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| Thae Yong-ho, one of the most high-profile North Korean defectors to South Korea in recent years, delivering a keynote speech at a seminar titled "Strategies for Improving Human Rights in North Korea: Linking Sustainable Development Goals to Human Rights" held Monday in Seoul. Korea Times photo by Jung Da-min |
By Jung Da-min
Sustainable peace on the Korean Peninsula will not be possible without confronting North Korea's human rights issues, a noted North Korean defector said Monday.
"The EU approached North Korea with an argument that improving human rights would eventually benefit the country, helping it to be recognized as a 'normal state' in the international community," said Thae Yong-ho, former North Korea's deputy chief of mission to the United Kingdom.
The assertion was part of his keynote speech at the seminar hosted by Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB), on the 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Human Rights Day that falls on Dec. 10.
Thae suggested that South Korea could take lessons from the European Union's approach to the North by linking the North's human rights policies with its sustainable development goals (SDGs).
He explained how the EU's aid projects allowed North Korea to establish NGOs ― though it is just for showing off ― to get the financial budget allocated by the EU.
"North Korea also started to invite foreign experts to investigate humanitarian situations for documentation, because it would be unacceptable, for a North Korean write about the vulnerability or insecurity of the country's agricultural or hygienic conditions," Thae said.
He said, "That was how foreign experts met North Korean officials to persuade them to push forward with joint projects with the EU to receive grants."
In the late 1990s North Korea allowed Handicap International, an NGO for the rights of the disabled, to open its office in Pyongyang. Thae said it was also a part of the country's efforts to receive the grants from the EU.
Also on hand were Cho Jung-hun, director of Ajou Institute of Unification, Kim Tae-min, head of inter-Korean Cooperation mission for the SDGs, Oh Joon, professor at the Kyung Hee University's Graduate Institute of Peace Studies and Hanna Song, researcher at NKDB.
