N. Korea Says It Can 'Show Flexibility' - hopeful sign?

N. Korea Says It Can 'Show Flexibility'
Possible Dismantling of Nuclear Arms Programs Tied to Broader Aid Package

North Korea has permitted a British ministerial delegation to be the first outsider to scrutinise its appalling human rights record. Bill Rammell, the Foreign Office minister, arrives in Pyongyang today, with his department's human rights specialist, Jon Benjamin, with a brief to investigate widespread allegations of prison camp torture, medical experiments on humans and random abductions.

The British mission will try to confirm the disturbing allegations that have prompted the UN human rights commission to demand an investigation.

Mr Rammell intends to impress on the world's last true Communist regime that if North Korea agrees to let human rights monitors into the country, and to end its nuclear weapons programme in line with an internationally agreed timeframe, "all sorts of positives can come its way. Isolation is the alternative route".

Britain is offering increased humanitarian aid in return for such gestures by Kim Jong Il, the country's dictator. Pyongyang has diplomatic relations with Britain and sees that as a channel to Washington.

Mr Rammell says he has "realistic expectations". The visit was allowed only after the North Koreans dropped objections to the team focusing on human rights, in addition to Pyongyang's clandestine nuclear weapons programme, which is on the agenda of six-party talks. Britain is not involved in the nuclear talks but has influence as a permanent UN Security Council member.

Satellite photographs have revealed a network of prison camps, where tens of thousands of inmates work as slaves in mining, logging and farming. Defectors say political prisoners are used to test chemical and biological weapons. One former North Korean army intelligence officer told the BBC in February that he had seen prisoners gassed to death.

Collective punishment is used against families who speak out against the regime, and Amnesty International has reports of public executions. Acute food shortages have forced tens of thousands of people across the border into China. If they are caught there, they are forcibly repatriated to North Korea and sent to camps for months of hard labour.

There is also concern about Japanese and South Koreans kidnapped by the North Koreans to train spies. But because of the nature of the regime, the claims have been difficult to verify. "They say it just doesn't happen, which I have to say lacks credibility," Mr Rammell said. He hopes to return with a commitment from North Korea for a return visit by Mr Benjamin. He is also calling on Pyongyang to admit a UN special rapporteur, as demanded by the UN human rights commission at its last session in April.

The claims of gross human rights violations in North Korea are "among the worst I have seen anywhere in the world", Mr Rammell added.

On the nuclear front, Britain hopes to persuade North Korea to continue the six-party process aimed at ending its nuclear programme which, intelligence services believe, has produced one or two nuclear weapons. But in the absence of UN weapons inspectors, expelled from the country in October 2002, it is difficult to know the extent of nuclear production.

NKorea is a titular war puppet of China and Russia.

Chuckster wrote:

NKorea is a titular war puppet of China and Russia.

North Korea and Russia? Could you please give some (recent, let's say from the last decade[s]) examples?

This case is on the move:

North Korea admits UK human rights team

Met with my mate the minister this morning. He's on his way right now to North Korea, to tell them to give up their nuclear missiles, give up being beastly to each other, and whilst we are on the subject of being beastly, to give up eating dogs.

However he gave me assurances that no one in the British government wants to see war with DPRK, nor indeed Iran.

I know, he's going to do the best. :wink:

Britain placed human rights at the heart of its relationship with North Korea last night as the Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell arrived in Pyong-yang to take the measure of the world's most reclusive Communist state.

Mr Rammell, making the first visit to North Korea by a British minister, made it clear from the outset of his first meeting, with the vice-foreign minister for Europe, Kung Sok Ung, that he would raise the "very serious human rights allegations'' during three days of talks.

The visit went ahead only after North Korea agreed to discuss human rights as well as the thorny nuclear issue that has bedevilled the country's relations with the rest of the world since it announced that it had a nuclear weapon in 2002.

Mr Rammell told the minister he welcomed the addition of human rights to the agenda. Mr Kung failed to respond directly at their foreign ministry meeting.

The British delegation last night raised specific human rights cases that will be discussed in more detail tomorrow. These include the fate of a former North Korean ambassador to Indonesia who was sent to labour camp, and that of two abducted South Korean pastors.

Mr Rammell and his team, which included the Foreign Office expert on human rights, Jon Benjamin, are calling for North Korea to admit a UN human rights investigator for a return trip by Mr Benjamin.

But a brief spat less than an hour later highlighted the extent of the hard-line government's paranoia, when official minders refused to allow a television camera into a new food market despite having given prior agreement.

After a short stand-off during which Mr Rammell cooled his heels outside the blue-roofed market - the produce ranged from dried squid to dog meat - his party and the camera were allowed inside.

Diplomats say that such well-stocked markets, which were introduced in the wake of monetary reform that pegged all foreign currency exchanges to the euro in 2002, are the sign of a timid liberalisation that could keep food shortages at bay.

Yet Pyongyang still looks like a city built for war, from its limitless airport runway to its deep underground Soviet-era metro and the wide avenues virtually devoid of traffic on a Saturday afternoon. About 30 military trucks were parked outside the foreign ministry yesterday.

Militaristic billboards are everywhere in the one-party state devoted to the cult of the late Great Leader Kim Il Sung, whose picture greets visitors from the airport terminal.

In central Pyongyang, dominated by austere grey buildings and monuments to his memory, soldiers raise their fists over the slogan "think and work and live according to the requirements of Sungun politics'', the policy that places the military at the vanguard of society.

Even though the party and military elite live in Pyongyang, their fear of the outside world is palpable. Talking to foreigners is actively discouraged unless the conversations are officially approved. When journalists entered a metro car at Buhung station, where patriotic music plays in the background, two people quietly slipped out of the car.

A student, who agreed to a short conversation in the presence of a government minder, was asked how much her salary would be when she found work in a hotel after completing her course. The salary is not important, she replied. "I try to repay the care of the government,'' she said.

A group of men was reading the sports news on a stand inside the metro. One of them, a surgeon named Jang Ji Min, described how he had watched the Olympic Games on television. What was his impression?

He chatted affably for a few minutes, saying he was naturally pleased at the victory of the North Korean medal for weightlifting, and was impressed by the Chinese divers.

He added: "By seeing the play of sportsmen on television I realised how they tried their best to glorify our country by having a great success at the Games.''

"Abandon all the tomfoolery about the internal stuggles of the N.Korean people and their Govt. it's simply irrelevant."