SEOUL, South Korea — In an uncompromising signal aimed at Pyongyang, the government of South Korea is vowing to prosecute those who violate human rights in North Korea if and when the two countries are reunited.
“We will hold accountable these perpetrators in the North once the two Koreas are united and we can hold relevant judicial proceedings,” the Unification Ministry announced Tuesday, according to local media accounts.
The Unification Ministry, along with the Foreign Ministry and the Justice Ministry, has been discussing ways to improve human rights inside North Korea, long ranked as one of the most secretive and repressive regimes on the planet.
Though details were scant, the rights initiatives include formalizing research on North Korean practices and abuses, finding ways to disseminate basic human rights information to those living under the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and establishing a museum on the topic in the South.
The most consequential policy shift — the pledge to punish rights violators — is predicated on the end to the long division of the Korean peninsula. There is no indication that unification is imminent — or even that it is inevitable — but the announcement sends a message to those with bloody hands in a regime infamous for its abuse of human rights that they could one day face justice themselves.
International rights groups say North Koreans lack such basic rights as freedom of expression, association, movement and worship. The government strictly controls the flow of information. Political prisoners lack access to due process.
North Koreans who find themselves in the regime’s vast prison system may be released after doing nothing worse than agricultural or industrial labor. But anecdotal evidence suggests conditions are extremely grim.
Prisoners face risks of malnutrition or starvation. Moreover, they are subject to brutalities at the hands of guards, including confinement in tiny spaces, beatings, sexual abuse, forced abortions and public execution.
Accounts of almost surreal nightmare scenes – of prisoners being forced to eat cabbage treated with biological agents and of pregnant women’s bellies being used as fulcrums for guards’ seesaws — have been recorded.
Political pushback
Despite the horror stories, the threat of future prosecution issued by the conservative administration of President Yoon Suk-yeol has proven controversial in South Korea itself. The new policy drew scathing criticism from an official in the previous Moon Jae-in administration, which has a policy of trying to engage Pyongyang that Mr. Yoon has largely rejected.
“If the minister of unification, who is supposed to be in a position of talking to North Korea, is talking about human rights prosecutions, post-unification, it signals that he is not doing his job well,” said Choi Jong-kun, an ex-deputy minister of foreign affairs. “Any imagination that it will have some kind of impact on curtailing human rights violations is wishful thinking.”
Mr. Choi, now a professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University, argued that the policy shift “only intensifies current animosities.” Virtually all North-South communication channels are currently closed off.
Above all, the policy “will have zero impact on what is going on in North Korea,” Mr. Choi said.
Author Michael Breen, who met North Korean state founder Kim Il Sung and wrote a biography of second-generation leader Kim Jong Il, said the Yoon policy is off-base if unification of the two Koreas is the goal: Amnesties will almost certainly need to be offered to North Korean regime officials if any peaceful, Southern-led process is to succeed.
“If your priority is actual unification, there is going to have to be forgiveness and carrots for the leadership there for them even to entertain the idea,” he said.
The Kim regime is likely to view Seoul’s announcement less as a principled initiative and more as just the latest tactic in the war of nerves constantly being waged between Seoul and Pyongyang.
“I don’t think they understand human rights like we do,” said Mr. Breen. “With a regime like you have in North Korea, they see [the issue of] human rights as a stick to beat them with.”
And extending the guilt of leaders down the ranks to subordinates carries an unintended risk — binding lower officials in support of the regime’s survival at any cost.
It is a tactic used by one of the most odious governments in history: Historians say Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler purposely revealed the German regime’s “Final Solution” to wipe out Europe’s Jewish peoples in an October 1943 speech to party officials to make them complicit in the policy and underscore their need to stay loyal to the regime to the very end.
Calling to account
But some argue the new approach could have a very different impact in Pyongyang.
For one thing, the North Korean officials carrying out the repressions and rights abuses have privileges denied to most North Koreans, including access to information far beyond what the government censors allow the general population.
“We are talking about people working for the State Security Bureau who, by the nature of their work, have privileged access to outside information,” said Shin Hee-seok, a legal analyst with the civic organization the Transitional Justice Working Group. “If there are minimal efforts by the South Korean government to share this information, they will share it among themselves.”
While top-ranking officials in Pyongyang are likely closely connected to the ruling Kim dynasty, the loyalty of officials down the organizational chart could waver.
“Commitments to future justice are more effective upon mid-level officials, as they may want to save their own skins if the system changes,” said Mr. Shin, whose organization uses satellite imagery to map North Korean mass graves. “It creates a strong personal incentive: They could be less harsh upon, say, political prisoners, so they won’t be targeted like very ruthless perpetrators.”
Mr. Shin agrees with Mr. Breen that, post-unification, it would be impossible to prosecute everyone in North Korea associated with abuses. He cited the case of East Germany, where millions of informants assisted security agencies before the Berlin Wall fell.
“The most likely scenarios involve plea bargaining at lower levels,” Mr. Shin said. “They could turn on their superiors and provide evidence to avoid punishment.”
Yet one outcome in a unified Korea, as some perpetrators bargain their way out of trouble, might be unintended: If South Korean officials decline to pursue individual officials for political reasons, North Korean victims with a new awareness of their rights might take up the cudgel.
“If there is a [South Korean] amnesty for North Korean figures, it will be their own people bringing the lawsuits,” Mr. Breen said. “So, this could empower the North Korean people.”
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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