Human rights in N. Korea

Seoul’s pure but positive involvement needed

A key U.N. committee adopted a resolution Tuesday denouncing North Korea’s rampant abuse of human rights, “by consensus and without a vote” for the first time. It shows the international community is one and the same in condemning the systematic, widespread and grave human rights violations in the communist country.

Opinions are less unified on this serious issue in the other half of the same peninsula. More precisely, most South Koreans also know the egregious situations in the North, but are bickering among themselves over what to do to help ease the plight there.

Especially troubled are the pro-North Korean progressive groups here, who have often appeared to look the other way. Some admit North Korea human rights issue has been their Achilles’ heel.

The previous two liberal administrations put this matter on the back burner not to allow it to damage inter-Korean thaws and prevent it from diverting international attention away from the North Korean nuclear crisis. Private groups were also far from positive in acting, citing the lack of correct information. In the process, they committed the mistake of letting the dismal conditions there go from bad to worse.

Various reports show they were wrong. Believe it or not, even Kim Jong-un has reportedly criticized the police for abusing citizens’ rights.

It’s past time for the South’s progressives to hurry, if for no other reason than making up for lost time. The key lies in how to make South Korean involvement result in meaningful, substantive changes in the North while assuring the establishment there that it has nothing to do with some inter-Korean hawks’ attempts to topple the isolationist regime.

One way is to continue to provide humanitarian aid and link its terms and amounts to progress in human rights issues in the North.

Both food and political rights are indispensible for human existence. If anything, however, bread comes ahead of freedom for their very survival. Various reports from North Korea also indicate rights violations become more severe when food situations worsen. That the right to live and survive is the most basic human right can’t be truer there than anywhere else in the world. Foreign countries, especially South Korea and the United States, should resume food aid on condition of sufficient monitoring of its distribution.

As always, the ultimate goal should be the North’s soft landing in human rights campaigns too. And this explains why we are worried about the current movements by some conservatives, who are bent on inciting North Korean residents to act under the pretext of improving their human rights.

How will the inter-Korean hawks be able to help North Koreans if their irresponsible stir-ups led to revolt resulting in bloody crackdowns like those in, say, Syria? That will result in tragic human rights violations whether intended or not. We hope in this regard the ongoing move to legislate the North Korean Human Rights Act will also proceed in ways to best institutionalize various support to promote the cause while removing political and ideological intentions from it.

It will be all the better if the conservatives and liberals can lower barriers between them in the course such joint efforts. <The Korea Times>