New Human Rights Chair: ‘I Can No Longer Remain Silent’ on N. Korean Abuses
Bloggers are moths to the flame of irony, and South Korea’s National Human Rights Commission has been a reliable beacon for K-bloggers in need of prime material. For at least the last two years, we’ve cringed and laughed our way through its pickayune inquiries into adolescent hairstyles and dairies while 23 million other Korean citizens’ mass starvation, suffocating oppression, and mass enslavement went pretty much unmentioned. The HRC is nominally independent of the elected goverment, but pretty clearly, politics was dictating that North Korea was the third rail of human rights.
Recently, however, we began to see signs that the issue had sharply divided the Commission (more). In September, the bitterness of that division seems to have caused the resignation of the HRC’s Chair. A new Chair has now taken his place, and his first official act was to shoo three monkeys out of his office:
For the first time yesterday, the National Human Rights Commission spoke out about human rights abuses in North Korea. Following the naming of Ahn Kyong-hwan as its new head, the rights commission published a report yesterday titled “A Study on North Korea’s Law and Human Rights.”
“North Korea operates political prisons and carries out public executions in violation of the principles of legality,” Kim Young-cheol, a law professor at Konkuk University, wrote in the report.
….
Despite urging to the contrary from lawmakers, Cho Young-whang, the commission’s former head, was careful not to criticize the North.
Mr. Ahn assumed the position as head of the rights body on Oct. 30, and attended a National Assembly hearing the next day. There, he said the commission would announce its position on North Korea issues as soon as possible.
Could this be a harbinger of a more reciprocal, aid-for-rights based approach? We can hope.
Another expert wrote it was inappropriate for South Korea to avoid discussing North Korea’s rights abuses. “South Korea must set forth parallel policies of providing economic aid and persuading the North to improve rights conditions,” Lee Keum-soon, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute of National Unification, advised.
If this is just the first step that Ahn has promised, South Korea has a Human Rights Commission worthy of its name at last. With that development, and following similar moves by the Korean Bar Association, the weight of moral authority has shifted perceptably in the right direction.
I found what little I read coming out of the commission since this guy took over rather refreshing. It seemed like a pretty big step – rhetorical-wise – from what I would have expected as their first move away from silent appeasement.
But, unless I am mistaken, the fact this group has no power or authority will keep it from doing anything real.
And without power, it isn’t going to pull anywhere nearly enough public support to give it any national sentiment authority. It is just going to be whistling into the wind – but a different tune than before.
Perhaps if/when the GNP or some more conservative thinking leadership gets into the Blue House, they will use this group as part of a trumpet to go along with real policy changes —- but again —– though it is very nice to listen to this group saying what it has just said — it still can’t do much.
I think it matters. Before anything positive can happen in South Korea, opinions have to shift first. South Koreans need to hear the facts of life and death in North Korea from a source they view as neutral and reliable.