The International Criminal Court and North Korea: Prospects for Deterrence

The final report of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea calls for the ICC to investigate the possibility that crimes against humanity have been committed by the North Korean regime. This call was echoed by the UN General Assembly in a December 2014 Resolution. To date, however, there has been very little academic analysis of the implications of ICC involvement in North Korea. This paper will take a first step towards filling this gap, by analyzing the potential deterrence effects of ICC investigation of North Korean regime leaders. The paper will argue that an ICC investigation is likely to have a relatively low deterrent effect within North Korea, and may even run the risk of encouraging North Korean leaders to stay in power to avoid prosecution. On the other hand, prosecution of North Korean regime leaders may have a relatively strong general deterrent effect elsewhere in the world. The paper will conclude by discussing the political implications of this likely disparity between the global and local deterrence effects of an ICC investigation.