Head of S. Korea’s Human Right Commission Resigns

Shortly after the HRC refused to speak up on behalf of a North Korean facing public execution, its head  has resigned.

Yesterday, at a meeting with commission members, one of them asked Mr. Cho why he walked out of a workshop suddenly on Friday.  He said only, “I think it is now time for me to resign. I have nothing more to say.”  He then left the meeting.  A commission official who asked not to be named said, “I heard that there was a huge fight among the commissioners, and that’s why Mr. Cho left.”

This is known as quitting  “in a  huff.”  According to the report, the commissioners were sharply divided by ideology, and although it’s not  clear which side Cho was on, the HRC’s recent legacy mostly speaks for itself.

The NHRC has held progressive views on dispatching troops to Iraq, scrapping the National Security Law, dodging the draft for religious reasons and eliminating non-regular jobs but has maintained silence about North Korea’ human rights violations, which has invited criticisms for neglect of duty.

To be completely fair to the HRC, with the exception of Iraq, those are arguably legitimate issues for the HRC, even if their urgency pales in comparison to, say, Camp 22 or the misuse of South Korea’s food aid.  The full story is both worse and better than that.  The HRC has allowed itself to be dragged into some truly ridiculous minutiae  (Get a haircut, hippie!), but has also allowed some good things to slip through as well, such as advocating equality for mixed-race Koreans and its sponsorship of this survey of North Korean refugees in the South.  Overall, however,  that has been the exception to the rule, and some encouraging signs that the HRC might speak up on North Korea came to naught.  Future generations of Koreans who try to understand how their country failed to respond to events in North Korea won’t be proud of the HRC’s historical legacy.