A North Korean official publicly on Tuesday acknowledged to the international community for the first time the existence of his country’s “reform through labor” camps, a mention that appeared to come in response to a highly critical UN human rights report earlier this year.
Diplomats for the reclusive country also told reporters that a top North Korean official has visited the headquarters of the EU and expressed interest in dialogue, with discussions on human rights expected next year.
Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Kore, said the mention of the reform camps was the first direct acknowledgement by a North Korean official speaking before an international audience.
North Korean Deputy Ambassador to the UN Ri Tong-il said the secretary of his country’s ruling Workers’ Party had visited the EU, adding: “We are expecting end of this year to open political dialogue between the two sides.”
In Brussels, an EU official confirmed a recent North Korea meeting with the EU’s top human rights official, Stavros Lambrinidis, but said any dialogue currently planned is limited to rights issues.
Choe Myong-nam, a North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs official in charge of UN affairs and human rights, said at a briefing with reporters that his country has no prison camps and, in practice, “no prison, things like that.”
However, he briefly discussed the “reform through labor” camps.
“Both in law and practice, we do have reform through labor detention camps — no, detention centers — where people are improved through their mentality and look on their wrongdoings,” he said.
Such “re-education” labor camps are for common offenders and some political prisoners, but most political prisoners are held in a harsher system of political prison camps.
The officials took several questions, but did not respond to one about the health of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who has made no public appearances since Sept. 3 and recently skipped a high-profile event he usually attends.
The officials said they do not oppose human rights dialogue as long as the issue is not used as a “tool for interference.”
The North Korean briefing concerned a lengthy human rights report it released last month in response to a UN Commission of Inquiry that concluded the authoritarian government had committed crimes against humanity.
Their briefing seemed timed in advance of the latest resolution on North Korea and human rights that the EU and Japan put to the UN General Assembly every year.
“We dare say that the case of human rights in the DPRK [North Korea] exceeds all others in duration, intensity and horror,” commission head Michael Kirby told the UN Security Council in April.
North Korea on Tuesday offered UN delegations its own lengthy report on Pyongyang’s human rights record and repeated its dismissal of the UN report as “wild rumors” peddled by “hostile forces.”
The 372-page UN Commission of Inquiry report detailed wide-ranging abuses in North Korea, including the use of prison camps, systematic torture, starvation and killings comparable to Nazi-era atrocities.
North Korea’s delegation organized a rare open meeting at UN headquarters in New York, inviting national delegates and reporters to attend.
North Korean diplomat Choe Myong-nam, who represents the North Korean Association for Human Rights Studies, told the meeting that while there may be an occasional hiccup in his country’s human rights record, Pyongyang is on the right path.
“As we are a transition society, as we move forward, there might be some problems, for example in the economic and other areas, we may need to establish more houses and social facilities in order to provide people with better living conditions,” Choe said.
“That’s why in our constitution there is a provision that stipulates that after society develops, the enjoyment by the people of the human rights and fundamental freedoms will extend further,” he added.
Choe said economic problems were also the fault of “external forces,” an apparent reference to international sanctions against North Korea over its multiple nuclear weapons tests and ballistic missile launches.
A summary of the North Korean response to the UN report said “the hostile forces are persistently peddling the ‘human rights issue’ in the DPRK in a bid to tarnish its image and bring down the social system and ideology chosen by the Korean people.
“Wild rumors and fictions about the DPRK are afloat in the international community due to the hostile forces’ despicable human rights racket to slander and hurt the DPRK,” it added.
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