[INTERVIEW] Moon partly responsible for Korea's failure to keep UN Human Rights Council seat: expert

Then President Moon Jae-in, right, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un walk toward the welcoming ceremony venue at the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom, in this April 27, 2018, file photo. Korea Times photo by Ko Young-kwon

Ex-president 'shamefully walked away' from roles to address rights abuses of North Koreans, Human Rights Watch official says

By Jung Min-ho

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division

Ruling party lawmakers have blamed the previous Moon Jae-in administration for South Korea's recent failure to keep its seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council, accusing it of shutting its eyes to North Korea's gross and obvious violations of human rights while seeking to improve inter-Korean relations throughout his five-year term.

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, said he believes they were right to point out that Moon is not free of responsibility for the seat loss. Though he is not the sole reason, the international human rights expert believes his failures to do "even the minimum" on the rights of ordinary North Koreans by U.N. standards affected members' voting decisions.

"Moon shamefully walked away from any sort of leadership to address the rights abuses and suffering of the North Korean people, taking an extreme position that he would not even acknowledge, much less act on, Pyongyang's systematic human rights violations," he told The Korea Times in an interview. "The huge policy swings between the Moon and Park [Geun-hye] administrations were certainly noticed by the international community, and it was not appreciated. It appears that some governments at the U.N. were whipsawed by the massive changes in South Korean government policy toward the DPRK (North Korea) and some apparently decided that meant Seoul is an unreliable partner when it comes human rights issues."

In a vote of the U.N. General Assembly to elect 12 members to the council last week, South Korea landed fifth among seven Asia-Pacific countries competing for membership, coming in behind Bangladesh, Maldives, Vietnam and Kyrgyzstan. It was the first time South Korea had been turned down for membership since the council's establishment in 2006.

The Moon administration's 2019 decision to repatriate two North Korea fishermen against their will, along with allegations that it neglected its duties and distorted information surrounding the death of a South Korean fisheries official who was killed by the North Korean military in 2020, were the cases that drew the most criticism from human rights activists.

Children perform as North Korea marks the 77th anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang, Oct. 10. AFP-Yonhap

Nevertheless, South Korea not getting reelected to the U.N. Human Rights Council came as a shock to many experts, given its relatively better human rights record and the size of its financial contributions to the U.N. The country is the ninth-largest donor to the 2022-2024 U.N. regular and peacekeeping budgets.

"There is certainly a high degree of shock in New York that South Korea performed so poorly in running for a seat on the Human Rights Council," Robertson noted. "Some of the reasons are procedural, such as failing to have a strategic approach, which was seen in the decision to run for many seats on many different U.N. bodies instead of concentrating efforts on a couple of key positions. Compounding this problem, the ROK (South Korean) diplomats were apparently sluggish in their efforts to lobby other governments, meaning they were unable to keep pace against the very vigorous and focused lobby efforts by other governments, like Vietnam and Bangladesh."

His analysis is in line with the explanation by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which attributed the failure to the country angling for too many leadership posts in international organizations simultaneously.

This photo taken on Oct. 11 shows a plenary meeting of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, as participants prepare to elect the members of the Human Rights Council. Yonhap

Robertson also said the U.N.'s decision-making system is not perfect and that South Korea needs to be more strategic to achieve its goals on the platform.

"While I wish that only governments with good human rights records could be elected to the HRC, that is simply not the reality. Votes at the U.N. are very political, and involve horse-trading between governments that go beyond just the rights record of a particular government. For example, Vietnam has presided over a massive crackdown on political dissidents, violated core civil and political rights and refuses to allow any media freedom ― yet it got more votes than South Korea, which has a significantly better rights record. So quite clearly, South Korea needs to raise its game politically as well as respect human rights at home," he said.

"Obviously, President Yoon Suk-yeol and his team need to go back to the drawing board and figure out what went wrong, and how to address it. This will require serious internal analysis, collaborative approaches and placing a priority on protecting human rights both north and south of the 38th parallel as well as inculcating rights policies into South Korean foreign policy."