Eunju Kim, who escaped starvation in North Korea in 1999, only to be sent back and flee a second time, has told the United Nations that the country’s leader must be held accountable for gross human rights violations.
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Gyuri Kang, whose family faced persecution for her grandmother’s religious beliefs, fled the North during the Covid-19 pandemic. She told the General Assembly on Tuesday that three of her friends were executed – two for watching South Korean TV dramas.
At the high-level meeting of the 193-member world body, the two women, both now living in South Korea, described the plight of North Koreans who UN special investigator Elizabeth Salmón said have been living in “absolute isolation” since the pandemic began in early 2020.
Thousands of North Koreans have fled the country since the late 1990s, but the numbers have dwindled drastically in recent years.
Salmón said North Korea’s closure of its borders worsened an already dire human rights situation, with new laws enacted since 2020 and stricter punishments, including the death penalty and public executions.
In another rights issue, she said, the deployment of North Korean troops to support Russia in its war against Ukraine has raised concerns about “the poor human rights conditions of its soldiers while in service, and the government’s widespread exploitation of its own people.”