A/HRC/13/13 8. Immediately after the liberation from colonial rule in 1945, DPRK laid down a framework for establishing a democratic judiciary, instituted and promulgated the Decrees on Land Reform, Nationalization of Industries, Labour, and on Sex Equality, and carried out democratic elections. 9. DPRK honourably safeguarded its system and dignity in the three-year war imposed by foreign forces just five years after the country’s liberation. After the war, which turned everything to ashes, DPRK took active steps to raise the people’s deteriorated material and cultural living standard to the pre-war level. Its Government, even during the hard time of the war, effected human rights policies including through enforcing universal medical care and taking steps for the relief of war victims. 10. The Government laid foundation for ensuring, to a greater extent, the enjoyment by people of their human rights in material and cultural life, which, in the 1980s reached a heyday in the country’s economic power and people’s living. However, dissolution of socialist market in the early 1990s and consequences of natural disasters that hit our country repeatedly from the mid 1990s negatively affected economic and cultural rights in general. 11. It was also at this time that military pressure and threats of aggression by hostile forces reached an extreme, compelling DPRK people to choose whether to “defend their independent lives or fall into slavery”. They have made tireless efforts in hearty response to the Songun leadership of the great General KIM JONG IL, and as a result the country acquired a strong war deterrent that can firmly safeguard their human rights system. 12. Today DPRK people, with ever more heightened honour and pride, are working devotedly to make the country an economic power and to guarantee the effective enjoyment of their human rights in economic, social and cultural sectors. 13. The DPRK is a socialist State guided by the great Juche idea, the essence of which is that people are the masters of everything and decide everything. Its sovereignty resides in the workers, peasants, servicepersons intellectuals and all other working people. The legal system that has embodied the Juche idea stipulates democratic rights and duties, as well as guarantees, ways and means for their realization. 14. Every individual citizen is entitled to enjoy human rights and the State is obliged to ensure those rights-this is one of the important features of the system for the protection and promotion of human rights in our country. 15. The Government of DPRK will in the near future create a firm guarantee for the ensuring on a higher standard of a more affluent and civilized life for its people, their human rights and fundamental freedoms. 16. Finally, the delegation noted it will participate in the interactive dialogue in a constructive and sincere approach, convinced that it will serve as an occasion to facilitate understanding of the human rights situation of DPRK. B. Interactive dialogue and responses by the State under review 17. Fifty-two countries took the floor during the interactive dialogue. A number of countries recognized the significant achievements by DPRK in the fields of health, education, gender equality. The decision of the Government to actively participate in the universal periodic review process was welcomed, as was the decision to engage in a dialogue with the Committee on the Rights of the Child. The Government was encouraged to intensify its efforts with a view to achieve the MDGs by 2015. A number of natural disasters, which consecutively hit the country in the nineties, gravely affected the economic 4