When South Korea goes to the polls next month, voters will not only elect a new president, they will also choose a new direction for how the country engages with one of its most difficult and contested challenges: the human rights issue in North Korea. Political division has mired this issue, which is treated either as a weapon in an ideological contest or as a diplomatic inconvenience, at best. The cost of this inertia has been borne by victims – escapees, families of the missing, and countless others whose voices remain unheard inside the North. The next administration, regardless of its ideology or stance, must commit to doing better.
Curiously, human rights issues are often subsumed under the broader category of “North Korea problems” in South Korean debates, often framed in terms of national security, ideological rivalry, or inter-Korean hostility. This framing has paved ways for conservative governments to dominate the discourse, while progressive administrations have shown a tendency to deprioritise the issue to establish an amicable environment for dialogue. Rights issues including gender equality or LGBTQ+ protection have largely been dominated by liberal politics, further illustrating that the North Korean human rights issue is of partisan concern, specifically localised within the South Korean context, rather than a universal one.
This divide has stalled the development of a consistent, principle-based approach to North Korean human rights.
The politicisation has produced a policy environment marked by volatility and short-termism. Institutional efforts – such as the North Korean Human Rights Act – have often stalled in their implementation, with momentum subject to the changing winds of political leadership. Even after passage of the Act, funding for civil society groups, inter-agency coordination, and the operationalisation of mechanisms such as the North Korean Human Rights Foundation have experienced disruption by partisan gridlock. Rather than building a stable, enduring architecture for fixing these problems, South Korea has allowed its policy on North Korean human rights to function more like a pendulum – swinging with each administration, rarely making meaningful progress.
Institutionalising North Korean human rights policy should not come at the expense of diplomacy or humanitarian engagement.
What South Korea now needs is a depoliticised, institutional framework, one that can outlast any single administration and support North Korean human rights work outside of partisan cycles. This requires the construction of a new normative framework that redefines North Korean human rights as a universal human rights issue, rather than a tool of ideological contention. Civil society organisations and scholars must lead in opening discussions and constructing new norms on the issue, acting as norm entrepreneurs. It is only after this, that the process to institutionalise mechanisms to uphold the mission of promoting North Korean human rights issues on a long-term basis can take place.
Institutionalising North Korean human rights policy should not come at the expense of diplomacy or humanitarian engagement. A credible approach requires the next administration to pursue multiple tracks simultaneously. This means upholding accountability for rights violations while actively pursuing dialogue, as well as advancing human rights advocacy work while also expanding humanitarian programs and support for separated families. Treating human rights and engagement as mutually exclusive has long been a false binary. Dignity, dialogue, and humanitarian care are not competing values, but complementary ones.
None of this will be possible without the ongoing work of civil society organisations. These groups document human rights abuses, amplify survivor voices, and push both domestic and international actors to take tangible actions on the issue – often with limited resources within a chaotically shifting political environment. Their contributions have kept North Korean human rights from disappearing entirely off the national agenda.
Over the past couple of months, foreign funding – largely from the United States – has virtually ceased, leaving many organisations focused on North Korean human rights issues financially strained and forced to curb their work. This dire situation underscores the immediate necessity for the South Korean government to institutionalise stable, long-term funding mechanisms to ensure that civil society initiatives can continue without disruption. The next administration must not only protect the operational space of these organisations but also see them as essential partners in building a more principled and sustainable North Korean human rights framework and discourse.
For too long, political battles have clouded the true nature of North Korean human rights. It is not just a policy issue, but a deeply human one. With a new administration on the horizon, South Korea has a chance to reset the conversation, moving past ideological binaries and building lasting frameworks and discourse rooted in new norms and values. North Korean human rights must no longer be treated as a weapon of political rivalry, but as a universal concern that transcends ideology. It is time to shift the focus from “North Korea” to “human rights”.
