In Their Desperation to Meet With Ban Ki-Moon, N. Korean Gulag Survivors Try Borrowing a White Guy

North Korean gulag survivors are knocking on Ban Ki-Moon’s door, asking for a meeting to tell him what he’s known for a decade — that the North Korean prison camps they lived to tell about, no thanks to Ban, are the Mauthausens and Buchenwalds of our time. Odd thing is, it would be a lot easier for Ban to simply not answer if former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik weren’t knocking with them:

“The profound suffering of the North Korean people, whose lives continue to be miserable, has not really been up on the agenda as it should “• not in the U.N. or the international community,” Bondevik said.

“And as the nuclear issue overshadowed the human rights situation earlier, now there’s the danger that the Cheonan incident will overshadow human rights.”

Bondevik, now president of the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights, urged the U.N. to establish a commission to investigate whether its “responsibility to protect” (R2P) doctrine is being violated by the North. [….]

The former Prime Minister added the international community should demand unhindered access to the entire country for purposes of food distribution and for the U.N. special rapporteur on North Korean human rights.

“It is imperative for the world to seize the opportunity offered by the sinking of the Cheonan to adjust its approach to engaging Pyongyang on the whole range of concerns it poses to the world,” he said at the forum. “Protecting the people of North Korea requires nothing less.” [Korea Times]

I’m not sure I completely agree with the R2P concept, but Mr. Bondevik may redeem a copy of this post for a beer at my expense anytime. Let nothing I’m about to say diminish my great respect for him in any way, but this is all a bit like those Chinese businessmen who rent white guys to make a good impression on other Chinese — here, Korean victims of atrocities by other Koreans need the help of a European politician to have any chance of getting a meeting with a Korean U.N. General Secretary. And that’s sad.

Not that the meeting would likely amount to much anyway. Stuart Levey has more potential to do humanitarian good for the North Korean people — completely unintentionally — than Ban Ki Moon does. If he had the will, Ban might be able to shame China into letting the UNCHR visit beautiful Dalian, but he probably lacks the means to materially change conditions inside North Korea, and nothing but the end of this regime will really do that.