FM to speak about N. Korea's rights abuses

By Yi Whan-woo

Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se will address a U.N. conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on Wednesday concerning North Korea’s dire human rights record. Pyongyang’s top diplomat Ri Su-yong will also attend.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday that Yun left for Geneva on Tuesday, to deliver a keynote speech at the 31st session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC). The annual session began on Feb. 29 and will focus on the state of human rights worldwide, including North Korea, Syria and Iran. It will run through March 24.

Diplomatic sources said that Yun will call for stronger action to be taken against North Korea’s state-perpetrated human rights violations in conjunction with the envisioned U.N. resolution.

Drafted by the United States and China, the U.N. resolution proposes expanding economic sanctions against the Kim Jong-un regime for defying the U.N. and recently carrying out a nuclear test and launching a long-range rocket.

Ri is expected to join Yun’s UNHRC speech after speaking before the council at a separate session scheduled for Tuesday.

North Korea has denied U.N. accusations that its leadership has been running political prison camps where up to 120,000 people are thought be detained, tortured and executed while those outside the camps are left in extreme poverty and starvation.

Instead, the repressive regime has argued that the U.S. is behind “malicious slandering” concerning its human rights record. It also claimed that it needs nuclear weapons for its self-defense against the U.S. and its allies.

Meanwhile, Yun is also scheduled to deliver a speech at the Conference on Disarmament early Wednesday before joining the UNHRC.

The conference, also a U.N. members meeting, is concurrently taking place besides the UNHRC session from Feb. 29 to March 4. Its primary concern is cessation of the nuclear arms race and prevention of nuclear war.

Yun is expected to address threats posed by North Korea’s nukes and ballistic missiles and will urge the international community to bolster efforts for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. Ri will not attend the disarmament meeting.

It is speculated Yun will not address issues related to Japan’s sexual enslavement of the Korean women before and during World War II at the UNHRC.

Korea and Japan agreed not to bring up Tokyo’s wartime sex slavery in the future as part of a controversial verbal agreement in December.