Whoever wins the South Korean presidential polls has the responsibility to speak up about their violations in North Korea
By Benedict Rogers in UCA News
South Koreans will go to the polls next Tuesday, June 3, to choose a new president. It is no exaggeration to say that in their hands is the fate not only of their democracy, but of the entire Korean Peninsula.
The unexpected election comes two years early. South Korea was not due to elect a new president until March 3, 2027, but the former president Yoon Suk Yeol’s unconstitutional attempt to declare martial law last December led to his impeachment and removal.
Yoon now faces charges of insurrection. While his actions on Dec. 3 last year marked a desperate and potentially dangerous moment in South Korea’s young democracy, the country has shown that its democratic spirit and adherence to the constitution remain robust.
The race for the presidency is between Lee Jae-myung for the left-of-centre Democratic Party and Kim Moon-soo of the conservative People Power Party.
Like the previous Democratic Party president Moon Jae-in, Lee is a civil rights lawyer who has served in the National Assembly since 2022 and was previously the governor of Gyeonggi province. In 2024, he survived an assassination attempt and, during the martial law crisis, gained international attention for climbing the National Assembly building fence and livestreaming the army’s attempts to enter the legislature. He then played a leading role in Yoon’s impeachment.
Kim served as Yoon’s employment and labour minister and, like Lee, was also the governor of Gyeonggi province. During South Korea’s dictatorship in the 1980s, Kim took part in student protests against the regime, resulting twice in his expulsion from university. He was arrested and tortured by the regime in 1980, and in 1986 was jailed for two and a half years for his role as a pro-democracy and labor rights activist.
One of the most significant dividing lines between Lee and Kim is how to deal with their authoritarian neighbour, North Korea, which has one of the worst human rights crises in the world. Ruled by Kim Jong-Un, the third generation ruler from the dynasty of the country’s founding father Kim Il-Sung, North Korea is a country of public executions and vast concentration camps in which forced labour, severe torture and sexual violence are widespread and systematic.
It is a country where there is zero freedom of expression or freedom of religion or belief. It is a country in which every single article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is violated every day. It is a country which a United Nations Commission of Inquiry led by Australian judge Michael Kirby just over a decade ago finds guilty of crimes against humanity.
Lee is likely to revert to the approach of his Democratic Party predecessor Moon Jae-in, seeking engagement, dialogue, and reconciliation with Pyongyang, and keeping silent on the massive violations of human rights in North Korea in the process.
Kim, on the other hand, has a long track record of activism on North Korea’s human rights. As a legislator, he led the way in introducing the North Korean Human Rights Act, first proposing it in 2005. The legislation took 11 years to pass, but was finally enacted in 2016.
South Korea’s North Korean Human Rights Act makes a focus on human rights in Kim Jong-Un’s dictatorship a priority for Seoul, providing humanitarian assistance, support for documentation of human rights violations, assistance to North Korean escapees, and an institutional framework for providing funding and research on the vast abuses taking place in North Korea. It created the role of ambassador for human rights in North Korea.
In most democracies, international human rights issues draw bipartisan support. With a few exceptions, they are not usually party political matters. But in South Korea, few issues are more divisive politically than the issue of human rights in North Korea.
In recent decades, whenever the Democrats have been in power in Seoul, concern and support for human rights in North Korea have been toned down significantly. Under Moon, civil society groups working in Seoul on North Korea human rights saw funding cut and faced threats and harassment from the authorities.
Moon viewed visible action on North Korea’s human rights as an impediment to his efforts to seek rapprochement with Kim Jong-Un, effectively attempting to buy peace through appeasement and silence on human rights.
An especially egregious action by Moon’s administration was the repatriation to North Korea of North Korean fishermen seeking resettlement in South Korea, an action that violated South Korea’s constitution and international treaty obligations, and put the repatriated fishermen in danger of torture and execution. On top of that, at the request of Pyongyang, South Korea not only stopped broadcasting via loudspeakers at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South, but tore them down.
The Moon administration also introduced and passed an anti-leafleting law that made balloon launches and other methods human rights organisations used to send information and humanitarian assistance to the people of North Korea illegal. The law, although declared unconstitutional, remains on the books, although the Yoon administration never enforced it and returned to broadcasting via loudspeakers at the DMZ.
In contrast, conservative governments — whether out of genuine conviction or political convenience — have given North Korea human rights much more support, by providing platforms for North Korean escapees and their activities in South Korea.
Throughout Moon’s presidency, from 2017 to 2022, all my contacts with the South Korean government dried up. The invitations to lunch with diplomats at the embassy in London stopped, sponsorship of conferences on North Korea human rights ceased, and opportunities to meet officials in Seoul came to a halt.
Whereas under Yoon’s government, I was regularly invited to lunch or dinner with diplomats, visits around the world by North Korean escapees — to tell their stories and mobilize awareness — increased, and advocacy on the human rights crisis in North Korea was encouraged by Seoul.
The same pattern is likely to be repeated after June 3. If Lee wins, the spotlight on human rights in North Korea from Seoul is likely to dim. Concerns have arisen over Lee’s foreign policy pledges during the election campaign, particularly his intention to pursue closer relations with Russia and China — members, with North Korea and Iran, of the so-called “Axis of Dictatorship” — a move which would draw South Korea away from its traditional Western allies.
In contrast, Kim’s election pledges emphasize that strengthening national security based on democratic values involves deepening ties with democratic allies and upholding human rights, freedom, democracy, and peace on the Korean Peninsula and across the Asia-Pacific. If Kim wins, support is likely to increase, especially given his role in introducing the North Korean Human Rights Act.
But it should not be this way. Human rights should transcend party politics and not be used as a political football. And whether the goal is dialogue and reconciliation or security and confrontation, human rights should neither be sacrificed nor weaponized. South Korea has a responsibility to speak up for human rights in North Korea, whoever is in power in Seoul.
An excellent new article by Jiwon Kim of the Lowy Institute makes exactly this argument. “For too long, political battles have clouded the true nature of North Korean human rights,” he writes. “It is not just a policy issue, but a deeply human one. With a new administration on the horizon, South Korea has a chance to reset the conversation, moving past ideological binaries and building lasting frameworks and discourse rooted in new norms and values. North Korean human rights must no longer be treated as a weapon of political rivalry, but as a universal concern that transcends ideology. It is time to shift the focus from ‘North Korea’ to ‘human rights’.”
When Koreans enter the polling stations on June 3, they should have in mind, alongside all the domestic concerns that every voter has, two pivotal, even existential questions. How to protect and advance South Korea’s democracy? And how to help the people of North Korea? And whichever candidate wins, whatever agenda they pursue in office, I hope they will ask themselves the same questions – and not play politics with the rights and freedoms all Koreans, north and south, deserve.
This article was originally published in UCA News.