UN opens SNS accounts for NK human rights office in Seoul

By Yi Whan-woo

The United Nations opened Facebook and Twitter accounts, Thursday, for its envisioned office in Seoul to investigate North Korea’s state-perpetrated human rights violations.

“Hello world! We are the United Nations Human Rights Office (Seoul). Our office will be launched very soon, so like, share, follow us and receive updates!” it said on its Facebook message. “We will be doing a lot of work on monitoring and documentation of the human rights situation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).”

It also posted on its Twitter message that it will open its official website “very soon.”

According to diplomatic sources, the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) will launch its field office in downtown Seoul within this month.

Headquartered in Geneva, the OHCHR is aimed at protecting and strengthening international human rights.

This is the first time that that the U.N. will set up an office to exclusively monitor Pyongyang’s alleged human rights abuses.

A South Korean government official said the U.N. in May last year first proposed opening a field office in the country to better monitor North Korea’s dire human rights record.

The U.N. has been stepping up its pressure against the repressive regime.

In December, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution that calls for the U.N. Security Council to refer North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands.