[Editorial] Shame to N. Korean human rights status

We were ashamed to receive the annual report on the human rights situation in North Korea, published on Wednesday by the U. S. Freedom House, an authoritative private organization that monitors conditions of democracy and human rights in countries around the world. North Korea was included in the list of 11 of the 192 nations that are classified as the worst in terms of political freedom and civil rights. Since the North is listed as having one of the world's worst human rights records, along with Afghanistan, Myanmar, Cuba, Iraq, Libya and Syria and others, we cannot but feel sorry for it, as the compatriots of North Korean people.

Up until now, the Seoul government has promoted policies for reconciliation, exchanges and cooperation toward Pyongyang and provided it with food and fertilizer in order to help support our starving brethren there, but kept silent on the political and human rights issues. Inter-Korean economic cooperation is meant to safeguard the people's rights to social and economic survival. The right to food and shelter can be said to be a fundamental rights, along with political and human rights. These are universal values that are contained in the U. N. human rights convention and that should be protected under the free market system.

However, civic and political freedom are universal values that all mankind should enjoy, in precedence over economic rights. These rights pertain to freedom of person, conscience, speech, religion, movement and profession, among others.

If North Korea turns its back on these basic rights on account of its socialist system, while dismissing them as issues that only apply in eastern societies, the question is very serious. This is also regulated in the B article of the United Nations human rights convention, which North Korea joined but failed to submit a pertinent report. Pyongyang tendered a human rights report as late as last July, or more than a decade after joining the convention, but the truth of the report is questioned.

Earlier this year, intellectuals in France issued a statement that the international community should not provide economic assistance to North Korea in light of its human rights abuse. At this point, Pyongyang ought to realize that this kind of statement will become burden on the Seoul government as it tries to implement inter-Korean economic cooperation.

Heretofore, the raising of the North's human rights issue was even considered slander of the North Korean regime, yet as compatriots, we cannot help but express concern over the North Korean people's human rights status. In this context, law-enforcement authorities will have to conduct thorough investigations of the recent incident in which a group campaigning for democracy and human rights in North Korea was threatened, and severely punish the culprits.

The human rights issue, mankind's universal value, is not restricted to North Korea but exists in the South as well. It behooves us to review whether the labor conditions for foreign workers and the treatment of applicants for refugee status really live up to the standards of the nation, whose president received the Nobel Peace Prize.