North Korea’s Dual Threats Addressed at UN: Human Rights and Nuclear Issues

For the first time, South Korea presided over a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting on North Korean human rights, facilitating discussions about the severe human rights situation in North Korea and its connection to international peace and security.

According to the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the 13th, South Korea, as the current chair of the UNSC, held an official briefing on North Korean human rights on the 12th (local time).

At the meeting, many Security Council member countries, including South Korea, expressed concern that there are continuous organized, widespread, and serious human rights abuses in North Korea, even with intensified restrictions on freedom of expression and surveillance. However, it has been ten years since the release of the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) report on North Korean human rights in 2014.

Ambassador Hwang Joonkook to the UN compared North Korea to a two-horse carriage running on nuclear and human rights abuses, emphasizing, “If human rights abuses stop, nuclear weapons development will also stop.”

As in the previous year, a defector attended this meeting and testified about the reality of human rights in North Korea.

Kim Geum Hyok, a former policy advisor to the Minister of Patriots and Veterans Affairs and a native of Pyongyang, appealed, “We must show Kim Jong Un that relentless oppression of North Korean residents and focus on nuclear weapons can no longer be a means of maintaining power.”

The UNSC meeting on North Korean human rights was held for the first time in ten months since last August. These meetings were held annually from 2014 to 2017 but were not held for a while. They resumed in August of last year after six years.

Meanwhile, 57 countries including South Korea, the U.S., Japan, and the European Union (EU) held a brief press conference in front of the meeting room before the start of the Security Council meeting, expressing concern about the worsening human rights situation in North Korea.

As the representative speaker, Ambassador Hwang criticized, “We have witnessed that the horrendous human rights and humanitarian situation in North Korea is closely linked to weapons development, like two sides of the same coin. North Korea is violating UN Security Council resolutions by devoting scarce resources to nuclear and missile development at the expense of its residents’ welfare and taking advantage of political immunity for human rights abuses.”