The United Nations report on systematic North Korean abuses is both welcome and long overdue. It should finally alert governments about just who it is they are trying to do international business with. And it should warn apologists about the sort of regime they condone. The report also emphasises both the futility of words and the failure of action against entrenched regimes such as the one in Pyongyang.
There can be no doubt about the work produced Monday by the three-member Commission of Inquiry into current affairs in the self-styled People’s Democratic Republic of Korea. The commission was established and sanctioned by the UN’s human rights body, a group that never misses a chance to apologise or overlook a pathetic or brutal human rights record. It was headed by retired Australian judge Michael Kirby, conducted interviews with more than 80 victims and other witnesses in Seoul, Tokyo, London and Washington. He, his assistants and staff took a careful, long year to conduct interviews, assemble reports, check and double-check its work. The result is a factual 372-page accusation.
If the report is unassailable in its overwhelming and sad catalogue of abuses by the North Korean governments of recent years, it is also Sisyphian. Many of the sickening and shocking tales in the report are, in fact, old news. The UN as a group, its human rights body as an organisation and its individual members as responsible countries have long overlooked or, in some terrible cases, apologised for Pyongyang’s undoubted crimes on the international front and, especially, against its own people.
Mr Kirby and his committee, however, are putting these worthy countries and the UN itself on the spot. In an unprecedented move, it has referred its report to the UN Security Council. That body, and its individual members, will be forced to send on the report to the International Criminal Court for a formal investigation and possible charges — or to ignore it. Either way, Security Council members, especially China, will be noticed by their actions towards the report.
Every decent person and government should pause to consider Mr Kirby’s report. The UN’s human rights chief, Navi Pillay, says the North Korean system has "allowed the government to mistreat its citizens to a degree that should be unthinkable in the 21st century". The system exists to hold 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners in city-sized camps that actually make the former Soviet Union’s gulags look more attractive. In the camps, children are clubbed to death for stealing food. A mother was forced to drown her baby in a bucket.
North Korea for decades was a terrorist state, fomenting even airline bombings and attacks on civilians close to Thailand. It abducted dozens of foreigners, including a young Thai woman. It smuggled drugs and arms through Thailand, and produced counterfeit money before dumping it into the Thai economy. Thailand’s attempts to help North Korea enter world trade and diplomatic circles through its Bangkok embassy have failed, or even have emboldened three generations of Kim family dictators to worsen their atrocious behaviour.
For its work in encouraging this report of Pyongyang’s shameful behaviour, the UN Human Rights Committee deserves thanks. One must hope that the report can be turned into action. Such brutality committed by the regime headed by Kim Jung-un has no place in today’s world. From Bangkok to Beijing, governments must inform Mr Kim to rein in his abuses, and move North Korea toward a more civilised regime.