Your Excellency, Philemon Yang, President of the General Assembly, Assistant Secretary-General Kehris, Special Rapporteur Salmón, Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates,
I speak on behalf of 36 civil society partners representing over 300 organizations in 116 countries, including the Association for the Rescue of North Korea Abductees, Centro para la Apertura y el Desarrollo de America Latina, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, Family Union of Korean POWs Detained in North Korea, Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, Global Rights Compliance, HanVoice, Human Rights Watch, Institute of North Korean Studies, International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea, International Commission of Jurists, International Federation for Human Rights, Korea of All, Korean War Abductees Family Union, Liberty in North Korea, Mulmangcho, Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights, NK Imprisonment Victims' Family Association, North Korean Human Rights Network, North Korea Reform Radio, Now Action and Unity for Human Rights, NVISION, People Building an Equal World, People for Successful Corean Reunification, RT Save, Stepping Stones, THINK, The Messenger, Tongilmom, Transitional Justice Working Group, Unification Academy, Unification Media Group, and UNISEED.
We represent human rights defenders, North Korean escapees, former political prisoners, and family members of detainees, abductees, and unrepatriated prisoners of war. We are united by one conviction: the future of the Korean Peninsula will be shaped not by weapons, but by people.
Today, we have five calls to action for Member States:
Create a Body to Address Human Rights and Security Together
At its core, North Korea’s human rights violations drive its weapons program. From its mass diversion of resources while 45% of its population remains malnourished; forced labour at home and abroad, hidden in global supply chains; militarization and foreign deployment in Ukraine; weapons development and export; illicit financial activities; and transnational repression and transnational criminal networks: these threats cannot be addressed in isolation.
North Korea has ignored every UN mechanism, resolution, and report on its human rights violations and its threats to international peace and security. Today, with the Security Council deadlocked, the General Assembly must act.
We, therefore, call for a strong resolution that mandates the creation of a new independent expert body that collects, analyzes, and reports on how North Korea’s human rights violations intersect with weapons development, global business, and supply chains. This body should examine credible reports that North Korea’s economic model, including systems of forced labour and slavery at home and abroad, may be generating substantial revenue, and that these proceeds, together with gains from illicit activities such as cryptocurrency thefts and other transnational crimes, could be diverted to its military programs. This body should build on decades of information and findings gathered and reported by the Special Rapporteur, OHCHR, and civil society.
Stop Forcible Repatriation and Bring Home Detainees, Abductees, and Unrepatriated PoWs
Since 2020, China has forcibly returned more than 600 North Koreans back to North Korea. One of those returnees is Ms. Kim Cheol-ok. She spent 25 years living in China. Today, Ms. Kim and over 600 others are at risk of torture, including sexual violence, enforced disappearance, forced labour, and even arbitrary and extrajudicial execution, among other forms of ill-treatment. The Commission of Inquiry in 2014 warned that officials involved in the forcible repatriation of North Koreans were at risk of criminal liability for abetting crimes against humanity.
We, therefore, urge China and every Member State to end the forcible repatriation of North Koreans. We urge China and every Member State to uphold their obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention, its 1967 Protocol, and the UN Convention against Torture and to terminate or amend bilateral treaties that enable forcible repatriation. We call on Member States to offer protection and asylum to fleeing North Koreans, safe and legal pathways for them to be able to leave, increase third-country resettlement pathways for people from North Korea, and pressure countries complicit in forced returns to allow for resettlement. North Korea must immediately release every returnee and drop their “illegal border crossing” and “treason” charges. We also call for UNHCR to designate North Korean escapees in need of international protection from persecution at home as refugees sur place, as then-High Commissioner Guterres suggested in 2006. North Korean prisoners-of-war in Ukraine must also be protected against forcible repatriation and allowed third-country resettlement.
At the same time, we urge Member States to call for the immediate return of all detainees, abductees, and unrepatriated prisoners of war still held in North Korea, including abducted Japanese citizens, South Korean missionaries Kim Jung-Wook, Kim Kook-Kie, and Choi Chun-Gil, and the repatriation of the remains of the deceased to bereaved families. The fate of the disappeared "returnees" from the "Paradise on Earth Movement" must also be clarified.
Protect Information and Aid as Lifelines for the North Korean People
On January 23, 2020, North Korea closed its borders and started enforcing excessive COVID-19 restrictions. They installed new fences, a 20-fold increase in the number of border guard posts, and a standing “shoot on sight” order at the northern border, sealing the country off from the rest of the world. None of these restrictions have been lifted after over five years, long after the pandemic. At the same time, North Korea has criminalized not only foreign media but also any contact with the outside world, while denying entry to international humanitarian staff. This has left UN agencies and civil society in the dark about the humanitarian needs of the North Korean people.
We call on North Korea to repeal the vaguely worded “anti-state” and “anti-nation” crimes in the Criminal Code, the 2020 Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Law, and other measures that criminalize freedom of information and freedom of expression. We also call on North Korea to grant unfettered access for UN agencies and civil society to assess conditions and deliver life‑saving food, medicine, and vaccines, prioritizing the most vulnerable, including prisoners.
Ensure Accountability and Justice for Victims
Member States must support every path that brings justice to victims. This includes exploring the application of universal jurisdiction for the prosecution of violations of international crimes. We welcome the court decisions ordering North Korea to compensate victims for its human rights violations and urge governments to find creative ways to enforce these court decisions, as has happened in the Otto Warmbier case. We also call on Member States to urge the Security Council to refer this situation to the International Criminal Court, as recommended by the COI.
Impunity must have costs.
We urge individual Member States to impose and enforce targeted human rights sanctions through independent and fair processes. Sanction every official and entity credibly found to be responsible for North Korea’s atrocity crimes, including crimes against humanity.
Accountability starts at home. The North Korean government owes its victims full reparations, including compensation, restitution, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition. Until that day, we urge Member States to back survivor-centred work, including psychosocial care for victims, truth-telling, community reparations, and memorials that keep the record alive.
Invest in the North Korean People
The human rights situation has grown darker in recent years. However, the story of North Korea is not one of passive suffering or the story of one man. It is a story of the North Korean people’s resilience and resistance. Since the 1990s, ordinary people, led by women, in North Korea have built underground markets and networks to survive, smuggled information in through memory cards, and, when escape was their only option, rebuilt their lives abroad, sending back millions of dollars in remittances. They transformed the country from the ground up.
Civil society outside the country has supported and accelerated this change. For decades, we have rescued and resettled tens of thousands of North Koreans. We have pierced the information wall, broadening access to information and technology. We have documented countless human rights violations and raised global awareness. We continue to fight for accountability and justice on behalf of victims. But funding is becoming more uncertain. Our efforts are at risk of being scaled back or scrapped, just when they are needed most.
Words are not enough. Member States must commit to sustainable, long-term investments, so these networks and the hope they carry will endure and grow.
Conclusion
I end with the words of Mr. Ji Seong-ho: a man who dragged himself thousands of miles on makeshift crutches to freedom and was later elected to the South Korean National Assembly. He tells us: “Each time I hear people speak up for us, I know we are not forgotten and that change is possible.” That fragile hope is now with us.
North Koreans are already risking everything for freedom. They risk their lives, their families, and their future. To be free from a government that represses and exploits its own people. Their fight for justice, peace, security – their freedom – is the same fight that gave birth to the United Nations eighty years ago and underpins the human rights law we claim to defend.
If we fail to act, we tell every tyrant that crimes against humanity carry no cost. We must act.
The North Korean people have not given up, neither will we, and neither should you.
