Human rights and inter-Korean peace process

By Park Jung-won

President Moon Jae-in seems to have lost some of the driving force behind his laborious quest for a “peace process” on the Korean Peninsula due to U.S. President Joe Biden's aggressive pursuit of “human-rights diplomacy.” On March 23, the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a resolution condemning North Korea for human rights abuses amid an increasingly deepening and widening rivalry between the United States and China.

Notably, it was the third consecutive year that the Moon administration chose not to co-sponsor this type of resolution, after the country had previously done so for a decade. The news came out days after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused the “authoritarian regime” in North Korea of “systemic and widespread abuses” against its own people during his first official visit to South Korea.

The Moon administration must have been deliberately mindful of irritating the North Korean regime as it tirelessly seeks a “permanent peace process” on the Korean Peninsula. If South Korea had co-sponsored the resolution against North Korea alongside the E.U., the U.S., Japan and many other U.N. member states, it would have soured the peaceful mood between the two Koreas. At least that's what Moon and his close associates might believe.

Since taking office in 2017, Moon has made strenuous efforts to engage a recalcitrant North Korea. There is nothing wrong with Moon's ceaseless engagement in the “peace process” per se, as nobody living in South Korea wants a war with a North Korea that possesses nuclear weapons. The problem is that all his efforts have been made without any reference to serious human-rights issues in North Korea.

Moon and his core cadre have proudly described themselves as true successors of the candlelight-vigil revolution in 2016-17 that toppled former President Park Geun-hye's conservative government. After taking power, they have pursued the inter-Korean peace initiative as the descendants of the progressive elements who fought against South Korea's former military dictatorship and its gross violations of human rights and political oppression.

What, then, should one make of the human-rights abuses and anti-democratic practices still occurring in the democratic and progressive Moon era, particularly with regard to inter-Korean relations? In 2019, two North Korean fishermen sailed into South Korean waters and were detained by the South Korean navy. They were suspected of killing their fellow crewmembers, and were forcibly sent back to the North without an opportunity to receive a fair trial in South Korea.

It was the first time since the Korean War Armistice Agreement of 1953 that detained people were forcibly returned to North Korea. The move stunned the international human-rights community because it essentially countered international law as well as South Korea's constitution. South Korean law stipulates that North Korean escapees, regardless of any serious crimes they are suspected of committing elsewhere, including murder, should be considered South Korean citizens without need of naturalization as long as they want to live in South Korea.

In December 2020, South Korea banned the sending of propaganda leaflets to North Korea, in the face of fierce opposition claiming that the prohibition constitutes severe restrictions on freedom of expression.

When faced with criticism of its disregard for the human-rights crisis taking place under Kim Jong-un's regime in North Korea, the Moon administration has always defended itself by referring to “special circumstances” in inter-Korean relations.

Moon Chung-in, a former special advisor to the president and presumably the de facto architect of Moon's unification and foreign policies, has emphatically argued that “human-rights issues” should not be an impediment in the pursuit of “state interests” in international relations, drawing on Henry Kissinger's accounts on “realist diplomacy.”

One cannot help but be struck by a sense of historical deja vu between the current era of President Moon and that of former President Park Chung-hee, which would otherwise seem incomparable because of the vastly different natures of their political regimes, i.e. democratic vs. anti-democratic.

Yet, if a rather grotesque commonality exists between the two, would this be an exaggerated assessment? In 1972, President Park adopted the Yushin (roughly translated as “revitalizing reform”) constitution, under which serious constraints on civil liberties and political freedoms were imposed.

President Park maintained that Western standards of human rights and liberal democracy could not be strictly applied to the case of South Korea under these “special circumstances.” If so, a very fundamental question must then be raised. For whom is the peaceful inter-Korean process toward eventual national reunification being pursued?

When both Park's dictatorial and Moon's progressive regimes have been driven by cherishing “peace, national reconciliation and national reunification” agendas, defining human rights in different ways in the South and the North respectively, where do ordinary individuals fit within such grandiosely constructed notions? What will ultimately be the benefit of such an outcome if it disregards human rights in any objective sense? Is this tragic comedy or comical tragedy?

Park Jung-won (park_jungwon@hotmail.com), Ph.D at the London School of Economics (LSE), is professor of international law at Dankook University.

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