|
The 8th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees starts at Chatham House in London on Tuesday under the theme "North Korea: New Approaches." The international conference will seek ways to bring North Korea into the international community economically and socially, and propose a kind of Northeast Asian version of the "Helsinki Process" -- a formula linking security with human rights.
The conference is organized jointly by the Citizens¡¯ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights in South Korea, Korea University's Graduate School of International Studies, Chatham House, and the Rafto Foundation for Human Rights in Norway. It is sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy in the U.S., the Norwegian Foreign Ministry and the Chosun Ilbo.
Kjell Magne Bondevik, the president of the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights and former Norwegian prime minister, will deliver a speech at the conference. Jim Hoare, former U.K. ambassador to Pyongyang, and Lord David Alton, chair of the U.K.¡¯s North Korea All-Party Parliamentary Group, will participate.
From South Korea will be Kim Suk-woo, the president of the National Development Institute and former vice minister of unification, Soh Chang-rok, dean of Korea University GSIS, pianist Kim Cheol-woong , a graduate of Pyongyang Music and Dance College, and former North Korean Air Force captain Park Myeong-ho.
Since it established diplomatic ties with the North in December 2000, the U.K. has taken a keen interest in the human rights situation there. Chatham House, the venue of the conference, invited Han Song-ryol, head of the North Korean Disarmament-Peace Institute and former deputy chief of the North Korean permanent mission to the UN for a lecture there in July last year. This year¡¯s conference organizers have asked North Korean officials stationed in Britain to attend the conference, but that is unlikely to happen.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
|
