By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
South Korea's abstention from Tuesday's U.N. vote on a resolution condemning North Korea's human rights violations has drawn criticism from the international community and rights groups.
A presidential spokesman said President Roh Moo-hyun made the decision in order not to damage inter-Korean relations and progress on the six-way talks aimed at scrapping North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
``The President made the final decision after being briefed by Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Song Min-soon, and Baek Jong-chun, chief presidential secretary for security and foreign policy, prior to the beginning of the vote,'' Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Cheon Ho-seon told reporters in Singapore.
Roh is now visiting Singapore to attend meetings with Southeast Asian leaders.
Sources said the foreign ministry had wanted to vote for the resolution, while the Ministry of Unification and Cheong Wa Dae sought an abstention.
Roh held a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il early last month. They pledged joint efforts in a declaration to achieve peace on the Korean Peninsula through South Korean-backed, big-budget cross-border business projects.
The declaration, however, fell short of dealing with rights problems in the North, which regards it an intervention in domestic affairs.
A U.N. General Assembly committee passed the resolution Tuesday expressing deep concern at ``continuing reports of systematic, widespread and grave violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights in North Korea,'' including torture, public executions and political prison camps.
The resolution, submitted by Japan and the European Union, also addresses North Korea's abduction of foreigners, referring mostly to Japanese citizens kidnapped by the North, and calls for their immediate return.
The resolution, not legally binding, was passed with 97 ayes, 23 nays and 60 abstentions. The draft now goes to the 192-member General Assembly for a final vote.
The communist regime has long been criticized for human rights violations. According to a government report, about 200,000 North Koreans are currently forced to work in concentration camps without any judiciary proceedings.
In addition, about 13,000 South Korean prisoners of war (POWs) and 83,000 kidnapped by the North have not have not been repatriated, it said.
But the Seoul government has not taken up the issue of human rights in inter-Korean talks, especially since the Kim Dae-jung administration which advocated the ``sunshine policy'' of engaging the Stalinist state.
Critics rap Seoul's lukewarm and ``two-faced'' attitude toward the rights issue of North Korea.
South Korea last year voted to support a similar resolution following North Korea's test-launches of medium and long-range missiles and first-ever nuclear test. From 2003 to 2005, however, the Seoul government had not participated in, or abstained from U.N.'s votes on the North's human rights record not to provoke North Korea.
Professor Kim Sung-han of North Korean studies at Korea University in Seoul said Seoul's latest abstention from the human rights vote would harm South Korea's diplomatic influence in the global community.
``I don't think a vote at the U.N. would undermine inter-Korean relations, as that is not an issue between the two Koreas, but a multinational, global issue,'' said Kim. ``Given the rights issue is one of the most important agenda items for the U.N., I doubt if South Korean diplomats could speak their voices on human rights problems in the international community in the future.''
``If South Korea's policy changes in accordance with the status of inter-Korean ties, it would raise suspicions that Seoul is using human rights conditions in the North as a playing card to press the North,'' Noh Ok-jae, general director of Good Friends, a group specializing in aid to North Korea, was quoted by AFP as saying.