Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent discussions he has had with his counterpart in North Korea on freedom of religion.

The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my right hon. friend the member for Richmond (Yorks) (Mr Hague) has never met his Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) counterpart.

However, the UK takes every opportunity to raise with the DPRK authorities our concerns about their appalling human rights record, not least with regard to freedom of religion or belief. The British Embassy in Pyongyang last raised our concerns with the DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs in March 2013. A senior official in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office raised this issue with the North Korean Embassy in February 2014.

We have also raised concerns specifically about recent reports that 33 people have been sentenced to death for alleged contact with Kim Jung-wook (aka Kim Jong-uk), a South Korean arrested by the DPRK authorities last year on suspicion of trying to establish underground churches. We have requested official confirmation of what has happened to the individuals concerned and called on the DPRK to respect the provision in its constitution guaranteeing “freedom of belief in religion”. We also played a leading role in securing a strong resolution at the UN Human Rights Council, calling for accountability for the range of human rights violations documented in the DPRK.

The annual FCO Human rights report, published on 10 April 2014 includes the DPRK as a country of concern. The full report can be found at http://www.hrdreport.fco.gov.uk