North Korean “human rights” groups exposed as fronts for regime-change operation as Trump administration threatens their funding

Headlines in a number of publications decry the precarious situation of North Korean human rights groups caused by the withdrawal of funding by the Trump administration.

Under the headline “Another U.S. Funding Cut Threatens Human Rights in North Korea,” The Diplomat, for example, complained in late March that such groups were experiencing their “biggest crisis.”

This has come about because the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has had its funding frozen by Trump spending Czar Elon Musk.

The NED was established in the 1980s by the Reagan administration with the purpose of “countering communist influence” and subverting socialist countries.

The organization, which operates across the globe, carries a picture of Reagan on its website.

In Ukraine alone it was funding 81 projects costing $9 million.

In 2024, the NED was funding 25 projects aimed at the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK-North Korea) costing $4 million.

Virtually all the funding of the NED came from the U.S. government, although nominally it was a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO).

The Diplomat article stated that “one major beneficiary of funds from the NED are groups documenting and helping to stop human rights abuses in North Korea.”

The website of one of these groups, “Liberty in North Korea,” announced that “many groups in South Korea have come to rely on funding from international sources. As U.S. interest in the North Korea issue had grown in D.C., grants through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the State Department had become consistent and reliable sources of funding. Unlike those sometimes offered by the South Korean government, these grants covered not only the cost of activities, but also staff salaries, making it possible for these groups to operate sustainably.”

Now some of the so-called North Korean human rights groups are announcing “emergency fundraisers.” Finally, the moment of truth has arrived for the North Korean human rights crusaders; that they are not independent entities but really funded by the U.S. government and part of a regime-change operation by the U.S.

It is not for us to speculate about infighting between different factions of the U.S. ruling class or what may be a restructuring of U.S. regime-change operations.

U.S. imperialism may well be undergoing a reset which appears to be based on the idea that regime-change operations and interventions in foreign countries must bring monetary benefits to the U.S. in the short term as well as medium and long term.

Some say that the U.S. is shifting away from soft power (propaganda) to hard power (military aggression and sanctions). Of course, the U.S. has in fact always used hard power and soft power, often in tandem. Whatever the real reasons and motivations for this apparent change of policy, it has adversely affected the North Korean human rights industry liberals and grifters who ride the North Korea human rights gravy train.

It is a very pertinent question as to what real benefits that regime change in countries like the DPRK, Syria, Iran, Cuba and Belarus (just to name a few) would actually bring the ordinary American citizen into the street? The answer is none at all!

Citizens in countries like the U.S. and UK have seen welfare benefits cut at the same time that huge amounts of money have been spent on “regime-change” operations and “human rights” campaigns aimed at the DPRK, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and other countries that adopt socialist policies or seek to establish their own economic sovereignty.

For years, taxpayers in the U.S. and UK and EU countries have been bankrolling the ambitions of the U.S. “deep state” and their trendy liberal hangers on to overthrow governments in foreign countries.

The constant propaganda against the DPRK on the issue of human rights is a serious impediment to the improvement of U.S.-DPRK relations and meaningful dialogue. Achieving peace in Korea, removing the threat of war and improving U.S.-DPRK relations could benefit ordinary U.S. citizens.

For one thing, it would remove a potential nuclear threat and enable cutbacks in military spending, which means the government could spend more on social and economic development programs in the U.S.

Since the beginning of the second Trump administration in January 2025, one undeniable fact has emerged clearly, namely, that the so-called North Korean human rights lobby, like LINK (Liberty in North Korea), are really funded by the U.S. and are a tool of U.S. foreign policy and a tool for regime change.

Of course, this was always the case, but these facts were hidden from view for a very long time by a compliant mainstream media.

All the talk of “human rights abuses” and “prison camps” in the DPRK are primarily inventions of those paid by the U.S. to make propaganda against the DPRK, a country that humiliated the U.S. during the Korean War and has been paying the price ever since.

The U.S. goal is to ridicule and isolate North Korea, deny it support and sympathy, and then foment regime change.

This was a tactic used against the former Soviet Union with great success but has failed in the case of North Korea because its leaders mobilized the country’s defense during the Korean War against U.S.-ROK invading forces and helped establish an independent economy.

