hankyoreh

The United Nations has ruled that Shin Sook-ja and her two daughters are being forcibly detained in North Korea. Shin was the wife of Oh Kil-nam, who defected with his family to North Korea from Germany in the 1980s. He later defected from the North, leaving his wife and children behind. The UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said that the three women’s continued detention since 1987 is arbritrary, and violates of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the human rights group International Coalition to Stop Crimes against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK) reported. The working group demanded that North Korea release Shin and her daughters with appropriate compensation.

The working group’s conclusion may be seen as the official position of the UN, since it is affiliated with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which oversees UN human rights activities. Shin’s status in North Korea is now an international human rights issue that can no longer be taken lightly.

A solution to this situation has to be found in the most basic humanitarian principles. The most urgent order of business is to see whether the individuals involved are able to exercise free will. North Korea has claimed that Shin died on Apr. 27 and that the daughters refused to see the father who abandoned them. Oh traveled with them to North Korea in 1985 from Germany, where he was an exchange student, before leaving North Korea on his own a year later. Since then, he has been working with domestic North Korea human rights groups to have his family members repatriated. If the situation is to be resolved, we first need to know whether the daughters really want to stay in North Korea. We should consider having international human rights groups see for themselves whether the two women are able to behave at will in a third-party location where North Korean authorities don’t hold influence. The family members will also need to reach an agreement for an investigation into the cause of Shin’s death and the return of her remains.

In some sense, the reason Shin’s situation is as prominent as it has been has to do with Oh’s statements implicating the late composer Yun I-sang, a Korean composer who made his career in Germany. Oh has claimed that Yun encouraged him to go to North Korea, while Yun’s family has argued that nothing of the kind happened and that a misunderstanding actually arose while Yun was working to help repatriate Shin and the two daughters from North Korea. The excessive attempts to bring Yun into things could well be criticized for making political hay out of North Korean human rights issues.

Human rights are universal without distinctions between North and South. In principle, both Seoul and Pyongyang should be applying the same yardstick to the issue. There is also no need to add political motives into the mix. We hope the Shin Sook-ja situation becomes an occasion for people to adopt a more mature approach to North Korean human rights.

　

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