Human Rights Racket Alive and Kicking
One of the nice things about running this blog is that people send you things. One of the more interesting things I have received recently is a letter which appears to be from Ambassador Ja Song Nam, the North Korean Permanent Representative to the United Nations, to his fellow ambassadors from other member states. It concerns the treatment of North Korea on human rights issues in the United Nations.
It is of interest for two reasons. The first is that it appears to imply that North Korea tabled a counter-resolution defending its human rights record in the General Assembly. Diplomats take note. The second, and to me, more interesting reason is the language itself.
Naively I have always carried the implicit assumption that North Korean diplomats communicated like, well, diplomats. This letter reads like a somewhat sophomoric outtake from KCNA--“Under the present circumstances where the human rights racket against our country is kicked up in the extreme…”
The ranting of KCNA is often dismissed as propaganda aimed solely at the domestic audience, i.e. political theatre not to be taken seriously. But this is the country’s UN mission, for Pete’s sake! And somehow it tells me that KCNA invective signals more about the mental frame of the Pyongyang leadership than some would have us believe.
Comments
That "chess move" is really clever, as it points to the weak spot of the human rights situation of the US.
You have no right getting a workplace, no right to get housing, no right of medical care for everybody and no right of free education. Big money rules your country, not the people.
Concerning social human rights, your country is really backward in development.
@Roland: The USA may be very socially backward for an OECD country, but I think even they have free education for everybody up to high school and rudimentary welfare, unlike North Korea where medical care and education are free only on paper but not in real life, and if innocent North Koreans like Shin Dong-hyuk happen to have the wrong parents, the "housing", "education", "workplace" and "medical care" they will get don't amount to more than a cruel joke.
Interesting that they explicitly linked their efforts to improve inter-Korean relations (Oct 4th visit was two days before this note was sent round) to reasons everyone should lay off the human rights criticism.
@Roland, your comment was a serious dodge. Do you or do you not give your 'active support' to this resolution, put forward by the respected delegation of the DPRK, led by the thought and brilliant diplomatic strategy of the Great Marshal Kim Jong-un? I think they (and he!) really want (indeed, perhaps can be said to _deserve_) the full weight of your personal support. In fact, perhaps their true purpose in contacting Dr. Noland in such an unprecedented fashion is to test your loyalty to the cause and to the leader in his hour of discomfort; I suggest you reciprocate! @SPark, seems they've been after this all year; the 'slander cease fire' also felt explicitly linked to the ROK's human rights criticism. The action on the Japanese abduction report (where the DPRK rep. showed up in Shenyang empty-handed, saying the biggest problem was an undisciplined Japanese media) is also a case in point. Thanks to Witness for keeping the drumbeat going on this issue. I guess one question which no one can really answer is: Would the North Korean state be so apparently eager to be moving forward (if with some difficulty) on the UPR process in the absence of the pressure of the Commission of Inquiry, etc? Something to think about, anyway.
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