 Thank you very much, Professor Rice, and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I too would like at the outset to acknowledge the wrongs, including wrongs to human rights of the Indigenous people of our country, and I am proud to have served on the High Court of Australia, which in the Marvo case and cases that followed it, took a strong and principled stand to correct those wrongs. And it's action of that kind that has motivated me in the work that I have been doing for North Korea, for the people of North Korea. I'm very glad that you've come here tonight to join in a reflection on the position of North Korea in respect of human rights. And these remarks of mine are going to be divided into three parts, and then we will have some Q&A. The first part is the chronicle of the work of the Commission of Inquiry, how it was set up, what its mandate was, how it went about its task, what it found, what it reported, and where the report stands at this moment. The second part will be of particular interest to lawyers, but not only, I think, lawyers. It will concern the methodology of the Commission, because this Commission of Inquiry went about its task in a way that was quite different from other Commissions of Inquiry of the United Nations. And essentially it went about the task in the manner of the common law, because that was the manner of inquiring and of conducting public hearings that I was familiar with. And I will suggest to you that that manner was particularly useful in gathering the testimony and in writing the report, and I believe that the report is actually a very readable document, which you can't say about most United Nations reports. And thirdly, I'm going to address the issue of the follow-up to the report and where it stands at this moment in the United Nations system, because we are facing coming months, testing times for the implementation of the recommendations and proposals that the Commission has put before the United Nations. The Commission of Inquiry arose, I believe, out of a general feeling of great unease with the situation of human rights in North Korea on the part of the organs of the United Nations that are concerned with human rights. In particular, the Human Rights Council, which is based in Geneva, it meets in a wonderful room in the Palais des Nations. It is the room where formerly the Commission on Human Rights used to meet, but the Council now has assumed those responsibilities and expanded them. And it has a system called Universal Periodic Review. This is an innovation of the Council. The method of Universal Periodic Review is designed to subject all countries to regular examination of their human rights record. And that means that the Russian Federation gets examined, the United States of America, the Permanent Five on the Security Council, all the rest of us, including Australia, get examined for our human rights record with a number of criticisms and comments and suggestions for improvement. North Korea was subjected to its first examination of its human rights about two years ago, and it remains the only country which has been examined under UPR, which has refused to accept a single one of the recommendations, 187 recommendations were made for the improvement of serious human rights breaches in the country. And because the government in Pyongyang would not allow the Special Rapporteur who had been appointed by the Human Rights Council to look specifically at human rights in North Korea would not allow him into the country, that plus the response to the Universal Periodic Review I think led the Human Rights Council to the point where it considered that it had to ratchet up the examination of human rights in North Korea and so a commission of inquiry was created by decision of the council. Uniquely, this is the only commission of inquiry of the United Nations that was created without a vote. Three times the president of the council, Ambassador Herzl of Poland, paused to see if there was a call for a vote, but call for a vote came there not, and that we thought really armed the commission of inquiry on North Korea with a very considerable strength because it indicated that there was virtual unanimity that the situation of human rights needed examination. Three members were appointed by Ambassador Herzl in accordance with his mandate to be the commissioners. One was the Special Rapporteur, Marzuki Dorisman, who had been refused entry and who had recommended that a commission of inquiry be created. Mr Dorisman had been the Attorney General of Indonesia. He's a very accomplished lawyer, speaks perfect English, is highly talented and a good cross-examiner with experience of trials and of practical law. Secondly, Sonja Beserco was appointed. She is a human rights expert and civil society personality in Serbia. She's an expert in crimes against humanity and genocide, of which sadly her country has had quite a lot of experience. And she was appointed the second member and I was appointed the third and I was designated to be the chair. The commission first met in July 2013 and we were required by our mandate to report on nine headings which were identified by the Human Rights Council and we were required to do that by March 2014. Because the report had to be translated into this, rendered into the six languages of the United Nations, that effectively meant that we had to complete our task by the end of 2013. And so effectively we had six months within which to produce this report and we did so. The report was produced on time within budget and unanimously and it was then put into the system for the purpose of printing and with the translations and it was ultimately presented to the Human Rights Council on the 17th of March 2014 by the three commissioners and was immediately the subject of a call for an ARIA briefing which I will explain to you by the Security Council in New York. That itself was an unusual but promising step that was taken in the Security Council. Now the nine-point mandate covered the whole range of areas which had been the subject of report, complaint and concern to the United Nations. The issue of the detention centres. North Korea denies that there are detention centres but unfortunately for North Korea we now have Google Earth and international satellites which can examine quite directly and with great clarity the topography of every country on Earth and North Korea is not immune. And the testimony that was given about the detention centres was corroborated in terms of the description of the detention centres and their layout and their approximate size, their proximity to identified cities and all of that confirmed