Washington (CNN) -- Starvation. Execution. Imprisonment. Rape. Torture. In a human rights report, these can seem like distant concepts or dry statistics, but when told by the people who experience them first hand, they take on new meaning. That is why U.S. officials invited two young North Korean defectors to address a crowd at the State Department on Wednesday -- to share their personal experiences of abuse at the hands one of the world's most notorious regimes. Yeonmi Park's family was part of North Korea's ruling elite. Her early life was comfortable, and her family even enjoyed access to smuggled Hollywood films and South Korean television shows. From these, Park said, she learned how different life could be in other places, and she started to feel more repressed by the government's rules. "I remember wanting to be like Julia Roberts after watching the Pretty Woman," Park said. "But in North Korea, the regime restricts even what I can wear, so instead I made paper dolls and I made the clothes that I wanted to wear for them." When she was nine years old, Park remembers that one of friend's mothers was arrested for sharing DVDs and was publicly executed. The experience, she said, shocked her. READ: World reacts to U.S. torture report Many people in her world participated in the underground economy, including her father, a government official. In 2004, he was arrested for illegal trading, and was severely beaten. Park and her mother were ostracized, and fled to China where they underwent further hardships as one of countless North Korean immigrants, and she saw her mother raped. After a harrowing journey on foot to Mongolia, they finally made it to South Korea, where Park is now a university student. New clues point to N. Korea in Sony hack Joseph Kim also grew up new the China-North Korea border. Kim on North Korea's cult of personality After famine hit the region, Kim's family struggled to find enough food to eat. North Korea behind Sony Pictures hack? "Hunger is humiliation," Kim told the audience at the State Department. "Hunger is hopelessness." He watched his father die of starvation, after which his mother and sister left for China to find work. "At the time I was so young and naive it never occurred to me that it might -- they might never be able to make it back," said Kim. He never saw his sister again. His mother sold his sister to a man in China, thinking her fate there would be less cruel than a life back in North Korea. "This is my first time saying that in public," Kim said Wednesday after relaying the story, "mostly because I was afraid that people would judge my mom for what she did." "But I realized this is an important part of my story, that I hope illustrates how difficult and desperate the life is," Kim continued, "and how many North Korean mothers were forced to make this kind of heartbreaking decision." The event at the State Department is just the latest in a string of events aimed at drawing attention towards North Korea's dismal human rights record, as the international community works towards shaming, and potentially prosecuting officials there. Last month, a United Nations committee approved a draft resolution recommending the International Criminal Court take action against North Korea over a slew of human rights abuses. That resolution, which is non-binding but symbolically important, is expected to come up for a vote in the General Assembly this month. Earlier this year, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea published a detailed 400-page report documenting abuses, which it submitted to the International Criminal Court for review along with recommendation that North Korean officials face prosecution. That report accused the government of murder, kidnapping, torture, slavery, sexual violence, mass starvation and other abuses. It includes personal testimonies from people who experienced life inside North Korea's infamous prison camps, including that of a woman who claims a fellow female inmate was forced to drown her own baby in a bucket. Testimonies also reveal how prisoners suffered from chronic hunger, and would sometimes resort to eating rodents and lizards to survive. Following the release of the report, Michael Kirby, the committee's chairman, told reporters: "The suffering and tears of the people of North Korea demand action." The North Korean government is sensitive to accusations against them, and is quick deny these reports as they emerge. Representatives have claimed the U.S. and its allies are fabricating abuse claims to justify meddling in North Korea's internal affairs. In September, North Korea's Association for Human Rights Studies came out with its own rights report, which proclaims that North Korea has "the world's most advantageous human rights system," and makes no mention of the country's infamous forced labor camps. The North Korean government has also called out the U.S. government for what they see as hypocrisy when it comes to human rights abuses -- particularly in light of a new report released by the Senate on Tuesday, which details how the CIA tortured terror detainees. North Korea's state-run news agency KCNA said the use of such enhanced interrogation techniques is "inhuman" and called on the UN to investigate those offenses. And according to Yeonmi Park, the North Korean government views it as essential to control the narrative when it comes to information in the public sphere if it hopes to maintain the image of Kim Jong Un as an all-powerful leader. This was demonstrated recently when North Korea demanded Sony Pictures stop the release of the upcoming movie "The Interview," a comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco, whose characters are tasked by the CIA to assassinate Kim Jong Un. The North Korean government came under suspicion after Sony's systems were infiltrated by anonymous hackers. "I didn't even see the movie yet," Park said Wednesday when she was asked about the film's potential impact. "But it will be a really big sensation in North Korea if they see that movie."
