Justice for Kim Jong-un
Providence Journal, Editorials
February 24, 2014

That North Korea is a brutal society that deprives its people of basic human rights on a mass scale is no secret to anyone. Nobody is fooled by its leader’s closeness to Dennis Rodman, the former basketball player, or by the pretty parades of its high-stepping troops.

The U.N. Human Rights Council sent to Korean leader Kim Jong-un a letter, dated Jan. 20, informing him that North Korea, “including possibly yourself,” could be held responsible at the International Criminal Court.

North Korea was not charged with genocide but with a list that included crimes of “extermination,” along with murder, enslavement, torture, rape and persecution on grounds of race, religion and gender.

Australian Judge Michael Donald Kirby, who chaired the council panel that released a 372-page report last Monday detailing the charges, told reporters in Geneva that “I hope that the international community will be moved by the detail, the amount, the long duration, the great suffering and the many tears that have existed in North Korea to act on the crimes against humanity.”

The report also said Pyongyang uses surveillance, public executions and forced disappearances “to terrorize the population into submission.”

Predictably, North Korea has denounced the report as the “instrument of a political plot aimed at sabotaging the socialist system.”

We’ve all seen night satellite photos where the differences between North and South Korea are exemplified by the light of civilization’s electrification to the south of the 38th Parallel and the sheer darkness to its north.

What goes on in the dark has long been very clear to the rest of the world. And although bringing Mr. Kim to justice may be problematic, we congratulate the Human Rights Council for shining a sharp ray of light into North Korea’s star chamber of horrors.

© 2014, Published by The Providence Journal

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