The job of special envoy for human rights in North Korea was vacant under Donald Trump’s administration, but Joe Biden has filled it. The White House said on Monday that Biden selected Julie Turner, a Korean-speaking career diplomat who heads the Asia department of the State Department’s human rights bureau. The statement noted that Turner was a special assistant in the envoy’s office working on North Korean human rights.
The Senate must approve the nomination, although resistance is unlikely. A 2004 legislation required Congress to create an ambassador-level position to address North Korea’s human rights and security issues. Since January 2017, when Barack Obama’s envoy, Robert King, resigned as part of the presidential transition, the office has been empty. As part of a business reorganization, Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first secretary of state, wanted to eliminate the office. Trump attempted diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with three high-profile summits that had little lasting influence. His successor, Mike Pompeo, did not fill the job. Some campaigners said that human rights were ignored while the US sought to negotiate with Pyongyang over its illegal nuclear weapons development. Since assuming office in 2021, Biden has often pledged to put human rights at the center of his foreign policy, but he has not appointed anybody to the role. North Korea blames its humanitarian crisis on 2006 sanctions over its missile development. It accuses Washington and Seoul of politicizing the situation. The 2014 UN report on North Korean human rights called for the prosecution of North Korean security leaders and perhaps Kim Jong Un for overseeing a state-controlled system of Nazi-style crimes, angering Pyongyang.
According to UN investigators, North Korea’s coronavirus bans have worsened human rights violations by restricting information, tightening border security, and increasing digital surveillance. In its recent worldwide report on human rights, the US State Department described numerous violations in North Korea, including draconian restrictions on dissent, public executions, and vast detention camps where detainees are forced to work and starve.
