South Korean Approach on Human Rights In N. Korea

Only in Korea could there be a human rights commission run by the government that is not concerned about human rights.

Asked in a parliamentary session on Friday what its priority was, the North Korean regime or human rights, the head of the National Human Rights Commission Cho Young- hoang replied, “It’s hard to tell.” The commissions is “yet to decide whether it can deal with North Korean human rights as it does with human rights” in the South, he explained. This is a reply by the head of the country’s top human rights agency, mind, after he watched footage of a public execution by firing squad in the North.
The NHRC is so concerned about human rights that it has taken a stand on teachers reading diaries written by schoolchildren expressly for the purpose of learning to write. When there was debate over sending Korean troops to Iraq, the commission raised an objection, asking the administration and the National Assembly to protect the human rights of Iraqi war casualties. National borders didn’t matter then, nor did the realities of individual countries, nor vital national alliances. But faced with egregious human rights abuses in the North, it will not open its mouth.

The NHRC has either caved into or is colluding with a particular political force now in power. It ought to speak where the administration is silent, but instead the two are as one when it comes to handling the Stalinist regime in the North with kid gloves. If it continues to close its eyes and block its ears to human rights abuses in North Korea, the National Human Rights Commission might as well give up its status as an “independent” agency and become a civic organization. There is no need to waste any more taxpayers’ money on it.