Meeting Targets North’s Rights Abuses

The conference on North Korean human rights that is currently taking place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Brussels is giving the public a look at the human rights abuses there, and what can be done about them.

Led by the U.S. rights group Freedom House and the Belgian group Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF), the conference is the outcome of decisions reached last July in Washington D.C. and at the Seoul Summit in December.

In Brussels, two North Korean defectors gave evidence of the real human rights situation in North Korea, and a delegate from South Korean talked about future North Korean human rights issues.

After a welcoming address by a Hungarian member of the European Union parliament, the conference tackled issues such as Japanese abducted by North Korea and the North’s compulsory labor asylums. A documentary film, “Ggotdongsan” on the North Korean human rights situation was shown. Humiko Saiga, the Japanese Special Envoy for Human Rights Issues, also made a presentation.

Pierre Rigoulot, chairman of the French Committee to Help the Population of North Korea, David Hawk, former-director of Amnesty International USA, and Yoo Se-hee, vice president of Citizens United for a Better Society (CUBS) participated in the conference.

A hearing for North Korean human rights will be held in a European Union parliamentary session today. It is the first time a hearing on the North’s human rights issue will be held in the European Union.

During the hearing, defectors’ testimony, panel meetings, and a documentary film, “Seoul Train” will be heard and viewed.

European countries aggressively brought up the human rights issue in the North by taking the lead in adopting a resolution for North Korean human rights in the U.N. General Assembly late last year.

Meanwhile, a group of demonstrators led by "Hanchongryon" (the General Association of Korean University Student Councils) held a press conference in Brussels Tuesday and protested demonstrations against the U.S. policy toward human rights in the North. They argued, saying, “The U.S. takes up North Korea’s human rights issue by ignoring the real situations in the two Koreas and putting its own interests before everything.”

About one hundred Korean demonstrators paraded against the U.S. violation of human rights in the North in the center of Brussels.

The Seoul Summit held last December for promoting human rights in North Korea encouraged ways to raise the North Korea human rights issue which had been left behind by the reconciliation policy of the two Koreas. Since then, a variety of civic groups, religious groups, and political panels have held a wide range of meetings which deal with human rights issues in the North. Overseas and local 50 groups attended the Seoul Summit organized “the International Network for human rights in North Korea.”

Dong-Keun Keum gold@donga.com