North Korean defectors urge the UN to hold the country's leader accountable for rights abuses

TANZANIA – Eunju Kim, who escaped starvation successful North Korea successful 1999, was sent backmost from China and fled a 2nd time, told the United Nations connected Tuesday that the country’s person indispensable beryllium held accountable for gross quality rights violations.

Gyuri Kang, whose household faced persecution for her grandmother’s spiritual beliefs, fled the North during the COVID-19 pandemic. She told the General Assembly that 3 of her friends were executed — 2 for watching South Korean TV dramas.

At the high-level gathering of the 193-member satellite body, the 2 women, some present surviving successful South Korea, described the plight of North Koreans who U.N. peculiar researcher Elizabeth Salmón said person been surviving successful “absolute isolation” since the pandemic began successful aboriginal 2020.

Thousands of North Koreans person fled the state since the precocious 1990s, but the numbers person dwindled drastically successful caller years.

Salmón said North Korea’s closure of its borders worsened an already dire quality rights situation, with caller laws enacted since 2020 and stricter punishments, including the decease punishment and nationalist executions.

In different rights issue, she said, the deployment of North Korean troops to enactment Russia successful its warfare against Ukraine has raised concerns astir “the mediocre quality rights conditions of its soldiers portion successful service, and the government’s wide exploitation of its ain people.”

The North's “extreme militarization” enables it to support the colonisation nether surveillance and it exploits the enactment unit done a state-controlled strategy that finances its expanding atomic program and subject ventures, Salmón said.

North Korea’s U.N. Ambassador Kim Song called the allegations that his state violates quality rights “a burlesque of intrigue and fabrication" and insisted that tens of millions of North Koreans bask quality rights nether the country's socialist system. He accused the West of being the bigger violator, done radical discrimination, quality trafficking and intersexual slavery.

But the 2 defectors and quality rights defenders elaborate galore abuses.

Kim, who said her begetter died of starvation, told U.N. diplomats that aft making it to China crossed the Tumen River the archetypal time, she, her parent and sister were sold for the equivalent of little than $300 to a Chinese man. Three years later, they were arrested and sent backmost to the North. In 2002, they escaped again crossed the river.

Kang, who was banished to the countryside arsenic a 5-year-old due to the fact that of her grandmother’s spiritual beliefs, said she became the proprietor of a 10-meter (33-foot) woody sportfishing vessel and escaped connected it successful October 2023 with her parent and aunt.

She said she was fortunate to person entree to accusation astir the extracurricular satellite and to person been fixed a USB with South Korean TV dramas, which she said she recovered “so refreshing and much credible than North Korea authorities propaganda,” though she knew being caught could mean death.

“Three of my friends were executed, 2 of them successful nationalist for distributing South Korean dramas,” Kang said. “One of them was lone 19 years old. … It was arsenic if they were blameworthy of heinous crimes.”

She expressed anticipation that her code would “awaken the North Korean people” and assistance them “to constituent successful the absorption of freedom.”

Kim accused North Korea of sending soldiers to combat successful Ukraine without them knowing wherever they were going and utilizing them arsenic cannon fodder to marque money.

“This is simply a caller and unacceptable signifier of quality trafficking,” she said.

Kim called for the country's leader, Kim Jong Un, to beryllium investigated and held accountable by the International Criminal Court.

Addressing the world’s nations, she said: “Silence is complicity. Stand steadfast against the regime’s systematic atrocities.”

Sean Chung, caput of Han Voice, who spoke connected behalf of a planetary conjugation of 28 civilian nine organizations, called connected China and each different countries to extremity forced repatriations to North Korea.

He called connected U.N. subordinate nations to impulse the Security Council to notation North Korea to the International Criminal Court, and to enforce and enforce sanctions connected “every authoritative and entity credibly recovered to beryllium liable for North Korea’s atrocity crimes.”

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