Yoon warns that North won't get a 'single penny' while it builds nukes

President Yoon Suk Yeol speaks at a Cabinet meeting at the presidential office in Yongsan District, central Seoul Tuesday. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

President Yoon Suk Yeol instructed the Unification Ministry to halt giving handouts to Pyongyang as long as the Kim Jong-un regime continues to pursue its nuclear weapons program on Tuesday.

Yoon told Unification Minister Kwon Young-se in a Cabinet meeting to "make it clear that in a situation where North Korea is pursuing nuclear development, the South Korean government will be not be giving it even a single penny," according to presidential spokesman Lee Do-woon in a press briefing.

This is an apparent shift away from previous administration's initiatives to provide economic aid to the North to promote denuclearization and inter-Korean cooperation.

The president then emphasized that "the key roadmap for security is to investigate North Korea's realities such as its human rights, political, economic and social situations through various channels and disclosing them domestically and abroad," according to Lee.

Yoon stressed that disclosing the reality of North Korea's dire human rights situation is especially important to national security "because it shows where the legitimacy of the state lies."

Yoon during the Cabinet meeting said the South Korean government is set to publish a report on North Korea's human rights abuses for the first time.

"The reality of North Korean people's gruesome human rights violations must be exposed in detail to the international community," said Yoon in his opening remarks at the meeting.

He called for the implementation of the North Korean Human Rights Act, which was passed in 2016 and requires the unification minister to submit an annual report to the National Assembly on North Korea's human rights situation.

"I hope that the reality of human rights in North Korea will be widely disclosed to the international community through the Summit for Democracy starting tomorrow and the UN Human Rights Council, which is currently underway."

Yoon was invited by U.S. President Joe Biden as a co-host of the Summit for Democracy held over Wednesday and Thursday.

He said the report would serve as an opportunity to "widely publicize and teach the reality of human rights in North Korea both at home and abroad," both through dissemination by the Unification Ministry and efforts by the Education Ministry and other government agencies.

The preceding Moon Jae-in administration avoided putting focus on the North's human rights issue, a matter to which Pyongyang has often reacted sensitively, amid denuclearization negotiations.

Yoon said that even if seven years has passed since the enactment of the human rights law, a North Korean human rights foundation has yet to launch.

Earlier this month, the Unification Ministry said that it will begin a committee to advise the unification minister on the establishment of the long-delayed foundation aimed at promoting human rights in North Korea as mandated by the 2016 law.

According to the law, the unification minister is tasked with nominating two candidates for the foundation's board of directors, while the main opposing parties are charged with nominating five candidates each.

But due to disagreements between rivaling parties, no one has been appointed to the foundation's inaugural board in the past seven years.

Seoul likewise co-sponsored for the first time in four years a UN Human Rights Council's resolution on North Korea to be adopted early next month.

Also on Tuesday, Seoul's foreign, unification, defense and justice ministries issued a joint statement welcoming the latest United Nations Human Rights Office (Ohchr) report condemning North Korea's human rights violations and abductions.

Seoul hopes that the report "contributes to raising the international community's interest in North Korea's dire human rights situation," read the statement.

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