Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to support independent investigations and documentation efforts, including those conducted by Korea Future and other human rights organisations, to uncover human rights violations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, particularly during the period when the British Embassy in Pyongyang has been inaccessible to UK diplomats.

The UK regularly calls on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) government, through multilateral and bilateral channels, to address its appalling human rights record and acknowledge the many reports of serious and wide-ranging human rights violations in the country, and to uphold its human rights obligations. We have encouraged the DPRK to take early measures to reopen its borders to allow officials from international human rights organisations and humanitarian NGOs to enter the country. We closely monitor reports of human rights violations with our international partners and international human rights NGOs organisations. We highly value the efforts civil society organisations take to investigate and document these human rights abuses.