[imText1]Korean expert Gordon Flake, executive director of the Mansfield Foundation, urged the National Human Rights Commission of Korea to be more active in North Korean human rights issues on Thursday.
At the International Symposium on Human Rights in North Korea hosted by the NHRCK, Flake told the Daily NK that North Korean human rights violations must be treated from an international perspective rather than a domestic one. And given the NHRCK’s role, the independent government agency should speak more on NK human rights as well.
In defending his argument for the Helsinki Process, in which both human rights and security issues are dealt simultaneously, Flake insisted on a concurrent approach of the two subjects; neither can precede the other.
Helsinki Process’s advantage was to keep negotiations where concerns over human rights problems could be expressed, according to Flake. And, thus, he argued for implementation of the Process into the forthcoming six-party talks to denuclearize North Korea.
Flake appreciated the South Korean government’s vote for the UN General Assembly’s N. Korean human rights resolution as a significant step forward and hoped for the government to focus on the issue of human rights and other inter-Korean affairs together.
On the U.S. government’s NK human rights policy, Gordon Flake said objective was ‘to keep the matter not forgotten,’ not to improve the human rights situation in North Korea directly. And “If we don’t bring the issue, we would never solve the problem,” Flake asserted.
