Activists, legislators call for NK human rights law

By Kim Young-jin

Activists and lawmakers Monday pressed for the passage of legislation on North Korean human rights, as a week of events to promote the liberation of the Stalinist state kicked off in Seoul.

The debate over the North Korean Human Rights Act, which remains at a National Assembly subcommittee, is largely drawn down party lines, with conservatives in favor but the left arguing it would worsen inter-Korean tension.

“In recognition of the atrocities committed by the Kim Jong-il regime, political parties in the United States and Japan came together to pass their respective North Korean human rights legislation,” Suzanne Scholte, chairman of North Korea Freedom Week said in a press conference held to open the events.

“It is a national shame that the Korean National Assembly has not passed the North Korean Human Rights Act,” she said.

Kim Moo-sung, floor leader of the ruling Grand National Party (GNP), echoed the sentiment, saying failure so far to pass the legislation left him with a “heavy heart.”

The call came as North Korea Freedom Week (NKFW), a major gathering of activists and North Korean defectors fighting to liberate the impoverished country began its full slate of rallies, seminars and exhibitions.

Scholte noted that the first NKFW galvanized support for similar U.S. legislation, which passed in 1994 backed by both parties.

“The fight for North Korean human rights is not a political issue,” she said. “It is a life-or-death struggle over the fate of 23 million people who live under one of the cruelest dictators in modern history.”

The North is considered one of the world’s worst violators of human rights, with a long list of infractions including a reportedly brutal political prisoner system, turning a blind eye to trafficking of North Korean women and mismanagement of its economy that lead to a devastating famine.

NKFW runs through May 1 in Seoul with concurrent events in Busan and Washington, D.C.