South, U.S., Japan urge North to end rights violations on anniversary of U.N. report

North Korea

Published: 19 Feb. 2024, 18:46

South, U.S., Japan urge North to end rights violations on anniversary of U.N. report

In this footage released by the North's state-controlled Korean Central Television on Friday, residents of Pyongyang pay tribute at the statues of regime founder Kim Il Sung, left, and his son and successor Kim Jong-il, right, to mark the 82nd anniversary of the former's birth. [YONHAP]

South Korea, the United States and Japan urged North Korea to end its human rights violations on the 10th anniversary of the release of a landmark United Nations report on abuses under the regime.

In a joint statement released Saturday, the three countries’ missions to the United Nations renewed their call for the implementation of the 2014 U.N. Commission of Inquiry report, which accused Pyongyang of “systematic, widespread and gross” human rights violations and urged the regime to rectify its behavior.

“We urge the DPRK to abide by its obligations under international law, take immediate steps to end all human rights violations and abuses — including the immediate resolution of issues involving abductees, detainees, and unrepatriated prisoners of war — and engage with the U.N.’s human rights experts for that purpose,” the three countries’ missions said in the statement, which referred to the North by the acronym for its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The 2014 report, compiled with witness testimony from defectors and overseen by Michael Kirby, a former High Court of Australia justice, noted that the North has committed violations that do “not have any parallel in the contemporary world.”

The report recommended “profound and institutional reforms” to introduce checks on the powers of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the ruling Workers’ Party, such as establishing an independent judiciary and a multiparty political system.

Saturday’s joint statement by the three countries criticized continuing rights violations under the North Korean regime, which they noted “remains one of the world's most repressive regimes, imposing severe restrictions on freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly, association, religion or belief, and movement.”

The three missions also argued that there is an “inextricable link” between the North’s human rights violations and its illicit weapons programs, which they said rely on “forced and exploited labor” to “support its unlawful and threatening programs” and divert food and supplies to the regime’s military at the expense of its people.

Their call for changes in the human rights situation in the North was echoed by U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, who called on Pyongyang to “initiate a reform process” to implement the 2014 report’s recommendations and urged the international community “to take immediate action to address the egregious human rights situation in the DPRK and for Member States to respect the principle of non-refoulement.”

Non-refoulement is the principle under which refugees and asylum-seekers should not be forcibly repatriated to countries where they could face persecution.

Miller’s comments appeared aimed partially at China, which does not recognize defectors from the North as refugees and deports them back to their repressive homeland, where rights groups say they face imprisonment, sexual violence or even death.

In October, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said China had forcibly repatriated a “large number” of North Korean defectors, with rights groups claiming that as many as 600 had been sent back to the North.

To mark the 10th anniversary of the Commission of Inquiry’s report, the UN Human Rights Office in Seoul is due to hold a closed-door international conference from Tuesday to Wednesday focusing on accountability for human rights violations that may amount to international crimes.

Speakers at the conference include Kirby, former commission member Sonja Biserko and Elizabeth Salmon, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in North Korea.

In its press release, the UN Human Rights Office in Seoul said it plans to present its findings on victims’ views of human rights violations in the North at the conference.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]