Limiting to 46 countries before 1990, scholars find that fiscal decentralization, measured by the subnational share of total government spending ( Davoodi Zou, 1998 ) , has negative relationships with economic growth in developing countries, the finding further confirmed in the case of china, with data from 28 provinces before 1992 ( Zhang Zou, 1998 ) . In contrast, using a similar sample of 52 countries between 1997 and 2001, limi ( 2005 ) finds positive and significant relationships between fiscal decentralization and economic growth, consistent with some other studies. Taking into the extent of the independent taxing powers enjoyed by subnational governments, a study of 19 OECD countries show no significant relationships at all.
Legalized Murder: The CIA's Greatest Hits (and Misses) Tweet share http://www.trutv.com/conspiracy/assassinations/cia-hits-misses/gallery.all.html Fidel Castro of Cuba (miss) AFP/Getty Images If you can devise a harebrained scheme the CIA has not yet used to try to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro, you might want to send a memo to their Langley headquarters. A 2006 BBC documentary and companion book covered 638 known attempts on Castro's life. The CIA wasn't behind every botched hit on El Comandante , but it is well documented that the agency has hired the Mafia, poisoned seashells, infected a diving suit with fungus and tried to poison his food with drugs to make him appear irrational and insane (some of Fidel's rambling speeches make one wonder if the latter plot hadn't actually worked). According to the book, written by former Castro bodyguard Fabian Escalante, the assassination plots continued until at least 2000, when a former CIA operative was arrested for trying to blow up Castro's podium during a speech in Panama. None have worked, of course, and Castro remains alive—barely. Michael Manley of Jamaica (miss) Central Press/Getty Images U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was getting a bad Rastaman vibration from Michael Manley, who became the Jamaican prime minister in 1972. Manley was friendly with Cuba and the Soviets, and tried to implement moderate socialist policies. For these sins, the CIA targeted him with three unsuccessful assassination attempts—by Jamaican soldiers, Cuban exiles and Jamaican gunmen—during his successful 1976 reelection bid. The attempts were detailed in a 1977 investigative report in Penthouse magazine (some people read it for the articles). Ahmed Dlimi of Morocco (hit) AFP/Getty Images Officially, General Ahmed Dlimi was killed in a 1983 car accident. But that statement came from the government that allegedly had him killed with the support and help of the CIA. Dlimi was a close assistant to the Moroccan king, but also reportedly had ties to an underground military officers' movement dedicated to overthrowing the monarchy. He was also on the CIA's most wanted list because he advocated closer ties to the former colonial powers in France, rather than to the U.S. Another dissident officer and former Moroccan army lieutenant, who was then living in exile in Sweden, told Africa Today in 1983 that Hassan's security team undoubtedly had Dlimi killed, and the CIA helped them. Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran (miss) Keystone/Getty Images The CIA and the Muslim world got off on the wrong foot in 1953. In one of its first major global political actions, the CIA overthrew the popularly elected Iranian government and installed the corrupt and brutal Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore and then-Near East operations chief for the CIA, detailed the coup in a 1979 book, and Tim Weiner obtained two extensive classified histories of the coup for his award-winning history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes . The CIA and the British government spent millions of dollars trying to oust Mohammed Mossadegh, a popular politician whose crime was vowing to nationalize Iranian oil exploration. Mossadegh survived several assassination attempts during his two years in power, but was eventually deposed and held under house arrest while the Shah's secret police terrorized the country for more than 25 years. Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala (miss) Popperfoto/Getty Images The early CIA meddling in Guatemala sounds like a joke, with its backing by a fruit company and a phony arms-cache plan labeled Operation Washtub. But the agency was deadly serious about removing the governing socialists and restoring U.S. influence. In 1954, the CIA created a list of 58 assassination targets, and then trained gunmen, according to CIA documents that were declassified in 1997. But it never carried out the attacks. Instead, it remained in the shadows while the military junta it backed overthrew the democratically elected government of President Jacobo Arbenz. Sukarno of Indonesia (miss) Archive Photos/Getty Images Sukarno (like many Indonesians, he used only one name) had a good run for the leader of a country of 90 million people sitting on 20 billion barrels of oil and trending toward communism. CIA officer Richard Bissell told the Rockefeller Commission in 1975 that the agency had tried to assassinate Sukarno in 1955, but failed to devise a feasible plan. In 1957, President Eisenhower ordered the CIA to overthrow Sukarno, according to CIA records described in the award-winning