Commentary 24/02/16 World needs a plan of action to free North Korea

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World needs a plan of action to free North Korea

Tragedy facing North Koreans, painstakingly documented in a UN Commission of Inquiry report a decade ago, must not be forgotten

Published: February 16, 2024 04:43 AM GMT ▾

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (center) inspects the eval‎uation test-fire of a new-type surface-to-sea missile Padasuri-6 to be equipped by the navy, at an undisclosed location in North Korea, in this photo taken on Feb. 14 and released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). (Photo: AFP)

Ten years ago, on Feb. 17, 2014, the United Nations (UN) did something people a few years earlier had told me assuredly it would never do. It published a report, upon the completion of a Commission of Inquiry, which found that Kim Jong-un’s regime is committing crimes against humanity.

The “gravity, scale and nature” of the violations of human rights in North Korea “reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world,” the report said.

Ten years on, little has changed in the world’s most closed nation, known as the “hermit kingdom.” So, it is time to dust off that report from the shelf and refer to it as a manual for action.

The world faces an unprecedented number of simultaneous challenges today from Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza crisis to China’s increasing aggression towards Taiwan. There is also Myanmar’s humanitarian and human rights disaster, not to mention the threats from Iran, religious persecution in Nigeria, and the rise of populism across the world.

The apparent election of former General Prabowo Subianto, with a bloodstained record of human rights atrocities as long as his arm, as president of Indonesia is just one particularly alarming development this week.

The nation’s transition from dictatorship to democracy in the past 25 years has been seen as a bright light for Asia.

"Freedom-loving people must show the same persistence and not rest on their laurels" 

The fact that Subianto’s two previous bids for the presidency failed perhaps lulled democrats into a false sense of security. Now he is third time lucky, and it shows that autocrats are nothing if not persistent.

Freedom-loving people must show the same persistence and not rest on their laurels.

Back to North Korea. Amidst the litany of the world’s woes, it is easy either to forget the northern half of the Korean Peninsula which on satellite maps is shrouded in almost complete and symbolic darkness or to laugh at the overweight Kim with a waddle and a silly haircut.

But it is no laughing matter, and the tragedy facing the people of North Korea, so painstakingly documented in the UN Commission of Inquiry report ten years ago, must not be forgotten.

I declare an interest because I worked hard to advocate for the creation of the Commission of Inquiry. In 2007 the organization I worked with at the time, Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), was one of the first international human rights organizations to document North Korea’s human rights crisis, in its report North Korea: A Case to Answer, A Call to Act. Pursuant to that report, we were among the very first to call for a UN inquiry.

By 2011, other human rights groups were beginning to make the same call for accountability and an end to impunity. And so together with a few others — including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights — we formed a coalition of over 40 groups from across the world, which was launched in Tokyo as the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK).

Momentum then grew surprisingly quickly. Within months, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights at the time, Navi Pillay, called for an inquiry, as did the then UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in North Korea, Indonesia’s former attorney-general Marzuki Darusman. And then, gradually, individual member states gave their support.

In 2013, there was a carpe diem moment, because the UN Human Rights Council’s composition consisted of — unusually — a majority of member states that believe in human rights, and so we seized the moment.

"He spoke of the commission’s findings as 'a Holocaust-type phenomenon'"

That year, the Human Rights Council did what many said could not be done — they established a Commission of Inquiry on North Korea. When I recall that moment, I reflect on an alleged Chinese adage: “The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.”

The UN chose an individual who turned out to be, beyond doubt, the best possible person to chair the inquiry, the distinguished Australian judge, Justice Michael Kirby — and he did so with courage, persistence, professionalism, creativity, determination, and aplomb.

Between the creation of the commission in 2013 and the completion of its report in 2014, Justice Kirby and his two other very distinguished commissioners — the aforementioned Darusman and Serbian human rights advocate Sonja Biserko — invested an extraordinary amount of personal commitment, energy, capacity, and reputation in this effort.

Following the report's publication, Justice Kirby was tireless and relentless in engaging with the media and spreading the word. He spoke of the commission’s findings as “a Holocaust-type phenomenon.” Just watch this interview for insights into the investigation.

The question is, ten years on, what happens now?

For the first few years after the Commission of Inquiry’s reports, there were discussions at the Security Council. Then there were the flirtations by US President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in with Kim Jong-un. Since then, virtual silence, aside from Kim’s recent bombastic threats to invade South Korea.

In 2018, Justice Kirby said: “I cannot put out of my mind the people who came to the public hearings of the United Nations inquiry. They told their stories of suffering. They trust the world and the United Nations to right the wrongs. Their testimony is on the internet. It haunts our world. But not North Korea where it is inaccessible to all but the elite around Kim. I will begin to respect his word when he opens up his isolated country to allow United Nations inspectors to visit the mass detention camps.”

One of the earliest escapees from North Korea, Kang Cheol-hwan, wrote: “If international justice is alive and if a global conscience exists, then we can no longer turn a blind eye to the devastation in North Korea. Not only in the prison camps but all throughout North Korea people are suffering … My parents, siblings, and friends, together with the majority of the people living in North Korea today, are all hoping for the international community to release them from the tyranny and starvation being suffered under the North Korean regime.”

The international community cannot simply leave the Commission of Inquiry report sitting on a shelf. We must show that, in the words of Kang Cheol-hwan, “international justice is alive” and that “a global conscience exists.” If not, it is not only the lives of North Koreans at stake, but the liberty and souls of all of us in the free world too.

Ten years on, we need an urgent new discussion of the human rights crisis in North Korea, at the UN Security Council and Human Rights Council.

We need a review of the effectiveness and actual implementation of current sanctions and consideration of new measures.

We need to reinvigorate efforts to support the North Korean diaspora in its advocacy and to renew and expand attempts to break Kim Jong-un’s information blockade through fresh investment in radio broadcasts and other efforts to disseminate knowledge and ideas across the borders of the world’s most closed country.

The Commission of Inquiry report — unlike the country it reports on — must not stay frozen in time. It must be a living document, serving to inspire a plan of action to free North Korea and hold the perpetrators of appalling crimes against humanity accountable.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.