This paper asks why North Korea—usually studied as a State Under Review—regularly issues human rights recommendations to other UN members in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), and it shows that North Korea’s recommendations appear politically motivated. Using UPR records from 2008–2020, the authors argue that North Korea treats the UPR as a political forum: it ‘‘pats on the back’’ politically close states and ‘‘shames’’ politically distant or antagonistic ones. The study’s central contribution is to shift attention from North Korea as a reviewed target to North Korea as an active reviewer, and to document patterns in whom it praises and criticizes within the UPR.
