South and North Korea are expected to clash over the communist country's human rights conditions at a United Nations meeting in Geneva next week, sources here said Tuesday.
The high-level segment of the 28th session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, scheduled from March 2-5, will draw keen attention as ranking diplomats from the rival Koreas are scheduled to make keynote speeches on the North Korean human rights issue.
Along with the communist country's nuclear arms matter, its human rights issue has become the focus of the international community after a U.N. commission of inquiry filed the first-ever official report documenting the country's human rights violations early last year.
The U.N. has since ratcheted up pressure on the North to improve human rights conditions, having adopted a strongly worded resolution that calls for the referral of the North Korean human rights situation to the International Criminal Court.
Amid increasing international pressure, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong plans to deliver a keynote speech to the high-level session on March 3 in Geneva, Switzerland.
In the speech, the first of its kinds to be given by any North Korean foreign minister to the U.N. council, the top North Korean diplomat is expected to voice the country's protest against the international moves.
The North has repeatedly claimed that the U.N. COI report was fabricated and plotted to topple the regime, entirely dismissing the report. Since the recent retraction of some of the testimony by Shin Dong-hyuk, a North Korean defector and key witness in the U.N. report, the North has ramped up its campaign to invalidate it.
Referring to Ri's planned appearance at the human rights session, a Seoul official said it "likely shows North Korea's keen attention and desperation on the human rights issue."
The March U.N. session will also be attended by South Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul, who plans to give a keynote speech in a separate day following Ri's appearance.
Cho is expected to focus on calling for increased international efforts to address the North Korean human rights situation and efforts to indict the North Korean leadership for the violations.
He may also touch on calls to stop repatriating North Korean defectors from foreign soil, as well as the importance of arranging reunions of separated families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.
Turning to the issue of the imperial Japanese army's sexual enslavement of Korean women, the vice foreign minister is also expected to add pressure on Japan for the early resolution of the matter. (Yonhap)
