By Yi Whan-woo
Calls are mounting for the international community to take North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to the International Criminal Court (ICC) after the assassination of Kim Jong-nam, his estranged half-brother, in Malaysia last week.
Groups of anti-Pyongyang activists, including North Korean defectors, and legal experts claim that the murder defies the U.N. General Assembly’s resolutions on Pyongyang’s dire human rights record and that Kim Jong-un must be punished accordingly.
Although it did not explicitly mention Kim, the General Assembly asked the U.N. Security Council to refer the North Korean leadership to the ICC for human rights abuses in its annual resolutions from 2014 to 2016.
“We’ll urge the ICC to consider prosecuting Kim Jong-un once again on the occasion of Kim Jong-nam’s death,” said Kang Cheol-hwan, a defector-turned activist who leads the North Korean Strategy Center in Seoul, Wednesday.
Referring to North Korean suspects in connection with Kim Jong-nam’s murder, Kang said, “Kim Jong-nam should be seen as a symbolic victim of Pyongyang’s state-sponsored crimes against humanity.”
Kang also said addressing the assassination and other acts of terrorism the North commits against its people overseas is critical, as well as raising awareness toward human rights abuses within the country.
Other anti-Pyongyang groups, such as NK Watch and North Korea, said they recently visited the ICC in The Hague, the Netherlands and requested prosecution of Kim Jong-un.
Chang Yong-seok, a senior researcher at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University, raised the possibility of the UNSC discussing the referral of Kim Jong-un to the ICC and also issues on North Korea’s eligibility as a U.N. member.
“If North Korea is confirmed to be responsible for Kim Jong-nam’s death, then its human rights issues are likely to be highlighted more than its acts of terrorism because it killed its own citizen in a third country,” Chang said.
Meanwhile, NK Watch Executive Director Ahn Myeong-cheol, a former guard at political prison camps in North Korea, said he will host a discussion in Geneva, Switzerland, March 13, to confess to torture and other inhumane acts he committed against prisoners.
“Usually, there has been testimony from victims of North Korea’s human rights abuses on the international stage while Pyongyang has been denying such crimes,” Ahn said. “I, as a perpetrator, will testify about my own experience so that the repressive regime will be in a tougher situation to hide its crimes.”
Some scholars said acquiring evidence to prove a link between Kim Jong-un and Pyongyang’s violation of human rights will be key to bring the young tyrant before the ICC.
“The most critical matter at an ICC trial, if it is held, is to prove that Kim Jong-un ordered the abuse of the human rights of his people,” said Kwon O-gon, a former permanent judge on the U.N.’s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
He said collecting testimony from high-profile insiders, such as North Korea’s former Deputy Ambassador to the United Kingdom Thae Yong-ho, will be important.
During a KBS interview, Tuesday, Thae, who defected to South Korea last year, claimed that “Everything is carried out under Kim Jong-un’s orders,” regarding North Korea’s rebuttal of Malaysia’s interim findings on Kim Jong-nam’s death.
Thae said Kim Jong-nam’s murder can be a crucial reference in taking Kim Jong-un to the ICC in the future.
Kwon speculated that bringing Kim Jong-un before the ICC exclusively over the death of his half-brother would not be easy.
“We instead should underscore that North Korea has been committing similar types of crimes systematically and widely, and that such acts are crimes against humanity as defined by the ICC,” he said.