UN special rapporteur Elizabeth Salmón laments lack of information from North Korea

Elizabeth Salmón, the newly-appointed UN special rapporteur on North Korean human rights, speaks with the press at President Hotel in central Seoul on Friday. [NEWS1]

The extreme lack of information coming out of North Korea is appalling, according to Elizabeth Salmón, the newly-appointed UN special rapporteur on North Korean human rights, in meeting with the press on Friday during her first research visit to Korea.

“Almost all the actors I met with said they do not have access to any updated information on what the current situation of human rights is in the DPRK,” she said in addressing the press at the President Hotel in central Seoul on Friday, using the acronym for North Korea’s full name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“The current isolation of the DPRK and the lack of information coming out is one of the biggest challenges I will have to address in carrying out my mandate.”

Salmón, in her first visit to Seoul since she assumed the position on Aug. 1, highlighted the state of malnutrition in the country that dates back long before the Covid-19 pandemic. The country is estimated to be experiencing one of its worst famines in years, according to recent reports by research institutions including the Korea Development Institute.

“I am worried about what is happening to the 40 percent of the population who were already food insecure before the Covid-19 outbreak,” she said.

Salmón, the first woman to assume the special rapporteur position, said she focused on meeting with the victims of North Korea’s human rights violations on this trip, especially of women and girls.

Since her arrival in the country last Saturday, she has met with defectors at Hanawon, the state-run settlement support center for North Korean defectors in South Korea, in a meeting that she characterized as having “no need to have an interpreter” to understand the defectors’ pains.

She is scheduled on Saturday to meet with the relatives of the South Korean fisheries official killed in North Korea two years ago.

The son of the official had sent Salmón a letter shortly after she began her work as the special rapporteur, asking for her help in obtaining the government records on the death of his father, which were sealed off by former President Moon Jae-in.

“I will try to provide my empathy, and my help, to anyone who needs it,” Salmón said at the press conference on Friday when asked about her response to the family’s request.

A spokesperson for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry in an anonymous statement Friday blasted Salmón's visit to Korea, calling her a puppet of the United States.

In responding to the statement during the press conference, Salmón said that speaking about the human rights violations of North Korea is “a necessity” and must be part of the denuclearization process of North Korea.

“I understand my position as trying to document the human rights violations of North Korea, and to build a memory about what is happening,” she said.

Recalling her involvement with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Peru, which investigated human rights abuses in the country between the 1980s and ‘90s, and the Colombian peace process between the Colombian government and an internal revolutionary force in early 2010s, she stressed that being remembered is not only “a part of what the victims want, but also [what they] deserve.”

Salmón met with South Korea's Foreign Minister Park Jin and the envoy on North Korean human rights Lee Shin-hwa in Seoul on Wednesday, and Unification Minister Kwon Young-se on Friday.

She called for a renewal of efforts to help the separated families meet, calling on North Korea during the Friday press conference to “engage with the Republic of Korea on resuming reunions, online or offline.”

Salmón is scheduled to submit her first report on North Korea to the United Nations in October.

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]