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South Korea decided to vote in favor of a UN resolution before the General Assembly condemning North Korea's human rights abuses, the government announced Thursday. The resolution was submitted by 37 countries including the EU, the U.S. and Japan. For the four years since 2003, the government abstained or absented itself from balloting on all such resolutions in UN bodies. "The situation has changed. North Korea's nuclear and missile tests influenced the government's judgment," the foreign minister-designate Song Min-soon said. "The government will deal with the issue according to universal humanitarian values."
Whenever it scurried from the glare of a UN resolution on North Korea in the past, the government cited "the unique nature of inter-Korean relations.¡± It did so out of concern that any discussion of a matter so embarrassing to Pyongyang would hamper inter-Korean dialogue. Eyes firmly shut to the suffering of 23 million North Koreans, the administration followed the whims of the hereditary dictatorship and its cronies. It even lobbied against putting the North's human rights abuses before the UNHRC, and some Uri Party lawmakers bullied activists for human rights in the North by saying they could provoke a war.
The lives of the North Koreans are single most important thing in inter-Korean relations. They are what any dialogue must be about: unification comes second. But the so-called dialogue between the two Koreas does nothing whatever to improve the rights and living conditions of the North Korean people. They are purely political transactions between those in power to suit their respective political interests. West Germany's aid to East Germany in the past, by contrast, paid for the release of political prisoners, greater travel freedom and improving living conditions. From 1963 to 1989 when the Berlin Wall collapsed, West Germany spent 3.43 billion deutschmarks (US$1.3 billion at current value) on releasing 33,755 East German dissidents.
Yet here, immediately after the decision to vote in favor of a UN resolution was announced, a senior government official said Seoul¡¯s basic tone on human rights in the North will stay the same. Neither sanctions nor pressure will be used, only ¡°dialogue.¡± When and by means of what dialogue did this wholly silent administration attempt to improve human rights in North Korea? Even in the act of pretending to back a UN resolution on the North's human rights record, a matter where many feel its hand was forced, the government is incapable of speaking the truth.
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