South co-sponsors UN resolution on North's human rights

A general view shows a United Nations Security Council meeting on non-proliferation and the DPRK, or North Korea, at the United Nations headquarters in New York on March 20. [YONHAP]

South Korea co-sponsored for the first time in four years the UN Human Rights Council’s resolution on North Korea to be adopted early next month, the Foreign Ministry in Seoul announced.

“This resolution includes new material, including reconsideration of North Korea's law to eradicate reactionary ideology and culture and concern about citizens of other member states detained in North Korea,” ministry spokesperson Lim Soo-suk said in a press briefing Thursday.

The resolution, drafted by Sweden on behalf of the European Union, is expected to be adopted at the 52nd UN Human Rights Council meeting on April 3 or 4.

The draft condemns “in the strongest terms" North Korea's "long-standing and ongoing systemic, widespread and gross human rights violations.”

Those violations include the regime's denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as the right to freedom of opinion, expression, and association, including “the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, both online and offline.”

The resolution said the people of North Korea were denied these rights “through all-pervasive and severe restrictions, including an absolute monopoly on information and total control over organized social life.”

Through the so-called law to eradicate reactionary ideology and culture enacted in 2020, the North Korean regime has banned its citizens from bringing in, viewing or distributing “reactionary ideology and culture,” including TV shows and movies from South Korea, with violators subject to harsh penalties, including death.

The full text of the law has been shared by a number of civic groups and organizations, including the civic group People for Successful Corean Reunification and the news organization Daily NK at a meeting they hosted in Geneva on Tuesday.

The resolution also addressed “the enforced and involuntary disappearance of persons by arrest, detention or abduction against their will,” and the regime’s refusal to disclose the fate and whereabouts of the persons concerned.

It also condemned Pyongyang for its policies that were “diverting its resources into pursuing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles over the welfare of its people and their access to food,” alluding to its record-level provocations last year and the ongoing reports of famine in the country said to be one of its worst ever.

North Korea’s human rights violations were also addressed in an informal meeting hosted by the UN Security Council last week, where 14 members out of the total 15 at the council were present, including Russia and China.

The North Korean regime protested the meeting and issued a statement afterwards condemning it as a challenge to North Korea’s sovereignty.

“I think this kind of reaction from North Korea shows its sensitivity to human rights issues and how much North Korea regards this issue as its own weakness,” said a Foreign Ministry official in speaking with a group of reporters in Seoul earlier this week.

The Human Rights Council at the UN has annually adopted a resolution condemning Pyongyang’s human rights violation since 2003.

Seoul was a co-sponsor of the resolution from 2008 to 2018 but stopped in 2019 as the liberal Moon Jae-in administration politically engaged with Pyongyang.

It returned to co-sponsoring UN resolutions on North Korean human rights violations last year when it co-sponsored a resolution proposed by the European Union at the meeting of the Third Committee of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly.

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