The South Korean government has apparently reached an agreement whereby the North Korean Human Rights Record Depository will be put under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice, as opposed to a number of other possible organizations.
According to the Legislation and Judiciary Committee of the National Assembly, the Ministries of Justice, Unification, and Public Administration and Security agreed to the move on Sunday. The Depository is just one part of the North Korean Human Rights Bill, which is currently pending in the Legislation and Judiciary Committee.
As a result of the decision, after the North Korean Human Rights Bill is passed by the National Assembly and the Depository is automatically established, it will be possible to punish those who commit or have committed grave human rights abuses in North Korea.
The issue of which organization or ministry would take on responsibility for the North Korean Human Rights Depository between the Ministry of Justice, the National Human Rights Commission and the North Korean Human Rights Foundation, which is also to be founded by the bill, was a source of controversy.
The North Korean Human Rights Record Depository is prescribed by Article 10 of the pending Human Rights Bill, but there are no attendant details about its role. It is assumed that it will be primarily responsible for collecting evidence of human rights violations.
Yoon Yeo Sang, a former chief of Database Center for North Korean Human Rights said that, “The reason why they want to put the Depository under the Ministry of Justice seems to be that they want to keep the ability to punish those who were involved in human rights violations in mind.”
He added, “They should now begin to discuss how to deal with information accumulated in NGO databases.”
Despite the agreement between ministries, opposition parties are in opposition to the bill, so there are likely to be difficulties getting it through the National Assembly.
