Dual pursuit of N.Korean human rights and peace on the Korean Peninsula

Posted on : 2011-02-17 15:02 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
A N.Korean human rights expert suggests a dual approach to the divisive issue

By Choi Won-hyung 

 

Some individuals call for an ominous confrontationalism with North Korea, saying you must not back down from war with North Korea, citing the North Korean human rights issue. Others refrain entirely from mentioning the human rights issue, which is likely to provoke North Korea, saying that peace on the Korean Peninsula comes first. Still others criticize both positions, and say both positions do little to help bring substantive improvements in the grim North Korean human rights situation.

The recently published book “Korea Human Rights: North Korean Human Rights and Peace on the Korean Peninsula” takes issue with both the existing clamors for North Korean human rights through confrontation and the doubtful silence. The writer, Ewha Womans University Center of Peace Studies Research Professor Suh Bo-hyeok, has over two year’s experience dealing with North Korean human rights issues at the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK).

Suh, whom met with Hankyoreh reporter for an interview Tuesday, first said that we need an introspective interim evaluation of the recent spate of warnings and calls regarding North Korean human rights. The North Korean human rights issue, which became known for its grim situation due to the appearance of mass defectors starting in the mid 1990s, has become a matter of international interest, with the U.N. Human Rights Commission adopting resolutions on North Korean human rights for three years straight between 2003 and 2005. In particular, the United States and Japan put active pressure on North Korea by legislating North Korean human rights laws, while South Korea has also remained socially split over whether to legislate a North Korean human rights law. About this, Suh said what is important now is not so much informing people about the severity of the North Korean human rights issue, but rather thinking about what we can do to actually improve the human rights situation in North Korea.

Suh criticized that the existing discussion about North Korean human rights lacks a comprehensive approach. The representative example is the self contradiction of the selectionists who value only civil liberties while ignoring other universal values, calling for the reduction or suspension of humanitarian assistance to protect North Koreans’ right to live.

The relativism some local progressive forces and North Korea itself espouses views national sovereignty and human rights as the same, distorting the very meaning of human rights as a universal value. The instrumentalism that views the North Korean human rights discussion as something to be used to build a political base or a less important task than building peace on the Korean Peninsula, or the discriminationists who divide the world into advanced and undeveloped human rights countries, are along the same lines.

As a result of this introspection regarding the existing approaches, Suh espouses “Korea human rights.” Korea human rights calls upon South Korea to constructively involve itself in improving North Korea human rights based on international human rights norms, and for North Korea and South Korea to cooperate on all human rights issues on the Korean Peninsula. The narrow approaches of the United States and Japan have produced only a commotion about North Korean human rights with few other results, while the European Union takes a comprehensive approach by including articles regarding improving human rights in its diplomatic policy with North Korea and pursuing economic cooperation, development assistance, training and education. Because the approach advocates broadly presented international human rights norms, the North Korean regime would find it difficult to ignore.

Suh said in the case of South Korea, it has many more strategic resources to use when it takes a comprehensive approach like the EU. It also much more keenly feels human rights issues it must solve together with North Korea, such as separated familes, POWs and abductees to North Korea. Suh said we must escape from the existing view that solidifying peace on the Korean Peninsula and the North Korean human rights issue are contradictory, and that South Korea should actively take the lead in developing North Korean human rights and pursue together with North Korea universal values such as peace, humanitarianism, democracy and reconciliation. The important thing here is solidifying an improvement in inter-Korean relations as a system. This is because the more inter-Korean ties systematizes, the more the scope and resources South Korea has to lead substantive improvements in North Korean human rights grow.

  

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]

 

 

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