that there are very large detention centres in North Korea. Those detention centres have according to our estimates between 80,000 and 120,000 people who are living in conditions of great deprivation. There are books written on this subject and there was testimony before us concerning the starvation conditions in the detention centres but also the bringing there not only of the person who's alleged or suspected hostility to the regime led to their arrest and detention but also two generations usually of the same family so that the scourge can be removed from society. Starvation is the order of the day in the detention centres and some of the most powerful testimony we had concerned the diet which in many cases is reduced to living on grass, living off rodents. We asked for access to North Korea and to the detention centres but as we expected would happen access was denied. The testimony we received was extremely vivid as to the severe and murderous conditions in the detention centres in North Korea. A second mandate item concerned the restrictions on movement within the country. Citizens of North Korea cannot leave their hamlet, their village without the permission of a local official and that is a restriction on movement which is contrary to universal human rights. Access to information is not in truth available in North Korea, access to radio and television is effectively controlled in access to the government outlets and that's the source of information. Possession, even possession of soap operas from South Korea in the Korean language which of course is common to both parts of the peninsula is a serious offence and the reason for the objection of North Korea to the soap operas is of course because the soap operas reveal life in all of its variety in South Korea and reveal the relative prosperity in which people live their lives in South Korea and the backdrop of the soap operas is of the motor cars, consumer goods, the television sets, the international holidays and all the other paraphernalia the McDonald's stores of a Western and prosperous economy. South Korea is now one of the ten most prosperous economies in the world and still growing. North Korea is an economic catastrophe and its system lacks the markets that can deliver the products and the investment in the capital that are necessary for a modern state. That element of life in North Korea gave rise to the next matter we were commanded to investigate and that was food. In the mid-1990s North Korea suffered an extremely serious famine that was partly as a result of natural causes but partly because of the disorganization of the markets people could not get food and even to this day the supply of food in North Korea although there has been some improvement in the natural conditions and some improvement in the market situation the supply of food is still problematic for some members of the community. For example the neonates in North Korea even on the figures that are supplied by North Korea to the World Health Organization and to the World Food Program disclose that newborn babies are stunted to an extent of 27%. It was 34% it's come down to 27% but 27% is still a very high level of stunting which means that the babies are malnourished their mothers carrying them are malnourished in their early weeks and months and years of life they are malnourished that means their brain is not expanding at that critical moment when our brains expand and that will lead to lifelong burdens in health of that cohort of the population. Discrimination was another matter we were asked to investigate discrimination against women in North Korea is rife discrimination against people on the grounds of religion is widespread. This was fully reported on in our report but gained very little coverage in the international media which is surprising to me because it's again a very serious potentially grave imposition on the human rights of the people of North Korea. At partition after the fall of Japan in 1945 the Christian identifying population of North Korea was the same as that of South Korea. They were about 25% of the population were identifying as Christians but today on the figures supplied by North Korea the Christian identifying population of North Korea is 0.8% that is to say it's less than 1% and an important question arose for us is that because the Christians were being or had been or in significant numbers had been killed or is it simply because the regime is so hostile to religion that people thought it a better and a wiser and more prudent step not to have anything to do with religion. Having in your possession Bibles or other religious paraphernalia is a very serious offence in North Korea and many of those who had fled into China in search of refuge who were sent back into North Korea by China have come with Christian publications because the escape lines in China are often organised by Christian churches to help people escape to the Republic of Korea which is South Korea. Discrimination against people also exists on a caste-like system, a class system which was put in place by the original Kim, the original leader of North Korea Kim Il-sung. He invented the so-called Songban system. Songban means classification in Korean and the classification in that country of people goes to a degree of more than 50 sub-categories but essentially they are three. The core class who are the elite, the wavering class who are subdued but can't be trusted, that's most of the people, and the hostile class who are identified because of some connection with South Korea or because of some suspicion has fallen on them and they are sent to work in arduous conditions in the northeast of the country, often in mines they get the worst jobs, they don't get education, they don't get housing, they can't live in Pyongyang and they suffer many disadvantages. There was another category which concerned countries outside North Korea and this was the category of abductions. North Korea had a policy of abducting people who it thought would be helpful to their economy and so when the Korean War was reaching its close and the South Korean and United Nations forces were driving the North Korean forces back into North Korea, they seized about 100,000 citizens of South Korea, mostly young men who were taken from their families, taken up into North Korea and have had no or virtually no contact with their families in South Korea ever since and likewise there was about 100,000 prisoners of war. The armistice which was signed at the end of the Korean War provided for the prisoners of war to be exchanged. North Korea exchanged 7,000 but did not give the full number that it