North Korea

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Swire, in a powerful introductory speech, has set the scene brilliantly in providing us with an analytical and sharp analysis of the situation in North Korea. The whole House is indebted to him for initiating this important debate. I declare my role as co-chair, with Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea, and my non-financial interests in the register.

It is 70 years since the Korean War armistice. Millions died in that war, including more than 1,000 British service personnel, who lost their lives fighting for the freedoms now enjoyed in the south but not in the north. Last weekend we commemorated the 75th anniversaries of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the convention on the crime of genocide. The UDHR was to be

“a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations”.

Keep its universal application in mind as we consider North Korea. Keep it in mind in reflecting on an interview just last week with an escapee who had managed to get out of North Korea, with his family, in a small boat. Among other things, he described how he had been forced to watch the execution of a 22 year-old man who had been caught listening to South Korean music and watching banned movies.

Keep our commitment to the UDHR and the genocide convention in mind as we consider that 2023 is also the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations commission of inquiry into human rights violations in North Korea. Led by the eminent Australian jurist his honour Mr Michael Kirby, it was, in the words of the United Nations, mandated

“to investigate the systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, with a view to ensuring full accountability, in particular for violations which may amount to crimes against humanity”.

When it reported in 2014, it concluded that North Korea is “a state without parallel”. It called for North Korea to be referred to the International Criminal Court for prosecution. Indeed, in pursuing the failure of the UN to take forward the recommendations of the UN’s own inquiry, our all-party parliamentary group established a parliamentary inquiry. It followed up the continuation of human rights violations in North Korea from 2014 until 2021, and found that nothing much had changed in that respect since 2014. If anything, the situation was even worse.

The UN commission of inquiry left open the question of whether a genocide is taking place. Since then, further evidence has emerged of the deliberate targeting of religious groups, which would fall within the convention’s definition. I argue that the convention needs to be widened to include the targeting of political classes, whom Stalin’s Soviet Union did not wish—for good reason—to see included in 1948. The commission of inquiry found that, over five decades, hundreds of thousands of prisoners had been exterminated in political prison camps, and that in the lifetime of three generations, entire groups of people, including families with their children, had perished in those death camps because of who they were, not for any actions they had carried out. It was certainly an intent to eliminate, but not genocide in a technical sense. Justice Kirby proposed a new term, politicide, to describe the atrocities. The commission unanimously concluded that the state has committed crimes in North Korea that definitely amount, in a technical sense, to crimes against humanity, and it concluded that those responsible should be arraigned before the courts and brought to justice.

In this 75th year of both the genocide convention and the universal declaration, it is worth returning to the foundation documents. In the case of the UDHR, it is difficult to see which of the 30 articles, if any, North Korea is not in breach of.

Article 1 of the UDHR insists that:

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood”.


Article 3 insists that:

“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”.


Without that right to life, of course, all other rights are worthless. Article 4 abjures slavery, yet 90% of the wages of North Koreans who are able to work overseas are confiscated. Article 5 asserts that torture, mental or physical,

“inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”

is not permissible. Article 6 insists on the rule of law. Article 12 states that no one will be subjected to arbitrary interference with privacy, family or home. Article 13 requires the right to leave a country. Article 14 states that where there is persecution, other countries must provide asylum. Article 17 provides

“the right to own property”.

Article 18 upholds the right to religious belief. Article 19 supports

“the right to freedom of opinion and expression”

and to seek and receive information regardless of frontiers. Article 21 provides for democratic government. Article 25 deals with the right to food and care, and Article 26 with the right to education.

How far North Korea is derelict in breaching article after article of the UDHR, and how far the international community has been derelict in failing to act on the findings of the UN’s own commission of inquiry, can be seen by a cursory examination of the COI’s findings.

It unequivocally concluded that North Korea had systematically violated human rights, including freedom of thought, expression and religion, the right to food, and more besides. The state has committed crimes against humanity including—in the COI’s exact words—

“extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation”.

It found

“systematic, widespread and gross … unspeakable atrocities … on a vast scale”,

amounting to

“crimes against humanity”,

and Justice Kirby said they were

“strikingly similar”

to crimes committed by Nazi Germany. The COI said the gross violations and crimes are

“ongoing … because the policies, institutions and patterns of impunity that lie at their heart remain in place”.

That was true in 2014; it is true now.

In the light of the evidence which has emerged from those thousands of escapees—there are around 30,000 in the Republic of Korea and there are about 1,000 in this country—Karim Khan KC, the prosecutor for the ICC, should examine further the testimonies of those who were incarcerated, or whose loved ones perished in the prison camps, because of their beliefs and consider whether this does indeed meet the test of genocide convention. If he is unable to do this because of the likely blocking vetoes of China or Russia—as in the case of the failure to refer the COI findings to the ICC—an independent people’s tribunal should be established to consider that evidence. This could be modelled on the very successful Independent Uyghur Tribunal that looked at the evidence of genocide against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, and was chaired by the eminent lawyer Sir Geoffrey Nice KC.

In 2017, the UN Human Rights Council voted to look for legal strategies for eventual prosecutions and authorised the creation of a central repository for evidence—which was the right call—but prosecution has not occurred. I hope the Minister, who I know has followed this in great detail and cares about it as passionately as I do, will tell us more about where the accountability process and the question of impunity have now reached.

