With it becoming increasingly clear that North Korea had a role in the assassination of Kim Jong-nam some have suggested that North Korea be investigated and tried by the International Criminal Court.
Continuing to internationalize the North Korean human rights issue is a critical task.
Despite the enormity of North Korea’s human rights violations, international attention cannot be taken for granted.
In 2016, while Thae Yong-ho’s defection from North Korea’s London embassy was widely covered, a total of 1,418 North Korean refugees entered South Korea.
KEI Communications Director Jenna Gibson, host of Korean Kontext, recently interviewed Justice Michael Kirby who led the United Nations’ Commission of Inquiry on human rights in North Korea. The following is a partial transcript of that conversation.
Commentators have sometimes hypothesized that one of its positive effects of the COI Report could be that North Korean prison officials moderate some of their brutality out of fear of eventually being held accountable. We have now heard that this may be happening in reality.
Earlier this month, three U.S. senators took on North Korea (DPRK) by introducing a broad sanctions bill aimed at addressing concerns about cyberwarfare and the North’s continued nuclear ambitions.
Short conversations about North Korea generally end with similar conclusions, while longer conversations reveal fault lines among experts.
Two separate but related events this week highlight that there is something new going on regarding North Korea, specifically regarding the North Korean human rights situation.
For Human Rights Day Minister of State at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Hugo Swire, blogs on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.