Abysmal Rights Situation

North Korea Urged to Better Respect Universal Value

The U.S. State Department announced its 2008 Human Rights Report on Wednesday. It is an annual event to call the attention of the international community to rights abuses and violations in countries around the world. We have to pay attention to North Korea, which has long been notorious for human rights violations.

Last year, the United States placed the North in the top 10 list of offenders including Myanmar, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba and Sudan. But this year, Washington did not come up with a list, while making its country reports on human rights situations. But this does not necessarily mean that any improvement has been made among the worst violators.

The authors of the report put a modifier ― ``repressive'' ― before North Korea last year. But they refrained from using such an adjective this year, apparently intending not to anger the communist state. But there was no change in stating that North Korea is a dictatorship under the absolute rule of Kim Jong-il.

As the report pointed out, North Korea's track record of human rights has remained poor, as the Kim regime continued to commit ``numerous serious abuses.'' The report cited reports of extrajudicial killings, disappearances, arbitrary detentions and political prisoners, let alone rigid controls on North Koreans' lives. It described prison conditions as harsh and life threatening, with the use of torture.

The report also said pregnant women prisoners underwent forced abortions in some cases, and that babies were killed upon birth in prisons in other cases. It has been widely known that North Koreans can hardly enjoy freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, religion, movement and labor rights.

Upon releasing the report, Karen Stewart, principal assistant deputy secretary of state for human rights and labor, described North Korea's rights situation as ``abysmal.'' She said human rights should be a ``part of our overall normalization dialogue with North Korea.'' U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused the Kim Jong-il regime of ``tyranny'' while visiting Seoul as part of her four-nation Asian mission last week.

President Lee Myung-bak said right after his inauguration in February 2008 that he would not remain silent on the dire human rights conditions in the North. But Lee could not raise his voice against the North's abuses and violations because the reclusive country has resorted to saber rattling and nuclear baiting in response to his tougher policy toward Pyongyang.

But, now, the Lee government should work together with the Barack Obama administration to prod the world's last Stalinist country to stop its brutal rule and improve its record of human rights. It is imperative that Seoul and Washington take substantial steps in this regard. The two allies, preoccupied with Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, must not turn a blind eye to innocent North Koreans who are groaning under the tyranny.