history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes . But the ensuing bloody coup failed. Sukarno finally fell in 1965 after an even bloodier revolution. The CIA wasn't heavily involved, but the agency helped establish and support the subsequent 32-year dictatorship of Sukarno's brutal successor, Suharto. Patrice Lumumba of the Congo (hit) Keystone/Getty Images While the CIA tried to take out Castro, the agency was also cooking up a plot against the Castro of Africa—literally. In 1960, a master chemist flew to the Congo with poison syringes for tainting the food, drink or toothpaste of the newly elected leader, who was suspected of being a communist. President Eisenhower ordered the hit during a National Security Council meeting, according to the Senate testimony of an NSC notetaker. However, the CIA station director backed down. Months later, Lumumba was captured and shot to death two days before John F. Kennedy's inauguration—officially on Belgian orders, but CIA memos discuss assassination by gunshot. General Abdel Karim Qasim of Iraq (miss) Popperfoto/Getty Images The CIA helped establish Saddam Hussein's bloody regime. It backed his Ba'ath party's overthrow of General Abdel Karim Qasim's military government, though it tried to kill Qasim first. He had overthrown the monarchy, exposed CIA ties to the royals and became friendly with communists. When the Ba'ath party initially failed to assassinate Qasim in a gunfight, the CIA's so-called Health Alteration Committee mailed a monogrammed, poisoned handkerchief to Qasim, as detailed in a 1975 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Qasim apparently didn't need to blow his nose, so it took a bloody coup to unseat and kill him. Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia (miss) Keystone/Getty Images Prince Norodom Sihanouk had a solid plan: stay out of the Vietnam War. Perhaps the U.S. should have followed the same course. Instead, the CIA started to meddle in Cambodia and forced the prince to take sides. In his 1972 book, My War with the CIA , he recounted two assassination attempts against him and a 1958 coup attempt. He was finally overthrown in 1970, paving the way for full Cambodian involvement in the Vietnam War and a reign of terror by the vicious Khmer Rouge. Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic (hit) Archive Photos/Getty Images Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo was a brutal despot, but he was our brutal despot. After 30 years of looking the other way, the U.S. government decided Trujillo could no longer be trusted to fend off a communist revolution. The CIA armed a Dominican rebel group, which murdered Trujillo in 1961. The murder was never officially traced to CIA guns, but President Kennedy had sent a damning memo to the embassy in Santo Domingo approving the hit, as detailed in a 1975 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Jose Figueres of Costa Rica (miss) Time Life Pictures/Getty Images Jose Figueres is one of the few Latin American leaders to admit close ties to the CIA, claiming that he helped the agency "in 20,000 ways," including aiding the plot to overthrow Rafael Trujillo. However, he also alleges that the CIA has tried to kill him twice. He angered the agency by harboring and supporting exiles from a host of U.S.-friendly Latin American dictatorships. Charles de Gaulle of France (miss) Hulton Archive/Getty Images Franco-American relations were tense long before Congress replaced "French fries" with "freedom fries." In the mid-1960s, French dissidents and CIA officials plotted to arm an assassin with a poison ring and a military dress uniform—and slip him into a reception for French soldiers. As President Charles De Gaulle made his rounds to shake hands with the soldiers, the assassin would prick De Gaulle's hand with deadly poison, and then vanish into the crowd. Lest this sound like a Pink Panther plotline, a CIA briefing officer confirmed the story in his 1975 Congressional testimony, as recounted in a front page Chicago Tribune story at the time. Che Guevara of Argentina/Cuba (hit) CBS/Getty Images It might be said that the CIA killed Che Guevara twice. The iconic Cuban revolutionary took his battles against agency-backed Cubans as far as the Congo, where American officials thought he had been killed and dumped in an unmarked grave in April 1967, according to Douglas Henderson, then-Ambassador to Bolivia. However, he "rose from the dead" to fight again in October in Bolivia, where he was really killed. CIA officer Tom Polgar recounted the story for Legacy of Ashes author Tim Weiner, including the gory detail that a staffer at CIA headquarters had asked a Bolivian agent for fingerprints and a positive ID, to which the agent replied, "I can send fingers." It seems Che's executioners had cut off his hands. Rene Schneider of Chile (hit) Public Domain The CIA was ready to instigate a military coup and prevent Salvador Allende, a Marxist, from taking power. The only hitch: Rene Schneider, the commander-in-chief of the Chilean army, didn't believe the military had the right to block or overrule a legitimate and constitutional election. Therefore, the CIA had to take him out on the way to overthrowing Allende. It took three tries to nab the general. The final attempt was supposed to be a kidnapping, but Schneider pulled a gun and was shot several