We write to urge you to take a more proactive role in addressing human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the situation of North Korean refugees.

In a letter to the National Human Rights Commission of Korea in advance of an upcoming conference on Korea's E-2 Teaching Visa policy, Human Rights Watch urges the commission to find the current policy discriminatory and to recommend abolition of its HIV testing requirement.

Despite the deteriorating relations between North and South Korea since early last year, the Gaeseong Industrial Complex remained largely unchanged.

South Korea's restrictions on entry, stay and residence for people living with HIV broadly violate international human rights law provisions banning discrimination and upholding equality.

NGOs around the world call Sri Lanka's defeat in today's Human Rights Council elections a victory for the UN body.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak should use the occasion of the Olympic torch’s passage in Seoul on April 27 to urge Beijing to stop arresting and repatriating North Korean refugees in China, Human Rights Watch said today. The torch relay, which up to now has been dogged by protests over China’s human rights abuses at home and in Tibet, will also pass through the North Korean capital Pyongyang on April 28, one place where protests are not expected.

Today in Pyongyang, the New York Philharmonic, the most prominent U.S. cultural institution ever to visit North Korea, performs live on state TV and radio. Many observers have cautiously dubbed this a prelude to a thaw between Washington and Pyongyang. But for North Koreans, a very real thaw, unseen by the musicians, has been transforming life for years.

When labor ministers from 22 Asian and Middle Eastern countries meet in Abu Dhabi this week to discuss Asian contract migrant workers, they should address widespread violations of migrant workers’ rights, Human Rights Watch said today.