U n Point Man on North Korea Urges Continued Focus on Kim Jong Un

U.N. point man on North Korea urges continued focus on Kim Jong Un

An undated picture released from North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency on Jan. 21 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un during a visit to the Ryuwon shoe factory in North Korea. (Kns/AFP/Getty Images)

TOKYO — Direct criticism of Kim Jong Un — whether through Hollywood films or international reports — has hit "a raw nerve" in Pyongyang and should be continued, says the United Nations' special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea.

But the world also should be actively engaging with the Kim regime to draw it out of its self-imposed isolation, Marzuki Darusman said Friday, calling the United States' increasingly aggressive approach toward North Korea "unfortunate."

"In the overall picture, I think much hinges on the way the U.S. acts," said Darusman, a former attorney general of Indonesia. A harder line against North Korea could "stall or delay the process that needs to be put into place," he said.

Since a U.N. commission of inquiry released a report last year calling for North Korea's leaders to be referred to the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity, there has been unprecedented momentum in efforts to hold Pyongyang to account. Darusman was a member of the commission.

A resolution to refer Kim and his associates to the ICC has passed through three U.N. committees and is on the Security Council's agenda, causing North Korea to engage on human rights as never before.

Marzuki Darusman, U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in North Korea, speaks during a news conference in Tokyo on Jan. 23. (Koji Sasahara/AP)

But this also comes as the United States imposes more sanctions — with possibly more to come — on North Korea as punishment for its alleged hacking of Sony Pictures in retaliation for "The Interview," a movie about a plot to assassinate Kim.

Darusman said that the U.N. commission of inquiry's report as well as "The Interview" and various online animations mocking the North Korean "supreme leader" have combined to put new pressure on him and his regime.

"This is a new thing, spotlighting the leadership and ridiculing the leadership. In any authoritarian, totalitarian system, that is an Achilles' heel," Darusman said in an interview in Tokyo, where he held talks with the government on an investigation into North Korea's abductions of Japanese citizens.

If this kind of ridicule seeps into North Korea, it could become lethal for the regime, he said. "If they want to preserve their system, the only way to do that is not to close themselves off from the international community but to actively engage," he said.

North Korea was so worried that Kim would be personally named in the ICC referral that it offered Darusman an opportunity to visit the country if the leader's name was left out of the resolution. Pyongyang had previously declined to extend such an invitation. Darusman, who has never been to North Korea, rejected the offer.

The 372-page report released by the commission of inquiry last year detailed a raft of human rights abuses allegedly committed over decades, including political imprisonment, executions, torture, repression and brainwashing.

That report has come in for scrutiny in recent days, however, since Shin Dong-hyuk, a star witness before the commission, admitted that there were inaccuracies in his testimony.

Darusman, echoing Michael Kirby, the retired Australian judge who led the commission, said Shin was just one of more than 200 witnesses who testified and that slight changes in his story did not dent the totality of the evidence that the commission had collected.

"We continue to stand by his testimony. The fact that he came out clarifying his earlier statement and corrected his timelines of events does not in any way affect the integrity and credibility of the report nor the thrust of its recommendations," Darusman told reporters in Tokyo earlier Friday.

"I continue to stand by his life story, one which is clearly one of massive personal and physical abuse, and therefore it remains incontestable in that sense," he said.

Shin had said he was born in, and spent his whole life in, North Korea's most notorious political prison, Camp 14, until his escape at 23. His story of torture and suffering was recounted in The Washington Post and then in "Escape from Camp 14," a best-selling book by former Post correspondent Blaine Harden.

Shin has admitted that many of the places and timing of events in his account were wrong, and Harden is working with him to correct the story.

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Anna Fifield Anna Fifield is The Washington Post's former bureau chief in Beijing, writing about all aspects of China. She was the Post's bureau chief in Tokyo between 2014 and 2018, writing about Japan and the two Koreas. She is the author of "The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un." Follow

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/un-point-man-on-north-korea-urges-continued-focus-on-kim-jong-un/2015/01/23/dc922c32-cc5d-471a-8986-7f613392479b_story.html