First lady meets mother of Otto Warmbier

First lady Kim Keon-hee, left, meets with Cindy Warmbier at the Old Korean Legation in Washington on Wednesday. [OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT OF KOREA]

First lady Kim Keon-hee met with the mother of Otto Warmbier, the American citizen who died soon after he was released in a vegetative state by the North Korean regime, in Washington on Wednesday.

Conveying her condolences, Kim told Cindy Warmbier how her son's death was "a shock for all of South Korea and its people," according to the presidential office.

Mrs. Warmbier was said to have expressed her gratitude. Otto Warmbier was an American university student traveling in North Korea in 2016 when he was arrested. He died less than a week after his release in 2017.

A number of North Korean defectors studying in the U.S. and human rights activists joined the meeting between Kim and Warmbier on Wednesday at the Old Korean Legation in Washington. The meeting was moderated by Korean Ambassador to the United Nations Hwang Joon-kook and also joined by Jung Pak, deputy assistant secretary for multilateral affairs and deputy special representative for North Korea at the State Department.

Kim was said to have stressed the importance of sharing information on the North's human rights violations with the international community.

The joint presidential statement by Washington and Seoul issued Wednesday also carried stronger languages condemning the human rights violations of North Korea than an earlier statement last May.

"The United States and the ROK condemn the DPRK’s blatant violation of human rights and the dignity of its own people and its decision to distribute its scarce resources to weapons of mass destruction development, which presents a crucial security challenge for the Alliance," reads the statement, referring to the official names of South Korea and North Korea by their acronyms.

In a meeting in Washington a year before, President Yoon Suk Yeol and U.S. President Joe Biden expressed "grave concern over the human rights situation in the DPRK" and agreed to provide aid to the most vulnerable North Koreans.

Just a day before the summit, the Ministry of Unification also released a report on North Korean human rights in English, detailing the human rights violations committed by the Kim Jong-un regime.

It was the first report of its kind organized by the South Korean government.

Yoon, in announcing the report’s release a month earlier, had expressed his wishes that the “grievous human rights violations” of the North be “exposed in detail” to the international community.

The statement issued by Yoon and Biden on Wednesday also highlighted for the first time the plight of abductees, detainees and unrepatriated prisoners of war in the North.

“It’s a sign that South Korea and the U.S. have chosen human rights issues as a means to realize universal values such as liberal democratic principles and the rule of law in North Korea,” said Oh Gyeong-sup, a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification.

By including stronger language on North Korean human rights violations in the joint statement, the two governments are essentially sending a signal to the North on their resolve to publicize the North’s violations in multilateral settings, Oh said.

Pyongyang has not issued an official reaction to the statement as of Thursday.

The Yoon government has taken a hawkish stance on the North Korean human rights issues, returning to co-sponsoring resolutions at the United Nations after a hiatus of several years taken by the previous administration, which wished to engage Pyongyang politically.

The issue was also addressed in detail by the nuclear envoys of South Korea, the United States and Japan earlier this month.

BY ESTHER CHUNG, LIM SUN-YOUNG, CHUNG YEONG-GYO [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]