{"id":43992,"date":"2020-03-02T15:00:33","date_gmt":"2020-03-02T06:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/?p=43992"},"modified":"2023-09-05T14:56:50","modified_gmt":"2023-09-05T05:56:50","slug":"will-donald-trump-ever-do-the-right-thing-on-north-korea-and-embrace-a-human-rights-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/will-donald-trump-ever-do-the-right-thing-on-north-korea-and-embrace-a-human-rights-agenda\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Donald Trump ever do the right thing on North Korea, and embrace a human rights agenda?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Politicians so rarely do the right thing that to question their motives when they do seems defeatist.<\/p>\n

So, whatever his rationale, I had some tentative hope at the end of 2017 and start of 2018 that Donald Trump would do the right thing on North Korea. While his speech to Seoul\u2019s National Assembly in November 2017 was mostly lauded for its praise of South Korea and their success in modernizing, as well as his relative restraint in threatening North Korea, Trump also used his speech to highlight the North\u2019s mistreatment of its own citizens. His State of the Union address the following January highlighted not only the Warmbier family, who lost their son Otto to the North\u2019s predations, but also North Koreans who risked life and health to escape.<\/p>\n

Then, in February 2018, Trump met with escapees from North Korea. After listening to their \u201camazing\u201d stories, he was implored to do more to bring attention to their plight, especially the repatriation of defectors back to the North from China.<\/p>\n

North Korea\u2019s crimes against humanity have been documented extensively by human rights advocates such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. And yet, such aggression against the rights, dignity and even the lives of North Korean citizenry consistently take a back seat to the threat posed by its nuclear and missile programs.<\/p>\n

The closest a human rights agenda has ever come to centrality in discussion on North Korea took place in the latter half of the 2014, following the release of the report<\/a> by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights<\/a> in the DPRK. The report cataloged the state\u2019s sustained assault on freedoms of speech, religion and association, the routine sexual violence \u2013 particularly against women in its prison camps \u2013 and the government\u2019s role in exacerbating the catastrophic famine of the 1990s. Its panel explicitly compared North Korea\u2019s atrocities to the Holocaust. One member even suggested<\/a> that the regime\u2019s very nature was incompatible with human rights reform.<\/p>\n

This led, later in the year, to resolutions at the UN General Assembly and Security Council condemning these abuses. While Russia and China prevented actual punitive measures at the UNSC, the UNGA ultimately adapted the resolution<\/a> after dozens of countries co-sponsored it.<\/p>\n

More than five years removed from those votes, a pair of things stand out. One is how North Korea itself reacted to the news. While most observers saw China and Russia\u2019s veto of the resolution at the UNSC as inevitable, Pyongyang appeared rattled by the proceedings, launching unhinged and personalized attacks on members of the panel<\/a> and world leaders<\/a> supportive of the resolution. It attempted to articulate an alternative vision<\/a> of human rights, and attempted to discredit defectors who served as witnesses (with mixed results<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Along the way, they revealed that the attacks on the \u201cdignity of the Supreme Leadership<\/a>\u201d were uniquely difficult to bear.<\/p>\n

Secondly was how quickly a pair of engagement-minded leaders, former presidents Barack Obama and Park Geun-hye, embraced the resolution. Both had been elected promising a different (i.e. warmer) relationship with the North following a deterioration of ties under their predecessors. Both had reached out to Pyongyang with proposals \u2013 Park\u2019s were (crudely<\/a>) rejected out of hand; at least one of Obama\u2019s was embraced in 2012, only to have its spirit violated shortly thereafter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Obama and Park\u2019s embrace of the human rights agenda for North Korea, late and half-hearted as it was, was the right thing to do. That they probably did so for the wrong reasons \u2013 diplomacy had gone nowhere, and they appeared unsure of their next move \u2013 matters little in the end.<\/p>\n

Except as a contrast to the actions of their predecessors. Moon Jae-in has shown no interest, and instead focused on an agenda of inter-Korean reconciliation. To the extent that he has shown an interest in a human rights agenda, it\u2019s in those of Koreans victimized by Japan decades ago.<\/p>\n

As for Trump, the exceedingly brief period between the end of 2017 and start of 2018 represents the totality of his engagement with the issue. He has convinced himself of his unique ability to strike a deal and rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons, which is a dilemma a generation of American diplomats failed to resolve before him. There is a reason for that: North Korea knows what its US and South Korean interlocutors do not \u2013 neither peaceful unification nor peaceful coexistence with democratic South Korea is possible while Pyongyang exercises the right to violate its subjects\u2019 human rights at will.<\/p>\n

As long as neither of those things are possible, North Korea will defend itself with nuclear weapons. This realization does not mean ruling out negotiations, and it does not mean opening the door to war for regime change. It only means doing the right thing \u2013 giving a voice to escapees, supplying those in the country information, providing a means of escape, and working with the international community to speak with one voice on the subject.<\/p>\n

Since Washington seeks to avoid both war and the recognition of North Korea\u2019s nuclear status, avoiding human rights means perpetual stalemate.<\/p>\n

Rob York is director for regional affairs at the Pacific Forum in Honolulu, Hawaii, and a former production editor at the South China Morning Post. He is a Ph.D. candidate in Korean history at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Views expressed in Guest Columns do not necessarily reflect those of Daily NK.<\/i><\/p>\n

Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politicians so rarely do the right thing that to question their motives when they do seems defeatist. So, whatever his rationale, I had some tentative hope at the end of 2017 and start of 2018 that Donald Trump would do the right thing on North Korea. 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