The Rt. Hon. Anne-Marie Trevelyan MP
Minister of State for the Indo-Pacific
King Charles Street London
SW1A 2AH
The Lord Alton of Liverpool House of Lords
London SW1A 0PW –
03 May 2023
Dear Lord Alton,
Thank you for your email of 31 March to the Minister for the Middle East, about Korea Future’s latest report – The Accountability Imperative: Torture & Imperative: Torture and Ill- treatment in the DPRK Penal System. I am replying as the Minister of State responsible for North Korea.
The UK remains deeply concerned about the DPRK’s appalling human rights record. We regularly call on the DPRK government, through multilateral and bilateral channels, to acknowledge and address the many reports of serious and wide-ranging human rights violations in the country, and to uphold its human rights obligations.
The UK was pleased to cosponsor the resolution on the situation of human rights in the DPRK, adopted by consensus at the UN Human Rights Council on 4 April 2022, which stresses the importance of following-up recommendations from the 2014 Commission of Inquiry Report and provides the basis for further work on a credible framework for accountability for human rights violations in North Korea.
As I made clear, we call on the DPRK to engage constructively with the UN Special Rapporteur Elizabeth Salmón and to bring about permanent change and improvement for people of North Korea. On 20 March, at the UN Arria-forumla open meeting, the UK and partners highlighted deep concerns about the DPRK’s appalling human rights record and the inextricable links with its illegal weapons programme.
As Lord Ahmad set out in his letter to you of 16 March, the Global Human Rights (GHR) sanctions regime gives the UK a powerful tool that we can use to tackle human rights violations and abuses and underpin the UK’s role as a force for good in global affairs.
We closely monitor reports of the serious mistreatment of detainees and have discussed the treatment of detainees with our international partners and international human rights NGOs. The UK designated two DPRK entities through the GHR sanctions regime in July 2020. The DPRK’s Ministry of State Security (Bureau 7) and the Ministry of People’s Security (Correctional Bureau) are now subject to an asset freeze. We continue to keep further listings under review.
The UK continues to monitor events and developments closely in the DPRK, working with like-minded partners to push for action at all levels to bring pressure to bear on the Government of the DPRK, and urging them to accept the existence and extent of human rights violations, and to address these seriously to bring about improvements and permanent change.
Yours sincerely,
The Rt. Hon. Anne-Marie Trevelyan MP Minister of State for the Indo-Pacific
