Panelists discuss North Korean human rights abuses at the Ministry of Unification in Seoul, South Korea, April 26, 2024. From left to right: Kim Tae-Hoon, president of the People for Successful Corean Reunification; Lee Keumsoon, senior research fellow at the Korean Institute for National Unification; and Yoon Sanguk, director general for human rights policy at the Ministry of Unification. (David Choi/Stars and Stripes)
SEOUL, South Korea — An upcoming report will revise the United Nation’s decade-old review of North Korea’s record of human rights abuses, according to experts on the humanitarian crisis at a panel discussion hosted Friday by the South Korea Ministry of Unification.
The last comprehensive report on human rights in North Korea was published by the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2014. It included testimonials from over 240 victims and witnesses and stated “systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations have been and are being committed by [North Korea], its institutions and officials.”
The council is scheduled to release an updated version in 2025, a Ministry of Unification spokeswoman said by phone Friday. South Korean officials customarily speak to the media on condition of anonymity.
The council’s 2014 findings included state-sponsored punishment for watching and listening to foreign media and an “absolute ban on ordinary citizens traveling abroad.” It also reported that North Korea stems the practice of any religion.
“The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world,” the report said.
The report accounts for only the first three years of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s reign and the country may have undergone societal shifts in the past decade, said Yoon Sanguk, director general for human rights policy at the Ministry of Unification.
“We need to think about how many changes there are compared to his father or grandfather,” Yoon told an audience of roughly 250 people.
Kim’s regime “took no credible steps to prosecute officials who committed human rights abuses or corruption” since his father’s death in 2011, according to a U.S. State Department report on North Korea’s human rights abuses published in 2021.
Human rights concerns have since been overshadowed by other issues, such as North Korea’s weapons program, according to Kim Tae-Hoon, president of the Seoul-based People for Successful Corean Reunification non-governmental organization.
Kim said public executions in North Korea may have dropped since 2014 and recommended the upcoming review should “name and shame China” for being complicit in Pyongyang’s human rights abuses.
Over 2,000 North Korean escapees, 70% of them women, are believed to be detained in China, the Human Rights Council reported in July 2023.
The Human Rights Watch accused China of facilitating human rights abuses in North Korea, including forcibly repatriating at least 120 defectors in 2023, according to the non-governmental organization’s website.
The updated report is “urgently needed now, more than ever” and should include the voices of “those who are most affected,” said Hanna Song, executive director of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights.
“The [report] would not have been possible if the victims, family members and the North Korean people themselves had not spoken out,” she said. “The report is for them. The report is to show that the international community is listening.”
