Seoul loses seat on UN Human Rights Council

A plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly elects members of the Human Rights Council at UN headquarters in New York Tuesday. [UNITED NATIONS]

South Korea failed to win a seat on the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council for the first time.

While Seoul's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the unexpected defeat was because it had been overstretched trying to win elections at other international organizations, some lawmakers blamed the Moon Jae-in government's lax attitude toward North Korean human rights while others raised concerns about South Korea's current diplomacy.

In a secret ballot at the UN General Assembly to elect 12 members to the council in New York Tuesday, South Korea won 123 votes, coming in fifth among seven Asia-Pacific nations competing for membership, coming behind Bangladesh, Maldives, Vietnam and Kyrgyzstan.

Afghanistan won fewer votes than South Korea, while Bahrain withdrew from the election prior to the vote.

South Korea first joined the council as a founding member in 2006, the year it was established, and was re-elected in 2008, 2013, 2016 and 2020.

The new three-year term runs from the beginning of 2023 to 2025.

The Human Rights Council, along with the UN Security Council and the UN Economic and Social Council (Ecosoc), play pivotal roles in efforts to achieve the UN's three pillars: human rights, peace and security and development.

Seoul's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday that it had not been able to prioritize winning a seat on the council this time around because it was focusing on similar elections in other international agencies.

Last December, the ministry decided South Korea would aim for membership or leadership positions in 14 international organizations this year, including the International Labor Organization (ILO) and Ecosoc, according to a Foreign Ministry official.

In the case of the 54-member Ecosoc, South Korea was reelected for the sixth consecutive time for a three-year term in June. South Korea is also vying for a spot as a non-permanent member of the Security Council in the 2024-2025 period. South Korea served on the Security Council twice before in the 1996-1997 and 2013-2014 terms.

The official told reporters that the biggest factor for the defeat in the re-election in the Human Rights Council was that Seoul was "unable to select and concentrate" due its focus on the other elections. Because South Korea's diplomatic missions had to deal with so many simultaneous elections, its bargaining power was weakened for this election.

"In international organization elections, countries engage in mutual support, in which countries promise to exchanges votes in the elections they each run for," said the official. "Some countries also appeared to be checking whether South Korea had too many seats on major organizations."

But Seoul lost a seat on a major UN body that is closely aligned with the Yoon Suk-yeol government's focus on values-based diplomacy.

The Yoon administration has emphasized protecting human rights as one of its core principles, a concept Yoon focused on in his first address to the UN General Assembly last month.

Members of the conservative People Power Party (PPP) blamed the Moon administration's lack of interest in the human rights situations in North Korea.

"The Moon Jae-in government didn't participate in UN resolutions condemning human rights abuses in North Korea for four consecutive years," said PPP spokesperson Park Jeong-ha in a statement Thursday. "It's like South Korea lost the opportunity to take a leading role in human rights issues, including those related to North Korea, in the international community."

He described the failure as a "diplomatic disaster" by the Moon government.

South Korea opted out of supporting UN Human Rights Council resolutions condemning the human rights situation in North Korea for four consecutive years since 2019. It co-sponsored those annual resolutions since 2008.

In 2020, the UN special rapporteur on North Korea's human rights sent the two Koreas a letter regarding the North's killing of a South Korean fisheries official in September of that year. South Korea also has taken a position of strategic ambiguity amid Sino-U.S. tensions, including on issues such as the human rights abuses in China.

"The failure was only to be expected," said PPP floor leader Joo Ho-young in a statement on Facebook Wednesday, asking why the Moon government and Democratic Party (DP) "remained unusually silent on North Korea human rights issues."

In turn, the liberal DP's task force on Yoon's diplomatic policy said the defeat in the Human Right Council election was due to the current government's diplomatic missteps. It said in a statement, "Korea's status in the international community has once again dropped due to the inexperience of the Yoon administration."

BY SARAH KIM [kim.sarah@joongang.co.kr]