US ambassador to UN pledges to boost NK human rights
By Jun Ji-hye
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (U.N.) vowed to make full efforts to make the North Korean regime change its ways and improve human rights conditions there during a meeting with North Korean defectors in South Korea, Sunday.
Amb. Samantha Power arrived in Seoul, Saturday, amid growing tensions, sparked by Pyongyang’s another possible military provocation to mark the anniversary of the founding of its ruling Workers’ Party that falls Monday.
The U.N. ambassador’s visit is seen as unusual since the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) is currently working on a fresh resolution to penalize the North following its fifth nuclear test on Sept. 9.
She will stay here until Tuesday.
According to the Ministry of Unification, Power met with the defectors during her visit to the Settlement Support Center for North Korean Refugees, also known as “Hanawon,” in Anseong, Gyeonggi Province.
The ministry said that she took part in a prayer session with some of the defectors there.
During the meeting, she told the defectors that the international community is well aware of sufferings of the people living in the North and that the U.N. and the United States will do their best to improve their human rights conditions.
Government insiders said her trip reflects Washington’s drive to make an issue of the North’s deplorable human rights abuses that could lead to the matter being linked to additional sanctions down the road as talks are currently underway for a new UNSC resolution.
On her arrival, the ambassador also noted that she wanted to directly hear the plight of those that have fled the North, and based on what she learned, go back to New York to negotiate fresh sanctions with other countries.
Later in the day, she also toured the truce village of Panmunjeom on the inter-Korean border, which officials here called a “symbolic event” that would send a strong message of Washington’s resolve to the North.
When arriving here Saturday, she told reporters that the world will “not be intimidated” by any action taken by the Kim Jong-un regime.
“Now we are looking to see what more can be done because, of course, another test was carried out at the beginning of September,” she said. “This must stop. We are not intimidated by the action of the government of North Korea.”
She also said, “A threat just across the border here that is felt in such deep ways by the people in this country is also a threat felt by the people in the U.S. There is no sense that this is a distant threat and this is someone else’s problem. We are in this together.”
Power visited Japan before coming to South Korea. Her tour of the two key Asian countries is apparently aimed at consolidating the alliance and helping draft punitive measures against Pyongyang, officials noted.
“We want to work in lock steps with our Korean friends and our Japanese friends and all who stand against these kinds of violations of international laws and threat to the international security,” she said.
Regarding the North’s human rights abuses, Power said no less emphasis should be placed on the threat that the Kim regime is posing to its own people.
“The world has done a much better job in shining the spotlight on those crimes in recent years and I am here also to meet people who have suffered under the North Korean regime’s rule,” she said. “We also seek to shine the world spotlight on the worst crimes with really no parallel in this world.”