South Korea To Shine Spotlight on North’s ‘Appalling’ Human Rights Abuses

South Korea is about to issue a de facto indictment of North Korea’s abysmal human rights record that’s sure to outrage the North and heighten tensions on the Korean peninsula.Just as South Korea’s conservative president, Yoon Suk-yeol, has encouraged the biggest joint exercises with American forces in five years, so he’s now taking aim at horrific abuses that the North has always angrily denied.The South’s unification ministry said a 450-page report, to be released tomorrow, for which more than 500 North Korean defectors were interviewed, “reflects the government’s commitment to improving the North’s human rights situation in a practical manner.” It’s not likely the North will reform, but for sure the report will alert the world to the egregious treatment of millions of North Koreans throughout its history.A New York attorney who served as America’s first ambassador on North Korean human rights while George W. Bush was president, Jay Lefkowitz, applauded the South’s decision to release the report after years of hesitation.South Korean leaders, hopeful of dialogue with the North and reluctant to offend North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, had been reluctant to raise the human rights issue. Mention of the term by bureaucrats was more or less banned while Mr. Yoon’s liberal predecessor, Moon Jae-in, sought in vain to see Mr. Kim after President Trump walked out of their second summit in Hanoi in February 2019.For Mr. Yoon to release the report “is very helpful,” Mr. Lefkowitz told the Sun. “If the South is not indignant, how can we in the West be indignant?”Mr. Lefkowitz doubted if putting out the report would get North Korea to change its policy, but he believed it would influence the South “to integrate human rights issues along with security.” Moreover, Mr. Lefkowitz hoped the report would induce the Biden administration to engage on the issue of North Korean human rights more than it’s so far managed to do so far. “They’re somewhat flummoxed on how to deal with China,” he said. “We’re not seeing any help from China.”The report is probably the most damning indictment of North Korea’s human rights policies ever issued after years of abuses.It “will be explosive and devastating and depressing,” said the president of the Defense Forum Foundation at Washington, Suzanne Scholte. “It will confirm what has long been suspected – that the human rights situation in North Korea is worse than ever before.” Ms. Scholte cited “public executions of young people listening to K-pop music,” smuggled into North Korea, as an example of the brutality that the report will include. It will also cite “brutal beatings and detention for anyone making a phone call to South Korea,” she said, as well as “shootings at the border for those trying to escape” across the Yalu and Tumen Rivers into China. Brutality has increased since Mr. Kim closed his borders more tightly than ever, according to Ms. Scholte, leading to “a drastic drop in people trying to escape and Kim’s desperation in trying to isolate the North Korean people by preventing information from going in or going out.” The report, in Korean, will eventually come out in English in an effort to let the world know what’s happening up there. It will include numerous specific examples of unbelievable brutality.“Public and summary executions have been frequently carried out in the North, with executions of people under age 18 and pregnant women being reported as well,” according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, also citing “torture, sexual violence and other inhumane treatment.” The list of specific types and cases of brutality goes on and on. “The North has even conducted medical experiments on the bodies of people with mental problems,” said Yonhap. In one case “a pregnant woman was publicly executed due to the spread of footage in 2017 where she was dancing while pointing her finger at a portrait of the country’s late founder Kim Il-sung. “ The report, said Yonhap, also recounts the execution by firing squad of six teen-agers for watching South Korean videos and smoking opium.” One reason for releasing the report is to alert the world to the full scope of the horrors of life in North Korea under Kim Jong-un, who often threatens nuclear war while refusing to consider talks on ending the North’s nuclear program.Mr. Yoon said the North’s “appalling human rights violations” must be fully exposed “to the international community.”

South Korea To Shine Spotlight on North’s ‘Appalling’ Human Rights Abuses

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