North Korea skips UN Security Council meeting on its human rights record

Dec. 24, 2013 - FILE photo of members of the United Nations Security Council at UN headquarters in New York.

UNITED NATIONS – The U.N. Security Council placed North Korea's bleak human rights situation on its agenda Monday, a groundbreaking step toward possibly holding the nuclear-armed but desperately poor country and leader Kim Jong Un accountable for alleged crimes against humanity.

It appeared to be the first time that any country's human rights situation has been scheduled for ongoing debate by the U.N.'s most powerful body. The meeting also came in the shadow of the United States accusing North Korea of a devastating hacking attack.

"Today, we have broken the council's silence. We have begun to shine a light, and what it has revealed is terrifying," U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said.

China and Russia protested the move, the boldest effort yet to confront Pyongyang over the issue.

The council "should refrain from doing anything that might cause the escalation of tensions," said China's ambassador, Liu Jieyi.

International pressure has built this year on Pyongyang after a U.N.-backed inquiry found grounds to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed under policies "established at the highest level of the State for decades." In a letter to Kim, the commission also warned that he could be held accountable.

Diplomats touched on the inquiry's more horrific details: Starving prisoners picking through cow dung for kernels of corn to eat. Rape. Forced abortions. Mass starvation. "I would not run through the macabre lists of atrocities," Luxembourg Ambassador Sylvie Lucas said. "This would make us all nauseated."

The U.N.-backed inquiry and the U.N. General Assembly have urged the 15-member council to refer North Korea's human rights situation to the International Criminal Court. The U.S., France and the U.K. said it should be considered, but the council was unlikely to take action Monday.

The council has had North Korea's nuclear program on its agenda for years, but Monday's meeting opens the door to wider discussion of abuses alleged in the recent inquiry, including starvation and a harsh political prison camp system of up to 120,000 inmates. Pyongyang rejects the inquiry's findings but never allowed it into the country.

An angry North Korea, also on the defensive against a U.S. accusation of hacking, refused to recognize the meeting. It has called the dozens of people who fled the North and aided the commission of inquiry "human scum."

"We totally reject the attempt" to bring the human rights issue to the council, North Korean diplomat Kim Song told The Associated Press shortly after the meeting began. He also rejected the idea of dialogue or a visit to North Korea by a U.N. human rights investigator, and he insisted that the council should look into Washington's recently released CIA torture report.

North Korea already sent a sharp warning last month, threatening further nuclear tests after the U.N. General Assembly's human rights committee voted to move the issue to the Security Council, which can take binding actions on matters of international peace and security.

Two-thirds of the Security Council this month formally requested that North Korea's human rights situation be placed on the agenda for ongoing debate, saying rights violations "threaten to have a destabilizing impact" on the region.

"Rarely has such an extensive charge-sheet of international crimes been brought to this council's attention," U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic said Monday. He said North Korea has shown "promising signs of engagement" since the inquiry came out early this year, but he stressed that real change in its human rights situation "will require not only reform; it demands justice."

China, which has veto power as a permanent council member, could block any eventual action against its traditional but troublesome ally.

But the mere threat of any damage to Kim Jong Un's image has outraged the North Korean government.

Such fury is thought to be behind a recent and devastating hacking attack on Sony, which last week canceled the scheduled release of "The Interview," which depicts an assassination of Kim. That set off alarm among some diplomats who warned of setting a precedent for backing down in the face of future threats. North Korea denied the hacking but has suggested it was a "righteous deed" carried out by sympathizers.

Power on Monday described as "absurd" North Korea's threat of serious consequences if the U.S. doesn't conduct a joint investigation into the hacking.

North Korea experienced sweeping and progressively worse Internet outages extending into Monday, with one computer expert saying the country's online access is "totally down." The White House and the State Department declined to say whether the U.S. government was responsible.