Seoul’s moment to lead on North Korean human rights

Lee Shin-wha

Approximately 70,000 people are currently imprisoned in North Korea’s concentration camps. The regime uses revenue from their forced labor to fund the very missile programs that put nearly 10 million residents of Seoul at risk.

Meanwhile, Pyongyang’s crimes grow increasingly invisible. Russia’s U.N. veto and the U.S. Donald Trump administration's deep budget cuts to Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) have dismantled some of the last remaining channels that once pierced the regime’s information blockade.

Amid this global silence, Seoul has a chance to lead. For President Lee Jae Myung, who was sworn in on June 4 just one day after winning the presidential election, North Korean human rights must not be a peripheral concern. They are a strategic linchpin connecting national security, international norms and moral responsibility. Now is South Korea’s moment to step forward.

A shared front

Human rights in North Korea are not merely a humanitarian issue; they are central to regional stability and rules-based international order. The 2014 U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI) documented “systematic, widespread and gross” violations — an indictment that remains just as chilling today. A 2024 U.N. report found that North Korea’s concentration camps generate $2 billion annually, directly funding Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missile programs. A 2025 study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported a 20 percent surge in missile tests since 2023, many capable of striking South Korea and beyond.

But North Korea’s arsenal isn’t limited to missiles. Its most enduring weapon is information control. Citizens risk death simply for tuning in to foreign broadcasts —acts that suggest Pyongyang fears truth more than firepower. Since Russia deployed North Korean troops to Ukraine in 2024, the regime’s clampdown on information has only intensified, buoyed by alliances with authoritarian states and China’s growing regional influence.

Seoul must respond strategically. The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team, launched in 2024, can use high-resolution satellite imagery and defector testimony to expose illicit financial networks. South Korea should also discreetly support alternative radio and digital platforms modeled after VOA and RFA, filling the vacuum left by the U.S. retreat.

The cost of inaction is high. According to a 2025 estimate by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a conflict in the Taiwan Strait could trigger $2 trillion in global economic losses. Stability in Asia cannot be separated from the defense of freedom.

A fractured order

The liberal international order is faltering under the weight of intensifying great power rivalry. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Indo-Pacific. U.S. retrenchment has accelerated sharply: In July 2025, the Trump administration dissolved the U.S. Agency for International Development and slashed 70 percent of the U.S. Agency for Global Media’s budget, effectively dismantling VOA’s global presence and ending RFA’s operations. These cuts have left a vacuum — one authoritarian regimes are rapidly moving to fill.

Historically, U.S. leadership was pivotal in elevating North Korean human rights on the global agenda. The success of the 2014 COI was due in no small part to Washington’s diplomatic weight. That influence is now in decline. A 2025 RAND study projects U.S. global influence could shrink by 30 percent by 2030 if value-based alliances are abandoned.

South Korea is uniquely positioned to step in. As a vibrant democracy, a technological leader and a rising middle power, it has both the capacity and the moral authority to lead. At the 2025 U.N. General Assembly High-Level Week in September, Seoul should call for an International Criminal Court referral of North Korea’s crimes and propose a new investigative mechanism modeled on the U.N.’s Syria-focused IIIM (International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism), to archive evidence for future accountability.

At the same time, Seoul must help restore the flow of truth into the North. History shows that information can catalyze regime change: In 1989, East Germans — emboldened by West German broadcasts — took to the streets and brought down the Berlin Wall. A similar information awakening could one day transform North Korea.

A moral imperative

At its core, North Korea’s appalling human rights conditions have driven countless people to flee in search of freedom. These are not distant strangers — they are family. More than 1,000 separated families remain in the South. Some 50,000 South Korean prisoners of war are unaccounted for. More than 500 South Koreans are believed to have been abducted by the North. Their stories — and those of the 34,000 defectors now living in South Korea — demand more than sympathy; they demand action.

In a deeply fractured world, South Korea’s voice carries weight. Seoul can revive international support for justice, empower the long-stalled North Korean human rights foundation, fund new information channels and press global institutions to act. It can champion a new model of human rights diplomacy, one that is not reactive but proactive in building coalitions, shaping norms and reaffirming that democratic leadership in Asia is not only possible but essential.

This is more than a moral duty. It is a strategic vision: a unified Korea achieved not through force, but through freedom.

A call to courage

To lead, South Korea must act with clarity and resolve. It should convene a strategic summit with Trump to align on shared goals. It must rally democratic allies at the United Nations and expand funding for covert information outreach to the North. These are not merely policy options — they are strategic imperatives.

Above all, Seoul must honor the civil society groups, defectors and families of the disappeared who have kept the flame of justice alive. Their courage reminds us that the North Korean people do not need saving — they need space to rise. South Korea must help create that space.

The world is watching. Now is Seoul’s moment to lead.

Lee Shin-wha is professor of Department of Political Science and International Relations at Korea University and director of Institute for Interdisciplinary Unification Studies.