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SEOUL- Dynasty Hall of Seoul’s Shilla Hotel was in full action as the bipartisan North Korean human rights conference highlighted South Korea and the International community’s role for the improvement of North Korean Human Rights. The conference concluded in introducing a strategic declaration on ways to improve the current conditions which lack human rights.
Keynote speakers and guests strongly criticized the different governments that have failed in actively addressing North Korea’s human rights violations, and China’s repatriation of North Korean refugees to persecution and torture. China was urged to grant North Korean refugees who sought political asylum a safe passage.
Seoul Summit: Promoting Human Rights in North Korea began in the midst of the ROK government’s concerns that the movement may harm the attempts of ending the DPRK nuclear program. The governing party, Uri Party and the opposition party, the Grand National Party were divided in determining the government’s priorities in dealing with its northern counterpart.
Member of Parliament, Mr. Chung Eui Yong (Uri Party) claimed that the demands to fix North Korea’s current human rights conditions was not only “unrealistic” but would provoke the North from further cooperating in inter-Korean issues. In opposition to this, Member of Parliament, Mr. Kim Moon Soo (Grand National Party), urged for aggressive action claiming that those stripped of human rights in the North were all “citizens” of Korea.
Together in a joint statement, the human rights activists recommended that the South Korean government take the lead in the movement for North Korean human rights.