The U.S. media have left no stone unturned in their efforts to damage the DPRK’s reputation and is incapable of any objectivity or balance when covering North Korea. Nothing positive can be said about its government, and no effort can be made to try to explain its durability.

Entirely erased is the role that the U.S. played in the 1950s in bombing North Korea nearly back to the Stone Age while committing legions of atrocities with its Republic of Korea (ROK) allies, and how Kim Il-Sung oversaw the rebuilding of North Korea in the aftermath of the devastation.

It was once said that human rights are like a political or ideological football; if you kick the ball marked human rights abuses into your opponent’s goal, you score a goal and can win the game. Allegations of human rights abuses are a good way to smear and demonize an opponent.

Most propaganda has some truth to it and there are certainly some human rights violations that occur in North Korea—like in almost all countries around the world—but the so-called North Korean human rights groups and U.S. media rely heavily on materials from defectors who are of questionable credibility.

Some of these defectors were found guilty in the DPRK of serious crimes such as rape and murder. A majority were paid handsomely to relocate in South Korea and denounce the North Korean government. It is not surprising then that many have been shown to be lying.

A 2013 article in The Guardian headlined “Why do North Korean defector testimonies so often fall apart?” stated that “cash payments in return for interviews with North Korean refugees have been standard practice in the field for years.”

Those who defect from the DPRK to South Korea can receive up to $600,000 as a reward from the South Korean authorities.

In 2015, Shin Dong Hyuk (Shin In Geun), a celebrity defector who was paraded before the UN and had a picture taken with George Bush, admitted that his story about imprisonment in the DPRK was made up.

Shin’s account of his time in the DPRK was ghostwritten by American writer Blaine Harden to whom she admitted to lying to.

A DPRK court had convicted Shin of rape but this fact was ignored by the U.S. human rights NGOs and UN.

Surely the UN should have at least carried out an investigation into Shin before putting him on a pedestal.

Yeonmi Park (Park Yeon Mi), another celebrity, has been caught several times uttering falsehoods, such as claiming that, in the DPRK, trains have to be pushed uphill by the passengers if there is a power cut.

This has been proved to be physically impossible.

Park also claimed that she had seen “dead bodies floating down rivers” in the DPRK but other eyewitnesses stated that this was not true.

Defectors have been behind many blatant fake news about the DPRK, such as different people supposedly being executed only for them to reappear months later very much alive.

Defectors have also staged provocative actions against the DPRK such as sending balloons laden with propaganda leaflets and U.S. dollars into the territory of the DPRK despite many warnings from the DPRK that this was a dangerous and provocative action likely to undermine peace on the Korean peninsula.

It was the sending of balloons by defectors who were backed by an NED-funded organization in South Korea that caused the DPRK to blow up in the inter-Korean liaison in Kaesong in 2020.

Supposed satellite pictures of “labor camps” and “concentration camps” in the DPRK have actually been proven to be pictures of farm villages and factories.

The plain and simple truth is that organizations like LINK, the UK-based Korea Future Initiative and South Korean-based NGOs are part of a vast U.S.-led conspiracy against socialism in People’s Korea and are funded by the U.S. government.

A few years ago the website of LINK openly revealed that its revenue increased by 27% but expenditures increased by 49 %, a considerable gap.

In 2024 LINK had a gap of nearly $1 million between revenue and expenditure. Who was plugging that gap?

Now we know where its money was coming from: the U.S. government or, more precisely, U.S. taxpayers.

The predecessor to the UK-based Korea Future Initiative, the “European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea,” used to operate out of an office block in Croydon where the other occupiers were major UK government departments, such as His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, a coincidence perhaps?

Interestingly, according to the website www.salary.com, the salaries of LINK staff averaged $86,709 per year or £65,000, a pay rate of more than £1,000 per week, well above the average wage for a British worker. Some salaries at LINK are as high as $99,000, nice work if you can get it as they say!

LINK’s account does not actually disclose what proportion of its budget is spent on staff salaries.

LINK is a very active organization. It is organized on university campuses in both the UK and U.S., carrying out propaganda against the DPRK. It recruits students to campaign against the DPRK.

There is a much darker side to LINK. Founder Adrian Hong, a Mexican-born Korean-American who had no connection at all with the DPRK at all, went on to found an outfit called “Free Joseon.”

On February 22, 2019, just days before the second U.S.-DPRK summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, Free Joseon, under the command of Hong, carried out an attack on the DPRK Embassy in Madrid, Spain.

