Professor Vitit Muntarborne, the UN Special Rapporteur for North Korean Human Rights, has called for North Korea’s Military-First Policy, or “Songun,” to be transformed into a “people-first” policy, providing opportunities for the people to improve their lives in conditions absent of fear.

Muntarborne, giving his final report after 6 years in the North Korean human rights chair, pointed out once again that North Korea remains guilty of a long list of human rights violations, including collective punishment, torture, arbitrary executions, public executions and more.

Using a number of specific points to illustrate his demands, that women are forbidden from wearing trousers or riding bicycles, for example, or that not one North Korean defectors has arrived in Mongolia in the second half of 2009, compared to more than 200 in all of 2008, Muntarborne called on the North Korean government to finally give its people the freedom from discrimination, from exploitation, from persecution and from want that they deserve.

Pointing out the fact that North Korea has a greater amount of mineral resources than the South, and therefore in theory is not a particularly poor country at all, he asked, “Where does it all go?”