Page 29 - NKHR Hawaii Conference 2023

where human rights, freedom, and human dignity are very important.
Hopefully, Julie Turner and I can be stepping stones to push our governments to
mainstream human rights issues in our foreign policy agenda, particularly the North
Korean human rights issue.

DR. STEPHEN NOERPER

Thank you, Ambassador Lee. Ambassador Turner, you are the personification of US
commitment on this issue. It took a while to put an Ambassador for Human Rights into
place, but you were conf rmed and now are serving in this capacity. How do you see it
in terms of broadening the def nition of the Alliance to include human security and the
issue of human rights as a US priority?

AMBASSADOR JULIE TURNER

T anks, Dr. Noerper, for that great question. While security has been the foundation of
the ROK-US Alliance, many other things factor into that Alliance and that includes the
people-to-people ties, which we see through the Korean American representation here in
the room today, as well as other linkages between our two countries.

But one of the other underpinning concepts in that ironclad Alliance are the shared values
between our two free and open democratic societies. As the ROK government takes on
the leadership of the Summit for Democracy in the coming year, it will symbolize our
joint ef ort to promote these values, with human rights being one of them.

In the last month, we’ve restarted the ROK-US bilateral consultations on North Korean
human rights. Human Rights was referenced in the Camp David Summit, particularly as
it relates to POW abductees and detainee families.

During the State visit earlier this year in April the joint statement put out by our two
leaders emphasized our shared commitment to free and open societies. It emphasizes
our concern, our condemnation of the human rights violations in North Korea, and
what will hopefully be continued close cooperation going into the future to bring about
concrete change for the North Korean people. And I do very much appreciate the close
contact and cooperation, collaboration that I’ve had with Ambassador Lee. We have been
engaged in many speaking engagements together. We are constantly in communication

NORTH KOREAN HUMAN RIGHTS HAWAII CONFERENCE 2023 29