N. Korea Comes Up for Human Rights Review at the U.N.
North Korea’s “universal periodic review” before the U.N. Human Rights Council began today in Geneva. Nothing much will come of it, I suspect, but at least the human rights story will get a bit of media attention, and North Korea will be just a little more toxic to potential investors.
“There is a difference between wanting to be isolated and not caring about the rest of the world. North Korea cares about the world and therefore it wants to be isolated,” said B.R. Myers, an expert on the North’s ideology at Dongseo University.
North Korea’s leaders have assured stability in the reclusive state by instilling a sense of paranoid nationalism and carrying out massive human rights abuses, experts say.
“Any mistreatment or disrespect by the U.N. is one of those things the regime has used always to whip its people’s ethnic paranoia,” Myers said.
The review may also boost efforts to have Kim Jong Il indicted for crimes against humanity, an effort that I expect will have about the same consequence (not much, but better than nothing).
Related: Meanwhile, in our latest episode of the Jimmy Carter dementia watch, Carter praises His Pickled Majesty and becomes an official North Korean propaganda source.
I had to doubt the KCNA report was true but I looked for the actual interview and, well, it is true:
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/search/read.php?newsid=30117133
You also met the late North Korean leader, Kim il-Sung. How did you find him?
I was there in 1994. He was very intelligent. Very smart. He knew everything about his country. He had been a dictator for 50 years. He knew every building … when it was built, what it was for … etc … And I got along quite well with him. I negotiated with him to have a summit meeting with South Korea’s president … and he was planning the summit when he died. He died only one month after I was there.
And, as you know, following up on what I had prepared, the summit did take place between Kim Jong-il and Kim Dae-jung and Kim Dae-jung won the Nobel Peace Prize for that.
I think in the long term, we will see some reconciliation between the two Koreas.
Read the rest if you care to also hear about Jimmy’s desire to reconcile with the misunderstood leaders of Cuba, Burma and Syria.
The only foreign left-wing dictator he ever snubbed was Josip Broz Tito, sending vice-president Walter Mondale to his funeral. Since then, he’s been all smiles for proggy tyrants, and all elbows for American presidents trying to deal with them.