The United Nations Security Council on Thursday took issue with North Korea’s human rights record for the first time in six years, with officials painting a grim picture of extreme hunger, forced labor and medicine shortages in the country.
The United States, which holds the council’s rotating monthly presidency, has sought a meeting with Albania and Japan.
In addition to reports from UN officials, delegates to the meeting heard testimony from Ilhyeok Kim, a North Korean who fled with his family to South Korea. He described being forced to work as a child and growing up under a “reign of fear.”
“The government makes our blood and sweat in a luxurious life for leadership and missiles that blast our hard work in the sky,” he said.
Predictably, news of the UN meeting did not go down well in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, where the government on Tuesday criticized the American-led discussion as “disgusting,” saying that the sole purpose of the meeting was will help Washington achieve its geopolitical goals.
The discussion also highlighted the current division of world powers. Russia’s delegate denounced the meeting, calling it “propaganda,” and China’s representative accused the council of exceeding its scope.
Those comments contrasted with the dire situation outlined by UN officials. Volker Türk, the bloc’s high commissioner for human rights, said that policies introduced by Pyongyang that seem to contain the spread of Covid-19 have grown more widespread and repressive, even as cases have slowed.
Rarely has North Korea been “more painfully shut off from the outside world than it is today,” Mr. Türk said, adding that North Koreans are becoming “more and more desperate,” and that fears of state surveillance, arrests and inquiries increased.
As economic conditions worsened, Mr. Türk said, forced labor for little or no pay – including child labor in some cases – was used to keep key sectors of the economy afloat. He said, many rights violations stem from the country’s militarization.
“The widespread use of forced labor – including labor in political prison camps, forced use of students to collect crops, the requirement for families to work and provide quotas of goods to the government, and confiscation of wages from foreign workers – all support the state’s military apparatus and its ability to develop weapons,” he said.
He noted that while North Koreans have suffered poverty and repression in the past, “currently they seem to be suffering the same.”
“Due to the limitations of state-run economic institutions,” he added, “many people appear to be facing extreme hunger as well as severe shortages of medicine.”
Elizabeth Salmón, a Peruvian legal scholar and the UN special rapporteur on rights in North Korea, said that women and girls in the country are imprisoned in inhumane conditions and subjected to torture, forced labor and violence which is based on gender. The escaped women who were forcibly sent home were subjected to invasive body searches, he said.
“The preparation for any possible peacemaking process needs to include women as decision makers, and this process needs to start now,” she added.
While many Western countries at the meeting said they were shocked by the abuse allegations, Russia and China took aim at the council.
Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, called the meeting a “provocation” and “a shameless attempt” by the United States and other Western countries to “use the council to advance their own self-serving political agenda. “
Geng Shuang, China’s ambassador to the UN, took a different tack, arguing that human rights issues were beyond the scope of the council’s mission because conditions in North Korea did not “pose a threat to international peace and security.”
But Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US envoy, said she was inspired by Mr. Kim’s bravery and that Thursday’s meeting was long overdue.
“We must give a voice to the voiceless,” he said.
Despite vivid descriptions of suffering in North Korea, there was no agreement to take any action and no mention of Pvt. Travis T. King, the American soldier who fled across the inter-Korean border into North Korea in July.