The fate of the nine young North Korean defectors who were caught by the Laotian authorities and repatriated to North Korea via China in May 2013 is receiving renewed attention after Pyongyang earlier this week released undated video footage of four of the defectors.
The release of the 25-minute video showing four youngsters studying at a prestigious middle school followed a claim by Park Sun-young, a North Korean rights activist, last week that two of the nine defectors, also known as the Laos Nine, had been executed. The last time the Laos Nine were seen together was in a TV appearance in June 2013 in which they claimed to have been rescued after being kidnapped by South Korea.
The latest video shown on North Korean propaganda website Uriminzokkiri only shows four of the nine youngsters and the two suspected of having been executed are not among the four shown.
Earlier this year, Park told The Korea Herald that letting Pyongyang know that the international community is keeping a watchful eye on the fate of the Laos Nine will help to keep them alive. Perhaps that strategy has partly failed in this instance.
The U.N. Commission of Inquiry report on North Korean human rights released in February draws a picture of widespread abuses of human rights in the country, where crimes against humanity are committed on a large scale, comparable only to Nazi Germany in contemporary history.
The report has heightened people’s awareness of the plight of the North Korean people and raised international condemnation of the regime that engages in systematic torture and killings of its own people.
The report has also led to unprecedented efforts this year to pressure the Kim Jong-un regime to improve its human rights conditions. The U.N. Security Council is due to meet this month to discuss North Korean human rights situation following a U.N. General Assembly committee’s adoption of a resolution condemning North Korea’s rights abuses and calling on the Security Council to refer Pyongyang to the International Criminal Court.
With China and Russia expected to veto a move to refer the case to the ICC, Kim will escape an ICC trial. Yet, the continued pressure on North Korea is yielding some results: Pyongyang was compelled to produce its own human rights report, even if it is one that is hardly believable, and at one point even extended an invitation to Western officials to visit North Korea to see the conditions for themselves. These efforts, although largely misguided, show that if the international community continues to press North Korea to improve its rights record, the North will be forced to respond.
South Korea has yet to enact a North Korean human rights law, with efforts to do so stymied by partisan politics for 10 years now. Unable to consider the bills on North Korean human rights presented by the ruling Saenuri Party and the opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy during the regular session which ended on Dec. 9, the National Assembly has one last shot at passing a bill at the extraordinary session due to convene later this month.
Human rights is a universal value that stands above ideologies. Upholding human rights is not a matter for political squabbling. If the National Assembly is unable to pass a North Korea human rights law this year, the country will hang its head in shame for failing to take action against the rampant abuses of human rights just across the border.