They assaulted staff members and their families, injuring women and children and vandalizing the embassy.

Staff were held hostage by Free Joseon but, fortunately, a female member of the staff escaped and was able to raise the alarm.

The timing of the attack itself was curious, raising an unanswered question as to whether this was really an attempt by the U.S. “deep state” to derail the U.S.-DPRK summit.

The DPRK at the time described the incident as a “grave terrorist attack”

Adrian Hong himself was not arrested but another member of the gang, ex-U.S. Marine Christopher Ahn, was arrested in the U.S. but, to date, has not been extradited to Spain.

The DPRK Embassy in Madrid issued a statement which pointed out “right after the case, the Spanish government issued interim investigative results to the effect that a gang composed of over 10 Americans illegally intruded into the DPRK embassy in broad daylight and transmitted data they stole to the FBI of the United States. The government also urged under the extradition treaty with the U.S. that the U.S. should arrest and hand over criminals who had fled to the U.S. However, the U.S. has not intensified the investigation into American criminals involved in the case nor handed over Christopher Ahn whom it ‘arrested’ for mere form’s sake.”

As for Christopher Ahn, he is an apparent criminal who deserves severe punishment as he raided the inviolable diplomatic mission of a state together with members of the anti-DPRK plot-breeding body and inflicted massive mental and physical strains and material damage on diplomats and their family members.

The incident illustrates the real nature of the so-called North Korean human rights crusaders, and how they are really politiccal zealots who work in collaboration with the U.S. and South Korean governments in an attempt to undermine or sabotage the independent North Korean government.

Another sinister aspect to the so-called North Korean human rights groups is that may be responsible for human trafficking and people-smuggling.

This author was told by two different sources, including a former researcher of the UK Home Office, that in fact these “human rights” groups received a monetary reward for each DPRK citizen that they remove from the DPRK. In other words, they were engaged in kidnapping and human trafficking at the behest of the U.S.

Of course, dirty tricks, covert operations, smears and propaganda against the DPRK will not disappear and there is a possibility that the cuts to the budgets for regime change in the DPRK will be reversed either by the Trump administration itself or by the U.S. government (recently the freeze on Radio Free Asia funding was overturned by a judge).

However, one thing that cannot be erased or reversed is the fact that the so-called North Korean “human rights groups” were nurtured by U.S. authorities.

---

CovertAction Magazine is made possible by subscriptions, orders and donations from readers like you.

Blow the Whistle on U.S. Imperialism

Click the whistle and donate

When you donate to CovertAction Magazine, you are supporting investigative journalism. Your contributions go directly to supporting the development, production, editing, and dissemination of the Magazine.

CovertAction Magazine does not receive corporate or government sponsorship. Yet, we hold a steadfast commitment to providing compensation for writers, editorial and technical support. Your support helps facilitate this compensation as well as increase the caliber of this work.

Please make a donation by clicking on the donate logo above and enter the amount and your credit or debit card information.

CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and your gift is tax-deductible for federal income purposes. CAI’s tax-exempt ID number is 87-2461683.

We sincerely thank you for your support.

---

Disclaimer: The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author(s). CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI), including its Board of Directors (BD), Editorial Board (EB), Advisory Board (AB), staff, volunteers and its projects (including CovertAction Magazine) are not responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. This article also does not necessarily represent the views the BD, the EB, the AB, staff, volunteers, or any members of its projects.

Differing viewpoints: CAM publishes articles with differing viewpoints in an effort to nurture vibrant debate and thoughtful critical analysis. Feel free to comment on the articles in the comment section and/or send your letters to the Editors, which we will publish in the Letters column.

Copyrighted Material: This web site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a not-for-profit charitable organization incorporated in the State of New York, we are making such material available in an effort to advance the understanding of humanity’s problems and hopefully to help find solutions for those problems. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. You can read more about ‘fair use’ and US Copyright Law at the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Republishing: CovertAction Magazine (CAM) grants permission to cross-post CAM articles on not-for-profit community internet sites as long as the source is acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original CovertAction Magazine article. Also, kindly let us know at info@CovertActionMagazine.com. For publication of CAM articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: info@CovertActionMagazine.com.

By using this site, you agree to these terms above.

---

About the Author