times. The assassination is detailed in the 2000 Hinchey Report on CIA Activities in Chile . Salvador Allende of Chile (miss?) AFP/Getty Images Even with Schneider out of the way, the military coup didn't materialize. Plan B was, of course, to take it upon ourselves to kill the popularly elected guy we didn't like. President Nixon and Henry Kissinger approved a CIA hit of Allende, and a White House paper discussed the various options for killing the Chilean president-elect, according to a book about Kissinger by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. They were never attempted, and Allende served for two years before the CIA-led coup in 1973 that led to 17 years of brutal military dictatorship by General Augusto Pinochet. Allende is generally believed to have committed suicide in the presidential palace during the coup, although rumors of assassination still persist. Orlando Letelier of Chile (hit) AFP/Getty Images Letelier (his remains are in the casket pictured) was the exiled voice of resistance to the repressive Pinochet regime in Chile, a regime the U.S. supported. To pull off this successful assassination in 1976, the CIA stuck close to home. The Chilean secret police, known as DINA, planted a car bomb that killed exiled Chilean diplomat Letelier and his assistant, Ronni Moffitt, on Embassy Row in Washington, D.C. The head of DINA was a paid CIA asset before and after the killing. Declassified CIA memos have detailed CIA links to Pinochet, and his hand in the Letelier assassination. Manuel Noriega (miss) Getty Images In Panama, they called him "Pineapple Face." In Washington, he was called "friend," then "frienemy," then "enemy." During the "frienemy" phase, he was on the CIA payroll and the DEA hit list. A drug-enforcement official tried to convince President Nixon to have Noriega killed because he was responsible for so much drug trafficking. However, his drug connections were too valuable to the CIA, which used drug money to fund many of its covert operations. By 1989, Noriega had burned all his bridges in the CIA, and he was arrested during a U.S. military invasion. Omar Torrijos of Panama (hit) Public Domain The CIA certainly left Noriega in power long enough to do its dirty work. In 1981, Noriega was lieutenant commander of the Panama National Guard. Omar Torrijos was his boss, the guard commander and functioning head of the Panamanian government. Torrijos was killed in a plane crash. The official line is that his plane went down in a storm, but Noriega's former chief of staff testified in 1987 that Noriega had Torrijos killed at the behest of the CIA. Muammar Qaddafi of Libya (miss) AFP/Getty Images Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi has been a U.S. terrorist bogeyman for decades. President Reagan ramped up both the rhetoric and the actions. Through both the CIA and military, he tried covert programs and psychological warfare. Reagan also launched one of the deadliest and most condemned assassination attempts in history. On April 15, 1986, the U.S. bombed the Libyan capital, killing up to 100 civilians. At the time, the White House said the strikes hit only important military facilities, but bombs also fell on a densely populated suburb and Qaddafi's residential compound, killing his adopted baby daughter. UPDATE: Qadaffi has been killed, presumably by rebel fighters. Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah of Lebanon (miss) Washington Post/Getty Images A 440-lb car bomb in 1985 killed everything in its path—except its target, alleged Hezbollah leader Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. The sheikh was not at his Beirut home, but many others died in a nearby seven-story apartment building and adjacent cinema that were destroyed in the blast. The bomb was allegedly set by a former Lebanese warlord, but funded by the Saudis and approved by CIA director William Casey, according to veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward. Sandinista Leadership (miss) Time Life Pictures/Getty Image In the 1980s, failed assassination plots against Daniel Ortega and other democratically elected, left-leaning Sandinista leaders, were only the third most controversial aspect of the CIA's involvement in Nicaragua. The agency was also helping to sell illegal arms to Iran (the same Iran the U.S. is now trying to dis-arm), secretly using the proceeds to illegally fund the Contras' struggle against the Sandinistas, and distributing a "Freedom Fighter's Manual" with tips and directions for assassination, torture, blackmail and more. Time magazine and other sources reported on the manual, which was scanned and is available online. Osama bin Laden (miss) Getty Images The CIA trained and armed Osama bin Laden and many of his future al Qaeda terrorists in their war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Today, many of the same CIA classmates are on a list of approved assassination targets. Although the CIA has been hunting for Osama since at least 1998, they've been famously unsuccessful. When it was discovered that U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki had been added to the current CIA hit list, two civil-liberties groups sued the federal government for illegally targeting an American citizen. UPDATE: bin Laden has been killed by Seal Team Six of the American Navy.
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