N.K. minister attended UN General Assembly but returns empty-handed

North Korea Secretary for Foreign Affairs Lee Soo Yong attended the UN General Assembly in 15 years but it is expected that Lee will return home empty-handed. North Korean foreign minister will depart after giving a speech at General Assembly on Sunday. Lee has not been engaged in any special external activities over the past six days since he arrived at New York on last Sunday. North Korean representatives did not attend the annual meeting of Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD) held in San Diego to focus on the UN General Assembly. As all of 197 UN member countries attend the General Assembly, it was forecast that the North Korean minister would be engaged various activities including bilateral and multilateral meetings. However, there has been no report on meetings between North Korea and other countries. North Korea even failed to contact the U.S.

The only occasion that Lee came into the spotlight was when he sat in the front with North Korean representatives and watch President Park Geun-hye’s speech until the end on Wednesday. One of the purposes of Lee’s visit to New York was attendance to "High-level Meeting on North Korean Human Rights" led by the U.S., trying to take the meeting as an opportunity to claim to the international community that "there is no human right issue in North Korea.’ However, the U.S. turned down North Korean representatives’ attendance by saying, “North Korea has never accepted even the recommendations from UN Human Rights Commission.”

North Korea posed a threat in an official letter, saying, “If the U.S. rejects North Korea’s attendance, it gives necessity to revisit the policies toward the U.S. including nuclear issues,” but its request was turned down. It is forecast that Lee will visit Russia on the way home to strengthen the relationship with Russia. Especially before Lee’s visit to Russia, the Russian government recommends that “North Korea should join the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty,” and this has drawn attention from the international community. Russia’s such move is eval‍uated as an act to admit North Korea as a nuclear power and to criticize the U.S.-led Missile Defense system.