Page 28 - NKHR Hawaii Conference 2023

PANEL DISCUSSION

DR. STEPHEN NOERPER
President, Asia Dialogue (Moderator)
It’s wonderful to have the experts that you’ve heard already by way of the keynote
addresses and we’ll press ahead with some of the issues and echoes of what we heard
earlier.

We’ll begin with a question in the context of the relationship between Korea and the
United States. We’ll ask Ambassador Lee to situate human rights for us in terms of how
South Korea approaches the United States and what you see in terms of the benef t of our
relationship.

AMBASSADOR SHIN WHA LEE

Well, as I said in my keynote speech, there was a Commission of Inquiry (COI) Report
in 2014 by an international NGO supported by the United Nations. T e United States,
South Korea, and like-minded countries were serving as a stepping stone to pushing
through that COI Report. Unfortunately, while the previous South Korean government
and the Trump administration appeared to cooperate, in fact they did not. I was hoping,
but I would say they cooperated to silence the problem of North Korean human rights in
the hope of reconciling with North Korea as a way to deal with denuclearization. So, at
that time, unfortunately, this kind of cooperation or consensus between South Korea and
the United States aggravated the situation and caused a loss of momentum that had been
made by the COI Report.

Now it’s 2023. The Biden Administration came into power in 2021 highlighting the
importance of democracy and human rights. In 2022, the Yoon government came into
power and emphasized value-based diplomacy and highlighted the closer relationship
between Korea and the US. Between them, the Alliance became much stronger, but not
necessarily only focusing on the military relationship. Today we have a Comprehensive
Strategic Alliance where human rights issues are one of the important topics on the agenda.

However, as you saw at the Camp David Summit last August, although they touched
upon the importance of human rights, more is needed. As Ambassador for Human
Rights, I want to highlight it more. It’s not suf cient to merely touch upon the issue of
human rights in the Camp David statement. So hopefully from this point on, the US
and South Korean governments can, based on the Camp David Summit, agree on a
statement that will mainstream human rights issues when we are dealing with our future
cooperation. We are both very much interested in the rules-based international order,