YONHAP NEWS

U.S. urged to discuss rights in future nuclear talks with N. Korea: scholar

By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (Yonhap) -- Future six-party talks on North Korea's denuclearization should also address human rights abuses in the reclusive communist state, a scholar said Tuesday.

   "Human rights should be worked into the ongoing nuclear talks with the North, possibly through the Northeast Asia Peace and Security mechanism," Peter Beck, Pantech research fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University, told a forum at the Brookings Institution.

   The working group on a peace mechanism to replace the fragile armistice that terminated the 1950-53 Korean War is among four groups established under a nuclear deal signed in 2005 by the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia.

   The others address the North's denuclearization, diplomatic recognition by Washington and Tokyo, and economic assistance to the impoverished nation.

   North Korea has boycotted the talks due to U.N. sanctions for Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests early last year.

   In a New Year's message last week, however, North Korea said it will work toward a peace regime and denuclearization through dialogue and negotiations. That brought a positive response from the State Department, which said Monday "there's reason to be more hopeful now than certainly a few months ago" for the reopening of the nuclear talks.

   Stephen Bosworth, special representative for North Korea policy, failed to get the North's commitment to return to the six-party talks when he visited Pyongyang last month in the first high-level contact between the sides since the inauguration of Barack Obama in January last year.

   U.S. officials hoped "some follow-up to those talks in some form" will lead to resumption of the nuclear talks.

   Beck also urged human rights to "become a component of bilateral security talks with North Korea."

   The previous Bush administration shunned the sensitive issue lest it become a hurdle to the North's denuclearization.

   Quitting his four-year tenure as the U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights in January last year, Jay Lefkowitz urged Obama to emphasize human rights in the six-party talks and proposed that the U.S. and its allies link any aid to Pyongyang with human rights improvements.

   Lefkowitz was denied access to North Korea while in office, although he frequently visited South Korea and China to write reports.

   Robert King, who was named in November to replace Lefkowitz, is due in Seoul early next week on a fact-finding mission.

   Vitit Muntarbhorn, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on North Korean human rights, is also to fly to South Korea Sunday on a similar mission.

   Their trip to South Korea comes amid efforts by the U.S. to seek consular access to Robert Park, 28, a Christian missionary from Tucson, Arizona, who was detained after crossing from the Chinese border into North Korea on Christmas Day to call attention to human rights conditions in the North, designated by the State Department as one of the worst rights abusers.

   Beck also called on Seoul and Washington to "establish the North Korean Refugee Protection and Resettlement Organization."

   He said the U.S. has accepted about 100 North Korean refugees since the North Korean Human Rights Act was enacted in 2004 to support North Korean refugees and promote democracy and freedom of information in North Korea.

   Hundreds of thousands of North Korean defectors are believed to be hiding in China, which views them as economic migrants rather than refugees, and repatriates them under a secret agreement with North Korea, its staunchest communist ally, where they are persecuted.

   Most of the defectors cross the border with China to seek asylum, mainly in South Korea, which has received nearly 20,000 of them since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

   Speaking at a Senate confirmation hearing earlier in September, King said he will raise the issue of China's deportation of North Korean defectors with Beijing.

   hdh@yna.co.kr
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