Seoul worked to block UN vote on North rights

Ra Jong-yil, the senior Blue House adviser for national security, said yesterday that he worked last year to keep the United Nations Commission on Human Rights from putting the North Korean human rights issues on its agenda.
Mr. Ra was Korea’s ambassador to the United Kingdom in the Kim Dae-jung administration at the time.
He told the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee, “At that time, our priority was to create an environment for improving rights there in the future, not demanding immediate changes. We believed that if North Korean human rights issues were dealt with publicly, it would lead to a worsening of human rights and a security crisis,” he said.
The administration has been criticized for ducking a vote on a resolution critical of Pyeongyang’s human rights regime that the UN body adopted recently.
“It is unbelievable that the Kim administration would try to prevent the issue from going before the UN commission,” said Representative Lee Yong-sam, a Millennium Democrat. Mr. Lee acknowledged that the issue was sensitive to the government, but said Seoul should have simply allowed other governments to take the lead rather that working actively to oppose any international scrutiny.
“It is hard to understand why the government went the other way when countries like Great Britain and Sweden were taking the initiative,” said Representative Ryu Han-yul of the Grand National Party.

by Shin Yong-ho