UN: Crimes against humanity have been found in North Korea

The UN Commission of Inquiry has said that it found crimes against humanity in North Korea. The commission urged the international community to respond and investigate the case properly.

Michael Kirby, Chairman of the Commission of Inquiry on North Korea, told a news conference in Geneva: "Crimes against humanity have been found and it is not open to the world community to turn away. It is the duty of the world community when there have been findings that there is a reasonable case for crimes against humanity, it is the obligation of the international community to respond and have those matters properly investigated and if found to warrant prosecution brought before an appropriate court or tribunal. That is an obligation of international law."

In February 2014, the commission established in its report that between 80,000 and 120,000 political prisoners were detained in four large political prison camps, where deliberate starvation had been used as a means of control and punishment. The commission also found that, since 1950, the State's violence has been externalised through State-sponsored abductions and enforced disappearances of people from other nations. These international enforced disappearances are "unique in their intensity, scale and nature," the report said.

"This is a high foreign exchange earning potential and it's why North Korea is promoting this facility. There have been instances of very serious abuses of employment standards such that in some of the Gulf States, the offenders have been sent back to North Korea by the Gulf State involved," Kirby says.

Asked about the issue of a North Korea nuclear program, the chairman of the commission reminded that "International universal human rights is connected to international peace and security. The experience of humanity has been, if you have a country which is not respecting universal human rights that tends to be an unstable and dangerous place for itself and for its neighbours."