had and interestingly because of the opening up of archives in the Russian Federation which had been the archives of the Soviet Union there are records now of the conversations between Kim Il-sung and Joseph Stalin concerning the starting of the Korean War which upholds what the United Nations asserted at the time that it started out of the North Korean invasion of the South and denies the North Korean assertion that it was a South Korean attack which was then repulsed and the conversations between Stalin and Kim Il-sung are all recorded and available. Likewise the keeping of large numbers of prisoners of war is recorded in the Soviet archives and there's many others such documents that are now available both from the Soviet Union and also from the German Democratic Republic and the countries of the Eastern Bloc their archives are also now available, often available online and you can go in and find out all sorts of things that were taking place during those years. So these were the matters we explored and we decided to explore them by a methodology that was distinctive. The methodology could be sort of subtitled common law lawyer meets the United Nations or maybe more accurately the United Nations meets the common law because the way the civil law is countries more countries are, this comes as a terrible shock to common lawyers but more countries are civil law countries than common law countries the civil law is a more efficient system of doing law it's more low key it doesn't have the public hearings and so on and it tends to have people who do their work in private and often in secret. That's not the way of the common law of England from the very early days in medieval times the English had this strange idea that procedure was the essence of good legal work and that you had to do things in public because if you did it in public you would then carry the village and the community with you that they could judge those who were doing the inquiry and they could hear what was being said it would spread around people would become familiar with it and it would raise expectations that there would be a proper outcome to it if the English law and its procedures have a fault it was that it's a much more expensive way of doing law but also that sometimes they were more concerned with procedure than with what actually was the substance of the matter but a lot of the public law that we have is based on courts that don't check whether the right decision was made but check whether the right procedures were followed because of the fact that there is this view that if you follow the right procedures then you're likely to come out at the end with right answers so what we did we agreed the three commissioners that we would have public hearings now there had never been public hearings there was one attempt in one COI to do it but it is not the way commissions of inquiry have operated in the past and of course the secretariat who were appointed to help us was very anxious about the security implications and about the question of whether it would be safe whether the media should be allowed in and so on and we said this is going to be transparent we're going to have this open if it is safe for the witnesses to give evidence in public they will do so if it's not safe we'll see them in private and so we advertised we had no difficulty getting witnesses we knew we wouldn't get into North Korea and so we had to gather the witnesses of people who could say tell us about the conditions in North Korea with up-to-date testimony there are 26,000 North Korean refugees living in South Korea 26,000 that's a very big section of their community and we had to cut off the number of witnesses because if we'd spent all our time seeing witnesses we wouldn't have got our report written within the time we had so by a certain point we'd had public hearings in Seoul, in Tokyo, in London where there is quite a large section of North Korean ex-military and in Washington DC where there is a Korean American community but also a lot of experts there are people who spend their whole lives studying North Korea there are libraries filled with material on North Korea but what we wanted to do was to get this testimony and to get it in public to get it before media, national and international to get it before the world community to get it recorded online to get a transcript of it to make the transcript available and tonight when you go home you can just Google North Korea Commission of Inquiry, public hearings and you will see and you can judge for yourself the reliability and accuracy of the people who gave testimony before us the witnesses gave their testimony in a way which was very low-key it reminded me of the testimony you see if you go to a Holocaust museum where before they die recordings have been made of people who went through the concentration camps in Germany and it's amazing to see this if you haven't seen it you should go to such a museum because people who are describing the most horrendous circumstances and the murders of their families and the seeing of a family member one second and then they're whisked away they tell it in this very low-key factual way it's as if they have a mantra in their minds that they've got to get out of them to justify their survival when so many others have perished and so this is how these witnesses were North Korea naturally said and we were not surprised with this that these were human scum they were unreliable witnesses they were enemies of the people they couldn't be believed and that the Commission of Inquiry by relying on them had relied on totally unreliable testimony but some of them corroborated each other without knowing each other some were corroborated by objective material from the sources in North Korea and some of them by objective material in the nature of satellite images and by expert testimony which was available to us and so this was the material on which we prepared our report every word of the report was scrutinized by the Commissioners and specifically by me part of the problem with United Nations reports is that they tend to be written by people whose first language is not the language in which they're written and these people are brilliant in comparison to Australians who are so monolingual their command of English is wonderful, amazing but it's just sometimes not quite comfortable you've got to have an anglophone, a native English speaker to make sure that the report is totally comfortable well every word of that report has been analyzed all verbal amendments to the report have been accepted and every page of the report contains passages from the witnesses and