was that a station be set up in South Korea to monitor North Korean crimes against humanity. Almost immediately after his lecture to the Lowy Institute Kirby went back to South Korea to confer with its President and other leaders about measures to be taken to publicise the evils of the DPRK and destabilise it further.

Kirby told the Lowy Institute of his regret that although he took great pains to ensure that the report is written in readable English free of bureaucratese and UN-speak, he has not yet been able to find a publisher who will publish and market the report for the general public. Meanwhile he is planning a book of his own on the whole North Korean nightmare. He is not leaving it to the March of History.