North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Eleonor Fernandez: What accountability looks like for North Korean abuses

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

On March 20, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights presented a report on “promoting accountability” for DPRK violations at the 58th session of the Human Rights Council.  This week, Eleonor Fernandez of the U.N. OHCHR joins the podcast to unpack the report and what accountability really means for North Korea, the evidence behind the […]

You're listening to an exclusive episode of the NK News podcast available only to subscribers. You can listen to this and other episodes from your preferred podcast player by accessing the Private Podcast feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide on the NK News website at nknews.org slash private-feed uh... Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jaco Zwetsly and this episode is recorded in the NK News studio on Monday, the 14th of April, 2025. And my guest today is Eleanor Fernandez, who is a human rights officer in the Seoul office

of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, or OHCHA. And last month on March 20th, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights presented a report called Promoting Accountability in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea during the 58th session of the Human Rights Council. Today we're going to talk about that new report and what it means and the contents of it and the reaction to it So welcome on the podcast Eleanor. Thank you very much for the invitation. Thanks for your time I know your office is not far from here. So and but today was a with the weather It's not a great day to walk over to a 12. No, no, we're supposed to be in spring, but it's not not there yet

That's right. It's actually it's like a beautiful Dutch summer's day. Exactly. I miss my time in the Hague. Almost miss my time. Now for many of our listeners, accountability, which is the word in the title here of the report, accountability can be an abstract word. Can we start by having you explain what accountability looks like in practice for North Korea and why it matters so much now? Yeah. Thank you very much for the easy question right at the beginning. I asked my colleagues what accountability, how is it translated in Korean? Because every time that I go to a different country to work,

I'm always very interested in the literal meaning of specific words, be it reparations or in this type of accountability. And I was told that in Korean is che kim gyum myung, which means, my pronunciation is probably very bad. Che kim gyum myung is it? Yes, that's what I was told. And it means to seek or find out or to clarify responsibility.

Yeah, che kim being responsibility and gyum myung being to investigate or find out. Exactly, so traditionally, that's what accountability means, to find out who is responsible, mostly in our case for human rights violations, but it's also important when you talk about accountability to see which legal framework you're talking about. Is it for accountability for human rights violations,

so where the state will be the one that it's to hold accountable, or is it crimes? Because crimes are not committed by states, they are committed by individuals. So in the case of international criminal law, then you will have a look at what accountability means on that level. And at the UN, we have a more,

a broader approach to accountability. We don't only look at accountability of who is responsible, but we also look at who was harmed by, let's say, human rights violation and crimes. And we advocate to provide also redress to these people. So it's also when human rights violations happen or where crimes happen, there are persons who suffer harm.

So we advocate for member states also, and for the international community to provide redress or also acknowledgement to the victims. So we see it in a more holistic approach. It's not only talking about perpetrators and who is responsible of something or who do we at the end. The traditional criminal law is who is put in a prison, in a trial, but also how can we remedy what happened to the victims.

Okay. Now your report divides the approaches to accountability into judicial and non-judicial approaches. So what does that mean in effect? So that's also, I think, a very technical division that we do. And we do it also in mind with what I was just saying is traditionally judicial. Like when a crime happened, you will have to go to court and you'll have a judicial decision that something happened.

So when we talk about judicial initiatives, it's something that could happen in front of a judge, like a criminal case or a civil law case, that's a judicial. But we use the word nonjudicial also to acknowledge that other initiatives are also equally important in this type of context when we're talking about massive human rights violations or international crimes, that other types of initiatives are as important as the judicial

decisions, which are always judicial truth is always very limited and it's only about a certain limited scope of things and of people. So non-judicial measures could be, for example, memorialization initiatives, but also truth telling, like truth commissions that have been around around the world, but also apologies, also monuments, also any form of initiative that could acknowledge the harm that victims suffer and could also benefit in them in a way. OK, all right. Now, we may have time to explore a little bit more about the concrete specifics of that later on. But for now, you've seen a wide range of human rights contexts in your own work before coming to Korea.

