hankyoreh

A United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for an improvement in the human rights situation in North Korea has passed with 97 votes for, 23 against, and 60 abstentions, becoming the sixth UN resolution of its kind toward North Korea. South Korea voted in favour of last year’s resolution, but chose to abstain this time around.

The Blue House’s explanation was that it took into consideration the recently improving situation in inter-Korean relations. In other words it abstained after agonizing over how to not put a burden on relations that have been improving rapidly since the inter-Korean summit early last month. While it is not as if there is no logic to the fact that the move was largely an opportunist one, since the government has changed its position from the one it held last year, when there have been no improvements to speak of in North Korean human rights. For that matter, when it voted in favor of last year’s resolution, the reasons it gave had less to do with human rights and more to do with North Korea’s test of a nuclear device and the situational reasoning that came with South Korea wanting to produce its first UN Secretary-General. It is awkward for Seoul’s approach to these resolutions to be to link them directly to the state of relations with Pyongyang, because if you have to be careful when relations are good, that means that relations need to be bad, like last year, in order to be able to vote in favor of them. It is desirable that the government thoroughly consider a way to approach North Korean human rights with consistency, instead of being buried in changing situations.

Some of the issues brought up regarding human rights in North Korea might surely be based on erroneous information, as Pyongyang claims. There have been more than a few instances where powerful nations bring up such issues selectively, in order to accomplish political and foreign policy goals. Nonetheless, it is clear the situation in the North is a serious one. If it wants to make improvements, the first thing it needs to do is allow the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights to visit the country and begin a “human rights dialogue” with the international community. Doing so would also be a way to back up its own efforts to move into the international community in the areas of finance and economy, as North Korea is attempting to do. The United States government is increasing the pace by which its relationship with Pyongyang is improving, so conditions are better for an international acceptance of its efforts to improve its own human rights record.

The South Korean government has long talked about four principles for approaching North Korean human rights: that human rights are a universal human value, that the peculiarities of each country need to be taken into account, that rights will improve in North Korea gradually and as tensions between the two Koreas improve, and that the degree to which the issue influences relations should be kept at a minimum. The Cold War continues on the Korean Peninsula, so these principles are very legitimate. However, any and all principles need to connect with actual efforts to improve human rights. The time has come for officials on both sides to carefully consider the possibility of dialogue on the issue.


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