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Hermit North Korea faces UN test over human rights
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Hermit North Korea faces UN test over human rights
Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL
Sat Dec 5, 2009 11:01pm EST
Factbox
North Korea's suspected human rights abuses
Sat, Dec 5 2009
SEOUL (Reuters) - Paranoid and reclusive North Korea will try to defend what groups and governments see as a systemic abuse of human rights in the country when it faces unprecedented questioning at the United Nations on Monday.
World | North Korea
The North has sat down for international nuclear disarmament talks, and will host a U.S. envoy who visits Pyongyang on Tuesday, but it has denounced global criticism of its rights record saying it is part of a conspiracy to topple its leaders.
North Korea's suspected human rights abuses have often been overshadowed by sputtering talks to end the mercurial state's atomic ambitions and that may happen again when envoy Stephen Bosworth tries to revive the dormant discussions.
But the rights review is shaping up to be a rare moment when the state tries to balance a desire to appear as a normal member of the global community while supporting its cult of personality leadership that has made it an international pariah and regional security threat.
"There is a difference between wanting to be isolated and not caring about the rest of the world. North Korea cares about the world and therefore it wants to be isolated," said B.R. Myers, an expert on the North's ideology at Dongseo University.
North Korea's leaders have assured stability in the reclusive state by instilling a sense of paranoid nationalism and carrying out massive human rights abuses, experts say.
"Any mistreatment or disrespect by the U.N. is one of those things the regime has used always to whip its people's ethnic paranoia," Myers said.
The North Korean system could easily survive after leader Kim Jong-il, 67, leaves the scene because it has so successfully isolated itself that change is nearly impossible for most North Koreans to fathom.
RECORD OF ABUSES
Rights groups and governments including the United States say North Korea maintains a network of political prisons where anyone thought to be associated with anything that may run counter to Kim's rule can be jailed along with their families, who are guilty by association.
The North uses unlawful and arbitrary killings and stages public executions as ways to intimidate the masses. It prevents free speech, controls all media and is thought to have ended nascent attempts at reform by executing or imprisoning those who oppose the state.
"North Korea will try to dismiss resolutions and ignore U.N. measures, but the popular concept that North Korea does not care about the criticism is not true," said Kay Seok, a Seoul-based researcher for the international group Human Rights Watch.
For the first time at the United Nations, its diplomats will be subject to formal questioning by member states over its rights record as a part of the world body's Universal Periodic Review, launched in 2006 to examine the rights record of all members.
North Korea has bristled at any criticism at its record, denied a U.N. special rapporteur access and made military threats after being chastised for abusing its citizens.
But in an unusual step, it has submitted a detailed document defending its rights record and sent a crew of diplomats to Geneva for the three hours of questioning it will face at the Universal Periodic Review.
"(North Korea) will take the useful recommendations and observations seriously," the state said in the document.
It also revived its Constitution earlier this year to increase the protection of human rights, which critics charged was an empty gesture that may have been directed at relief organizations who have stayed away due to the reported abuses.
World
North Korea
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