Photo : YONHAP News
South Korea has urged the immediate release of six nationals wrongfully detained in North Korea at a meeting of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention(WGAD) in Geneva.
South Korean Ambassador to Geneva Yun Seong-deok said on Tuesday that Seoul expresses deep concern over the serious human rights violations by North Korea.
Missionaries Choi Choon-gil, Kim Guk-gi and Kim Jong-uk were charged with conspiracy to commit subversion and detained by the North between 2013 and 2014. Based in China’s Dandong region, all three worked on relief efforts for North Koreans.
The ambassador said that it has been more than ten years since the detainment of Choi and Kim Guk-gi while Friday will mark four-thousand days since Kim Jong-uk was detained.
Yun also called for the immediate resolution of abductees and Korean War prisoners of war held by the North and raised concern over the arbitrary detention of defectors who are being forcibly repatriated to the North.
The arbitrary detention by North Korea will be a subject of review by the United Nations in November.
It will be part of the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review, which is a human rights peer review of UN member states every four and a half years.