International activists kicked off a high-profile conference yesterday on human-rights abuses in North Korea by accusing Pyongyang of enslaving its people and calling for the overthrow of Kim Jong Il's regime.
This week's meeting brings together some 700 officials, including Jay Lefkowitz, the US special envoy for North Korean human rights, US Ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow and Hwang Jang-yop, the highest-ranking North Korean to defect to the South.
The conference "will serve as an occasion for raising human rights awareness of the 23 million North Koreans who are suffering the worst human rights violations, and for dealing a fatal blow to Kim Jong Il's dictatorship," Hwang said at the opening of the event in the South Korean capital.
"North Korea is sparing no efforts to abolish people's conscious needs for human rights and to make them spiritual slaves of the supreme leader," he said.
The conference was organized by South Korean human-rights groups and Freedom House, a pro-democracy organization partly funded by the US government, which held a similar meeting in Washington in July. Another session on the North's human rights is scheduled for March in Belgium.
The South Korean government has largely remained silent on the three-day conference, fearing its voice could hurt North-South reconciliation efforts ahead of high-level bilateral talks next week -- and also complicate international efforts to resolve the standoff over the North's nuclear programs.
Seoul's stance has drawn criticism at the conference.
In a separate meeting with South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Chun Young-woo, Lefkowitz called on Seoul to be more actively engaged in improving the North's human rights record, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Lefkowitz said South Korea should link humanitarian aid deliveries to the North to the human rights issue, while Chun stressed the need for balance with the government's policy goal being the establishment of peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, according to the ministry.
South Korean Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo told reporters that Seoul's policy would "naturally take priority over public demand for improvement of North Korea's human rights record."
"The government will try to help the North Korean government improve its human rights situation by itself," he said, according to the Unification Ministry.
"Our government has serious concerns about North Korea's human rights situation and has a clear position on this," he added.
At the conference, Suzanne Scholte, president of the Defense Forum Foundation, a Washington-based conservative policy group, called Kim "the worst violator of human rights in the world today" -- citing the deaths caused by his policies, involvement in drug trafficking and counterfeiting, kidnappings of South Korean and Japanese citizens and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
She criticized the US government for treading cautiously on the human rights issue while it negotiates with the North to abandon its nuclear weapons.
"Being silent on human rights while negotiating on the nuclear issue means more death for the North Korean people," Scholte said.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and