At a meeting hosted by the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, representatives from many nations including South Korea and Japan gathered to discuss the issue of North Korean human rights violations. Secretary Kerry had invited a special guest to speak before these ambassadors regarding the atrocities that are enacted by the North Korean dictatorship upon its citizens.
The speaker was Dong-hyuk Shin, a North Korean defector who is one of the few people who had managed to escape from the rogue state's notorious concentration camps. He told all the ambassadors from all over the world that "a dictator has no right to inflict pain upon his citizens" and urged the international community to "save our brothers in North Korea".
At the same conference held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, New York City, Byeong-sae Yoon, the Foreign Minister of the Republic of Korea had the opportunity to meet with John Kerry, the U.S. State Secretary to discuss possible hosting of official talks regarding North Korean citizens' human rights violations and how to resolve this issue reports Yonhap News. Minister Yoon proposed that these talks take place between the two Koreas.
Yesterday, Secretary Kerry and Minster Yoon met during the "NK Rights High Ranking Conference". Yoon proposed to all the representatives present that such discussions regarding the humanitarian situation in North Korea specifically between the two governments of the Korean peninsula.
At the United Nations General Assembly that was held on the 13th, the North Korean ambassador stated, after hearing the most recent UPR report on the state's treatment of its citizens and proposals for improvement, that DPRK is willing to continue such discussions regarding human rights issues in North Korea. It appears that Minister Yoon has taken this most recent statement by a North Korean representative into account.
Minster Yoon spoke at a press conference after the talks and stated that if North Korea is indeed serious about solving the issues of their citizens' human rights, then the nation must seriously come to terms with key issues such as detained Korean War veterans from South Korea, dispersed North and South Korean families as well as further cooperation with international organizations starting with the U.N.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was the one who hosted yesterday's conference, told reporters that it is undeniable that acts of atrocities are happening within North Korea such as torture and that their penal labor camps must all be disbanded.
There are now an abundance of evidence including testimonies from defectors (some of whom are soldiers that actually worked at these facilities) and satellite imagery that prove that North Korea is using these penal labor camps to incite fear into the hearts of its citizens. The prisoners are often people who are believed to have anti-government ideas and even relatives of such suspects. They are suspect to intense labor, torture and starvation and those who are taken into these facilities often do not make it back alive. Some prisoners are even used for testing of chemical and biological weapons.
U.S. citizen and missionary Kenneth Bae was sentenced to 12 years in one of these camps earlier this year, and is still detained within North Korea despite desperate outcries from his family back in America.
