Page 34 - NKHR Hawaii Conference 2023

PANEL DISCUSSION

leader, and as a thought leader, look at this in terms of how we can elevate it?

AMBASSADOR JULIE TURNER

I think we have to frame this within the context of the broader competition, not just the
People’s Republic of China (PRC)—which is of course the pacing challenge for the US
Government right now—but amongst autocracies and democracies to take North Korea
and internationalize it in the human rights conversation.

Oftentimes we talk about North Korean human rights as an oddity but integrating
it into the global conversations about human rights will help elevate and draw more
governments into a conversation that has largely been led by the ROK and the US over
the last two decades.

In particular thinking about the linkages in how authoritarians work with each other,
thinking about how human rights abuse is happening. And how Xinjiang and the forced
labor of Uyghurs ties into the forced labor of North Korean workers. Is Xinjiang cotton
being transferred into factories where North Korean workers are weaving it into textiles?
Arms sales from North Korea to the Burmese military and whether or not those weapons
are then being used to commit human rights abuses against the Burmese people. All of
these things are interconnected and talking about that connection between international
peace and security and human rights will help mobilize more and more governments to
take action.

I keep thinking about the common thread that we’re hearing here and that is:

“Now is the time for action.”

And I hope that we all walk away from this Conference with that thought. I encourage
people to think about the conversation that Morse brought up regarding accountability
and the types of tools that we are using to document abuses in order to take action against
other authoritarians right now. We haven’t been using them in the North Korean context
in the same way and thinking about how the US government can have a conversation
about human rights and security issues with the PRC.

We do it with the government of Vietnam as well. We have a human rights dialog, we
also have a security dialog. But thinking about how we can talk about North Korean
human rights as well as the North Korean security situation, security on the peninsula as