94Ha Viewpoint
North Korea’s various actions are detrimental to regional peace and security, and ultimately pose a major threat to the security of many countries, including the United States. From this point of view, security and human rights are two sides of the same coin. Keeping silent on these North Korean issues will give the international community the illusion that it is giving up or recognizing North Korea’s actions.
With Trump’s second term as US president, how the US policy toward North Korea will unfold has attracted international attention. First, judging from the personnel structure of the diplomatic and security departments, the anti-China and anti-North Korea tone is very obvious, so it is expected that the “strategic patience” countermeasures will be adopted for the North Korean nuclear and missile issues that threaten the United States, which is different from the “strategic patience” promoted by the Biden administration. In particular, it will actively oppose issues such as restoring the Russian-North Korean alliance, military cooperation, and sending North Korean troops to Ukraine. In addition, as Trump said at the Davos Forum this year, various pressure measures may be taken against North Korea, and China is expected to play an active role in dealing with North Korea and Russia.
There are different opinions on how the Trump administration views North Korea’s human rights issues. Some people predict that in order to improve the situation of Kim Jong-un’s regime violating basic human rights and committing crimes against humanity, the White House will invest more resources to continue to exert pressure. The previous Trump administration also attached great importance to the settlement of North Korean defectors in the United States and the human rights situation in North Korea, especially making a lot of efforts to release hostages detained in North Korea. From this point of view, the current Trump administration will also pay attention to issues related to North Korean defectors.
However, some people are worried that after Trump’s re-election, the United States’ human rights policy towards North Korea may regress comprehensively as he pursues pragmatic diplomacy. The current US government’s position on value diplomacy and human rights diplomacy may weaken, and even if negotiations are held between the United States and North Korea, human rights issues may be ranked behind. Therefore, although Trump expressed the statement that “I get along well with Kim Jong-un”, in the context of the failed experience of the Hanoi talks in 2019, the strengthening of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities and the significant progress in Russia-North Korea relations, it cannot be ruled out that the situation of turning silent or letting North Korea’s human rights issues go cannot be ruled out.
During the Biden administration, the tone of strengthening overall value diplomacy and putting pressure on North Korea’s human rights has been restored to a considerable extent. The United Nations “North Korean Human Rights Resolution” has been adopted for 20 consecutive years, the Federal House of Representatives passed the “U.S. North Korea Human Rights Act Reauthorization Act”, and the international community’s accusations and pressure on North Korean human rights continue. In addition, the United Nations Security Council re-discussed the North Korean human rights issue, the United Nations North Korean Human Rights Special Rapporteur, and the “North Korean Human Rights-Related Report” submitted to the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly last year. The cooperation between South Korea, the United States and Japan on North Korean human rights issues has also been strengthened to a certain extent.
Of course, Trump’s second administration did not sit idly by on the North Korean human rights issue. Regarding North Korean affairs, Trump appointed former ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell as “Special Envoy for Special Diplomatic Missions” and appointed Joshua Wong, the former Special Representative for North Korea Policy of the State Department who helped the previous Trump administration and the United States and North Korea negotiations, as Deputy Assistant for National Security. In addition, William Beau Harrison, who led the US-North Korea summit, was appointed as Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations at the White House, with a lineup for consultations with North Korea. However, they once led the Trump-Kim negotiations and may be more inclined to resolve the problem through negotiations than to put pressure on them.
The question is whether the US policy towards North Korea will link human rights policy with the North Korean denuclearization negotiations. Although this is not just a problem for the Trump administration, it is hard to deny that during his first term, Trump was reluctant to include North Korean human rights on the UN Security Council agenda in the process of promoting North Korean denuclearization negotiations, and human rights issues became a tool to bring Kim Jong-un to the negotiating table. As a result, the North Korean human rights issue has been buried since the breakdown of the Singapore talks in June 2018 and the Hanoi talks in February 2019.
But frankly speaking, it is not easy to ease sanctions on North Korea through the North Korean nuclear negotiations and exchange them for North Korean denuclearization. Experience shows that it is difficult to deal with human rights issues related to the North Korean nuclear issue effectively. As reflected in North Korea’s deployment of troops to Russia, the basic human rights of countless young North Korean soldiers to “protect their life opportunities” have been ignored. In addition, it is also a well-known fact that North Korea is spreading international instability and violence by exporting weapons, ammunition, and ballistic missiles to Iran and terrorist proxy organizations Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Ultimately, North Korea’s various actions are detrimental to regional peace and security, and ultimately pose a major threat to the security of many countries, including the United States. From this point of view, security and human rights are two sides of the same coin. Keeping silent on these North Korean issues will give the international community the illusion that it is giving up or recognizing North Korea’s actions. North Korea has no intention of reflecting on itself. In response to the human rights offensive against North Korea, it actually enacted the “Countermeasures Law” in 2019, which regards the international community’s raising of human rights issues, criticism of military exercises, and international economic sanctions caused by nuclear missile development as unfriendly behavior, and enacts corresponding laws.
In this way, international security issues will also arise on the fundamental basis of trampling on human rights, and we must look at this comprehensively. Even if it is not to convey wrong information to Kim Jong-un’s authorities, we must constantly remind the international community of the North Korean issue. If the pressure from the international community to maintain the universal value of human rights weakens, North Korea may move towards a more closed and oppressive system, which will obviously have a serious negative impact not only on the North Korean people, but also on neighboring countries and the international community.
