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The just-inaugurated Lee Myung-bak administration on Monday made it clear to the international community that it will get more active on the human rights of North Koreans than the previous two administrations. The new South Korean government represented by Park In-kook, deputy foreign minister for international organizations and global issues, presented a position on the human rights issue in North Korea at the seventh session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
During the session, the UN Human Rights Council will adopt reports on the human rights situation in North Korea, Burma, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and will also discuss the overall human rights situation, including torture, child abuse and suppression of the freedom of religion and the press, in countries around the world. In his key-note speech, Park explained Seoul's efforts to improve human rights and also touched on the situation in North Korea.
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A North Korean subway guard watches commuters as they pass a ticket booth to catch a subway train at a metro station in the North Korea capital Pyongyang. /AFP
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During the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations, South Korea talked only in general terms about the human rights situation in North Korea. In last year's session of the UN Human Rights Council, deputy foreign minister Cho Jung-pyo said, "We share the international community's concerns about the human rights situation in North Korea. The South Korean government will continue efforts to substantially improve the living conditions of North Koreans in compliance with the current inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation policy."
Without clarifying its position, Seoul abstained on a resolution on the matter at the UN General Assembly in November last year. The Foreign Ministry had called for a vote in favor resolution, citing consistency of the country's foreign policy and the universality of the human rights issue given that Seoul voted for a similar resolution in 2006.
But the ministry's voice was drowned out by the Unification Ministry. Roh reportedly ordered the country's delegation at the UN to abstain. At the time, Cheong Wa Dae said the policy was based on consideration of progress in inter-Korean relations, including the inter-Korean summit. In a total of five UN votes on human rights in North Korea during its term, the Roh administration remained silent on four, boycotting the vote in 2003, and abstaining from votes in 2004, 2005 and 2007 -- except for 2006, when the North conducted a nuclear test. With regard to the clause on non-intervention in internal affairs in the agreement reached at the end of the inter-Korean summit in 2007, many people accused the Roh government of agreeing with the North not to mention human rights.
The Kim Dae-jung administration, critics said, turned a blind eye to human rights abuses in the North, including the question of prisoners of war and abductees. Seoul sent 63 so-called ”°unconverted”± long-term North Korean prisoners to Pyongyang right after the inter-Korean summit in 2000, but failed to win the release of any South Korean POWs and abductees in return. Nor has Seoul raised the issue of North Korean refugees or political concentration camps before.
President Lee Myung-bak has been more vocal on the issue, vowing to tell the North Koreans what needs to be said and ”°approach the issue from the standpoint of universal human values."
The new government has also put human rights diplomacy on its agenda. It plans to establish a new office in the Unification Ministry that will take charge of North Korean human rights and South Korean POWs and abductees.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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