U.N.: North Korea is increasing repression as people starve in parts of the country

Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, speaks via video call to the United Nations Security Council on Thursday. North Korea is increasing its repression of human rights and people are becoming more desperate and reportedly starving in parts of the country as the economic situation worsens, the U.N. rights chief said Thursday. Volker Türk told the first open meeting since 2017 of the U.N. Security Council on North Korean human rights that in the past its people have endured periods of severe economic difficulty and repression, but “currently they appear to be suffering both.” “According to our information, people are becoming increasingly desperate as informal markets and other coping mechanisms are dismantled, while their fear of state surveillance, arrest, interrogation and detention has increased,” he said. The countries called on all 193 U.N. member nations to raise awareness of the links between the human rights situation in North Korea and international peace and security, “and to hold the DPRK government accountable.” North Korea on Tuesday denounced U.S. plans for the council meeting as “despicable,” saying it was only aimed at achieving Washington’s geopolitical ambitions. Vice Foreign Minister Kim Son Gyong called the United States a “declining” power and said if the council dealt with any country’s human rights, the U.S. should be the first “as it is the anti-people empire of evils, totally depraved due to all sorts of social evils.” Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky, whose country is an ally of North Korea, told the council the meeting was “propaganda” and “a cynical and hypocritical effort to step up pressure on Pyongyang.” Human rights should not be discussed in the council, he said, and attempts to link the rights situation to peace and security are “absolutely artificial.”