What makes the DPRK situation especially challenging or unique from an accountability perspective? Yeah, so particularly for me, when I arrive here, is the broad range of violations and also how long it's been going on. So that's a challenge because normally when I've worked in other, mostly tribunals or in other places, where we had a very specific limitation, be it temporal or on scope or on thematic, so it was easier just to concentrate on a specific issue and that is also then easier to talk with victims, also to gather information from witnesses and also to manage expectations because you know exactly what your mandate is,

what the scope is, and then you can talk and explain about it. Here for the DPRK, the mandate of the office is very broad. We don't have a temporal scope and we also don't have a thematic limitation on which human rights violations we're mandated to have a look at all human rights violations and all possible international crimes

that might be happening. So that's a challenge. Another challenge is also that we are dealing here in the office, I'm an international criminal law lawyer, so normally I used to deal with international crimes, but here we also have a mandate to have a look at human rights violations. And I was saying at the beginning,

there are different thresholds and it's a different way of investigation. And then also of course, that we don't have access to the country is a challenge, but that's similar to many other situations that the office has worked on and that I've worked on. So that's not, I mean, it's a challenge, but it's not something uncommon.

Yeah, I think that's, I will say. Okay, now the government of the DPRK consistently rejects any external scrutiny as a violation of its own national sovereignty. So why, help us to explain or understand, why is the work of the United Nations OHCHR legitimate and why should the DPRK take it seriously? Well we have a mandate because the DPRK has ratified five out of nine core human rights treaties so they have voluntarily agreed to respect those rights. So these are not

treaties imposed on or forced on the DPRK? No, those are the treaties that the DPRK has voluntarily said that they will respect the obligations that are contained therein. And that's why we have then the mandate to monitor, as we do it in many other countries, how are these obligations implemented in the country? So that's it's not something that we have imposed. It was a DPRK that decided to voluntarily and those are five out of nine so they have even signed more human rights treaty than other countries in the world. Can a country withdraw its ratification from these human rights treaties? Yes it depends. There are some reservations it could but most of the of the rights that are protected in these treaties

come from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which has already, has a customary level, so that all states have to abide to it. So they could, but for instance, if they ratify a treaty, they also have certain obligations to produce or to submit reports to the different treaty bodies. So that's another obligation that they have say that they are going to do it. So that's why we're waiting for their reports.

For instance, the next one is on the Convention for Persons with Disabilities or the CEDAW or the Convention on the Rights of the Child. So there are ways for them to withdraw and it has happened, but the DPRK hasn't. That is interesting. Okay. Now, let's talk about what the evidence shows. So the OHCHI has conducted hundreds of interviews and built a massive central repository of evidence about human rights violations in North Korea. So what patterns are emerging from that data today? Yeah, so the office mandate was to or is to investigate to continue with the investigation of the Commission of Inquiry. So we've continued with the findings to gather more evidence regarding

the different issues that the COI concluded happened or may continue to be happening. So we have a vast information and as we say in the last report, especially on arbitrary detention, on conditions of detention, on enforced disappearances of people as well, on forced labor in certain spaces, which we also had a report that was issued last year on that topic. We also have concerns regarding surveillance and monitoring of different freedoms, also of the lack of freedom of movement. It's one of the big issues that we also

have information about it. It's a lot of different... Right. Based on previous reports, does it look like things are getting worse now in North Korea, in those areas that we've talked about? I think it depends. I mean, we're currently working on a report that was mandated by the Human Rights Council as well that will be published in September that will have a look at the last 10 years of human rights.

So that we're currently working on exactly on looking at the trends and the patterns of the of the of the of the last 10 years but of course it's different because like the COI looked at crimes also that happened since the Korean War. So of course there's been changes in the patterns that's exactly what we're trying to identify and that we'll be publishing. Some issues for instance on M4Z's appearances which is a continuous crime. We know that there hasn't been any efforts even in acknowledging those cases, so that's an issue that is ongoing. We also have information that cases of people that are repatriated also disappear in some cases. So we know that we have also information about arbitrary detention, also fair trial rights not being guaranteed. So

in those issues it's the same, but we also have information regarding, for instance, the living conditions or food that we are looking at. But you can invite us in a month or in two and then we'll have more findings on that. Right, more information. Okay, now how does the OHCHR engage with similar databases and repositories built by, for example, the South Korean government and by civil society organizations? Curious to hear the rest? Become an NK News subscriber today for access to the full episode. Head to nknews.org slash join for more information. If you're already

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