Rising International Pressure Raises Profile of N.K. Human Rights in S. Korean Politics
The EU’s resolution condemning human rights conditions in North Korea has reached the floor of the General Assembly:
The resolution calls for an end to North Korea’s egregious and systematic human rights violations including torture, illegal detention, public executions and forced labor. It lashes out at Pyongyang’s brutal treatment of defectors who are caught or repatriated. The General Assembly is expected to vote on the resolution between Nov. 17 and 23.
Meanwhile, back in Korea, score one for the GNP. After years of moral paralysis and “Sunshine Lite,” the GNP said as little as possible about human rights in the North. Today, there is a perceptable shift in the GNP’s position on human rights in the North. This time, the GNP is submitting a resolution to the national assembly calling on South Korea to vote in favor of the U.N. resolution. Opportunism it may be, but the fact that opportunism is pointing in the right direction is encouraging news for 2007.
The Grand National Party said yesterday that it would submit to the National Assembly a resolution urging the administration to take a stand on a North Korean human rights resolution that a United Nations body will take up soon.
The conservative opposition group, unhappy with the administration’s policy of abstaining on past resolutions in the UN Human Rights Commission that condemned human rights abuses in the North, wants that changed early this month. The European Union plans to introduce early this month a resolution on the same subject, but this time to the UN General Assembly. Seoul has abstained in the rights commission ballots for fear of adding an irritant to its relations with Pyongyang.
A party official said yesterday it would be the equivalent of a crime for Seoul to remain silent about human rights conditions in the North. “Inter-Korean relations are important, but we can’t maintain those ties at the cost of human suffering,” the official said.
Has this has any effect on the government policy? Hard to tell, but I sense some wriggle room:
Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon on Thursday told the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Committee there was a good chance the resolution will pass, but he added, “There are some countries with different views on the matter.
Ban said the government has yet to decide its position. “The government will make a decision after reviewing its stance on previous UN Human Rights Committee resolutions condemning North Korean human rights abuses, the situation on the Korean Peninsula and progress made in six-party talks” on the North’s nuclear program. After staying away from the UNHRC vote in 2003, Seoul abstained in the next two years. Ban’s protestations notwithstanding, sources say the government has already decided to abstain in the General Assembly as well.
In the long run, I have little doubt that South Korea will abstain. The best possible results that can be expected are that this will utterly disgrace the ruling party and cost it more support, and that the GNP will continue to see human rights in the North as a winning issue.