General Assembly Passes N. Korea Resolution, Continues to Be Mostly Worthless

[Update:   Here is the text of the resolution.]

South Korea for the first time on Friday joined other U.N. members in rebuking North Korea for gross human rights abuses, including torture, political executions and miserable prison camp conditions.

A draft resolution on the abuses was passed by a vote of 91 to 21 with 60 abstentions in a General Assembly committee that includes all U.N. members, thereby assuring its official adoption by the full assembly.

North Korea rejected the measure and blamed its passage on the United States and its allies.

… such as  the EU, which sponsored the resolution?  The General Assembly  would have passed it yesterday, but they were too busy condeming Israel for the third time — for shooting back at terrorists —  and denouncing a U.S. “embargo” against Cuba.  The Cuban representative,  who voted against the North Korea resolution, called the U.S. “embargo,” which is in fact a ban on U.S. trade with Cuba, “genocide.”  Lovely. 

Cuba and China, which also voted against the North Korea resolution, joined in  supporting another resolution that passed the Human Rights Committee of the General Assembly, which opposes the very  idea of “country-specific resolutions on the situation of human rights” as the “exploitation of human rights for political purposes.”   Presumably, the United States and Israel will continue to be exceptions to that principle.

Incidentally, I’d love to print the text of the resolution, but the U.N., which wants to regulate the Internet, has yet to even publish it.  Only at the U.N. does the information superhighway require you to allow six to eight weeks for shipping and handling.   I’ll say it again:  the U.N. has the worst web site on earth.

What will this actually mean?  Yonhap thinks that this is “a new high” in pressure on the North Koreans, some human rights NGO’s are ebullient about this, and my friend Suzanne Scholte welcomed the vote.  I welcome it, too, but I take a more cynical view.  I tend to think that South Korea caved under withing pressure from some of those NGO’s and other governments.  I don’t think this will mean that South Korea will take more meaningful measures, such as a more liberal acceptance of refugees, support for underground railroad workers, or channeling its aid through organizations that will expect it to be monitored.  It will continue to do its best to channel Kaesong and Kumgang profits directly to the regime, helping to perpetuate the very abuses it was forced to condemn.  The difference between those actions and todays vote is that the latter  will have little or  no practical effect on the lives of the  North Korean people. 

The North Korean approach will likely be to “ignore and continue,” and unless people hear about the cruelties there in their horrific details, most South Koreans, Europeans, and American “progressives” will do pretty much the same. 

John Bolton, who can now add another impressive success to the list he’s accumulated in the last year (and here’s another), can expect to spend his confirmation hearing  answering  charges that he flicked a  booger  during a deposition in 1982.  He’s probably toast, which is too bad.  He’s pretty clearly the most effective U.N. Ambassador we’ve had since Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  He’s earned the right to serve through sheer merit, and I challenge anyone to cite an example of him engaging in  “intemperate behavior.”  Hell, the man even took his counterparts to a Knicks game the other day.

On the subject of the U.N. and North Korea, we heard a surprisingly realistic view  today,  from none other than  Hans Brix:

In Japan, Blix said verification of North Korea disarmament would be especially tough given the secretive nation’s history of restricting access by foreigners to much of the country. North Korea has limited the activities even of U.N. officials distributing food aid, he noted, and foreign weapons experts would likely be far less welcome.

The former chief weapons inspector warned against the temptation to sign a deal that doesn’t guarantee full cooperation.

“Cosmetic inspection is worse than none because that can lull states into a confidence that is false, and you can have very unpleasant surprises” he said. 

Or else what, Hans?