South Korea to Condemn North Korean Human Rights Violations

This is actually quite surpising considering the South Korean government’s past policies of being North Korean apologists:

Seoul has for the first time decided to support a UN resolution on North Korea’s human rights abuses when it comes up for the vote in the UN General Assembly. The government has been absent or abstained from votes on resolutions condemning the rights situation in the Stalinist country, three times in the UN Commission on Human Rights between 2003 and 2005 and once in the General Assembly. “We expect that the decision will contribute to promoting human rights as a universal value in North Korea,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Thursday but added, “We will maintain the principle of reconciliation and cooperation toward the North and make continuous efforts to bring about real improvements in the human rights situation there including food issues.”

Don’t read too much into this because this vote was only to save face for newly elected South Korean born UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. I don’t expect anything of any substance from the South Korean government to materialize that would actually promote human rights in North Korea. Like One Free Korea I remain very skeptical about these UN Human Rights resolutions when these international diplomats show more outrage about false accusations by terrorists of Korans being flushed down the toilet at Gitmo than about the slow, starvation, and murder of hundreds of thousands of North Koreans.

More over at the Marmot’s Hole as well.