The international community's diplomatic efforts to address the issue of human rights in North Korea have been intensifying, with flexibility, in recent years. Pressured by repeated urgings from the international community to improve its human rights, North Korea last year submitted a report, obligated under the international human rights convention, to the United Nations for the first time in 16 years, and subjected itself to the Human Rights Committee's deliberation in Geneva on July 19. In mid-June North Korean delegations attended a human rights seminar held in Lund, Sweden and similar meetings sponsored by the European Union. These are unprecedented and unusual.

The recent Brussels human rights conference, the outcome of which is yet to be made public, was "negative," according to an EU official. Meaningfulness is still confined to the fact itself that such a conference has taken place with a North Korean delegation attending. A North Korean delegate is said to have taken a stance at the conference to this effect, "North Koreans are not rich but equal. We have a human rights conception of our own. The national division and the United States render it difficult for us to improve human rights."

The Human Rights Committee's deliberation last month produced a meaningful result, minor as it was. For the first time in history, North Korea acknowledged the fact that "public executions" took place in the country. It's quite a step forward, compared with the rage with which Pyongyang, when asked about the existence of "concentration camps," had countered, maintaining, "They didn't exist in the past, neither do they today."

The only case of public execution, acknowledged by the North, involved that of Chu Sun Nam. In its North Korea Report section on March 26, the Chosun Ilbo covered in detail an eyewitness account of the Chu case, by a North Korean defector. Pyongyang used to either flatly deny, or feign ignorance of the conduct of public executions. Its exceptional acknowledgement of one appears to imply the North's submission to material evidence. Offering the evidence was a copy of a public notice informing of Chu's public execution, issued in the name of the "State Security Agency Office in Hamhung." The copy of the public notice had been smuggled out of the North by a Hamhung citizen who had defected to Seoul, which was then widely covered by the media.

Testimonies by North Korean defectors have played a role in arousing international concerns about the condition of human rights in North Korea. But North Korean authorities have "nervously" ignored such testimonies. If North Korean defectors' testimonies help to pull North Korea out to the "stage of human rights diplomacy" by arousing world opinion, the securing of "real evidence" should induce Pyongyang into making firmer changes in its attitude toward the human rights in the North. It's also in this context that "accessibility" to North Korea is needed, as recommended by the Human Rights Committee.

(Kim Mi Young, miyoung@chosun.com )