Changes of Administration in both the Republic of Korea and the United States have also played their part in dampening the quest for accountability, although I strongly welcome the Republic of Korea’s most recent insistence—echoed in a conversation I was privileged to have with President Yoon during his very welcome recent visit to the United Kingdom and to this Parliament—that his Government will champion the human rights of North Koreans. That is very welcome indeed.

While international justice for crimes is needed, we must also look at other options, including under the principle of universal jurisdiction. Such prosecutions in the UK would most likely not be possible because of the very limited scope of Section 51 of the International Criminal Court Act 2002. This is an issue that has been raised by experts in the field and the noble Lord is aware of it. Until we reform our law—which perhaps an incoming Government might consider doing—other countries, such as Germany and Argentina, which have broader universal jurisdiction, should be encouraged to address the growing impunity for these atrocity crimes in North Korea.

On 15 November of this year, the UN General Assembly adopted, by consensus in the Third Committee, a resolution on the situation of human rights in the DPRK. It drew attention to

“all-pervasive and severe restrictions, including an absolute monopoly on information and total control over organised social life … further tightened by Covid 19 prevention measures”.

The resolution related that these measures have led to

“food insecurity, severe hunger, malnutrition, widespread health problems and other hardship in the population”.

The prison camps, with an estimated 100,000 people being held there, are characterised by torture, brutality and degradation.

This is a country which, according to the 2021 report of the US State Department, World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers, spends a staggering $4 billion on armaments, an estimated 26% of its GDP—the highest proportion among the 170 countries it reviewed. Yet it is also a country where people starve and live in acute poverty, while its leaders wallow in luxury. The Telegraph reported earlier this week that dictator Kim had been seen riding in four new foreign vehicles, including a $200,000 armoured Mercedes-Maybach sedan. It brings to mind comparisons with the Communist dictatorship of Ceausescu in Romania.

In the face of all that, it was therefore surprising—as the noble Lord, Lord Swire, alluded to—that, on 8 December, the UK Government announced a package of sanctions targeting individuals linked to human rights abuses around the world. However, despite announcing a total of 46 sanctions, the Government did not impose any sanctions on certain North Korean individuals and entities about whom overwhelming evidence, including the FCDO’s own annual human rights reports, demonstrates their responsibility for serious human rights violations. Although it is welcome news that the UK is actively using the global human rights sanctions regime—Magnitsky sanctions—to hold to account officials in Belarus, Haiti, Iran and Syria who are complicit in repressing individual freedoms, why was there no mention of North Korea? Perhaps the Minister will tell us.

It also underlines why a parliamentary Select Committee should be given power to meet in camera, where necessary, to oversee this opaque and random process. Over the years, I have made over 400 interventions about North Korea in Parliament—in Questions, letters and meetings around this building. It is 21 years since I first raised the issue of the repatriation of escapees, which the noble Lord, Lord Swire, touched on. I did so in that first instance after a North Korean escapee came here to give his testimony. He described the plight of repatriated refugees:

“Some have been executed … When returned, they face torture, interrogation, and humiliation. Any woman who is returned and became pregnant while in China is forcibly aborted, supposedly to avoid the birth of babies ‘contaminated’ by foreign influences. There are reports of repatriated North Koreans being corralled and bound together, with wire being passed around their wrists and through their noses”.


That was testimony given in the Moses Room here in the Palace of Westminster.

Hundreds more were recently repatriated, and I have repeatedly urged the Government to raise this failure to protect refugees with the People’s Republic of China, not least because the Republic of Korea is willing to give sanctuary and a new life to every single one of them. I have received the supine and hand-washing response that

“it is for the parties involved to interpret their obligations under this agreement”.—[Official Report, 30/4/03; col. WA 104.]

We are talking about the 1951 refugee convention, of which China, which sits on the UN Human Rights Council, is in breach.

My noble friend Lady Cox, with whom I have travelled to North Korea, will speak specifically about the targeting of religious adherents, but the UN commission concluded that

“there is an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion”.

The charity Open Doors has again listed North Korea in 2023—for the 19th time out of 20 years—as the state in which, worldwide, Christians face the greatest level of persecution.

In the face of all this, we must do more than making weak-tea statements of concern. We must call out issues such as forced repatriation, the breaking of sanctions over weapons of mass destruction, the links to Putin’s war machine and the day-to-day violation of human rights—and, specifically, a referral of the commission of inquiry report to the ICC. We must continue to break the information blockade—not by short-sighted reductions in the BBC Korea service—which the APPG campaigned to initiate.

Let me end on a hopeful note. In 2016, the then North Korean ambassador and his deputy asked to see me. He read me a long denunciation for raising cases of human rights and providing a platform for escapees. His deputy had been given the task of compiling all my Hansard speeches and interventions in this House. He subsequently told me that it was his job to be my spy. A few weeks after my defenestration, Mr Thae Yong-ho and his family defected. He later told me that, through his observance of our parliamentary democracy and way of life, he had been convinced by the democratic case for freedom, human rights and the rule of law. Today Mr Thae is an elected Member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea, representing the Gangnam district of Seoul. He recently took part online in a meeting of the all-party parliamentary group focusing on the likely fate of the escapees being repatriated by China. I hope that he is the advance party for what will one day be a united Korea that upholds the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and gives its people the freedoms and liberties enjoyed here, and indeed in the Republic of Korea.