that's a very unusual thing the discursive report is another common law feature we write in a discursive way in a way that an intelligent lay person who has to be taken with the process can understand and the quotes from the witnesses are a way of allowing the vividness of those who have suffered to be spoken directly to the United Nations and to the world community and so that was the report we produced now when it was delivered to the Human Rights Council in March 2014 it created I think it's fair to say a sensation because there'd never been a commission of inquiry report of this kind and I believe that that plus the international attention to the report was very beneficial in ensuring that it secured a lot of attention and debate in the Human Rights Council at the end of the debate only six countries disassociated themselves from the report those countries were China, the Russian Federation Venezuela, Cuba, Vietnam and Pakistan they were the countries that didn't agree with the report but when analyzed their disagreement was not with support for the human rights situation in North Korea it wasn't in any criticism of particular findings which we had made it was rather that they didn't agree with country specific mandates now that's a very formalistic approach as a person who's lived my life in the law I'm very familiar with formalism formalism is saying well you've done this report we can't criticize any of it but we don't approve of you doing the report and therefore we're going to ignore what you found that is not in my opinion consistent with the charter the charter allows certain countries, five of them to have a veto that is only in the Security Council it doesn't give a veto to North Korea or anybody else from having an investigation by the Human Rights Council which was duly decided and as I've told you without even a call for a vote and then we received the call for the ARIA briefing now Mr ARIA was a diplomat from Latin America who concerned that the Security Council might be frustrated in getting matters of importance for peace and security before it devised a procedure for briefing members of the Security Council it's called the ARIA procedure the ARIA procedure means that if a member of the Security Council asks for a briefing then the briefing can be organised it doesn't take place in the beautiful chamber of the Security Council in New York it takes place in a big chamber next door and so an ARIA briefing was organised in the big General Assembly chamber next to the Security Council and that chamber was packed with countries of the General Assembly because this report was a matter of concern to the whole international community in the front were the 15 seats for the Security Council members of the time being in a horseshoe type arrangement and there were two seats which were empty the seat of the People's Republic of China and the seat of the Russian Federation but that meant 13 members seats were there and they were filled pressure had been applied it came back to us to countries particularly African countries not to turn up but everyone turned up except the two permanent five members and of the 13, 11 spoke and all of them spoke in favour of the report of the 11, 9 specifically endorsed one of the key recommendations in the report which was that the case of North Korea should exceptionally be referred by the Security Council to the International Criminal Court and that means the majority of the of the Security Council members were in favour of that proposal now what is happening now and what is going to happen the report is now proceeding from the Human Rights Council to the General Assembly that's the body of the United Nations to whom the Human Rights Council reports it will probably come before the General Assembly in September of this year and a motion will be prepared to respond to it the Commission of Inquiry recommended that the General Assembly should refer the report into the Security Council for formal consideration formal consideration of what we recommended and specifically formal consideration of the recommendation to transmit the case of North Korea to a prosecutor the prosecutor's office in the International Criminal Court we found in the headings which we investigated crimes against humanity had been committed these are very grave international crimes we did not find that genocide had been committed in North Korea there's a reason for that the genocide convention of the United Nations formulated in 1948 defines genocide as being the killing or violence against a population or part of a population as a matter of state policy on the grounds of race, ethnicity, nationality or religion and in the case of North Korea the crimes against humanity which we have found are not on the basis of race or religion they are on the basis of political affiliation or deemed political objection views were expressed to us that genocide has expanded in its meaning since 1948 and now includes the violent acts on the basis of political or social beliefs a reasonable case can be made out in support of that view but we had so many crimes against humanity that we thought the correct stance of the commission of inquiry was to take a modest view and therefore we didn't find genocide crimes against humanity are already extremely serious international crimes there's plenty of evidence of those when we came to a point either factual or legal where we were in doubt as to whether the case had been made out we always opted for modesty and didn't push the envelope this is a hard hitting and discreet and I believe convincing and readable report which is now before the international community some people have said to me couldn't you see those empty seats in the area briefing can't you see what is going to happen when this matter goes to the Security Council don't you think it might have been more prudent not to be so assertive about the findings could you not have reached out more to find some agreeable solution with North Korea well the answer to that is the world has been trying to reach out to North Korea for a very long time and North Korea will not respond North Korea has been brilliant in its diplomacy of closing its borders of keeping out scrutiny of refusing even tourists to talk with their population you can go there on so-called tours but you are controlled and if you try to get away from your minders on some occasions the tourists who've done that have been shot and on other occasions they've been rounded up and brought back into control North Korea is a totalitarian state it's not just autocratic it's a state that seeks to impose upon its people what they must think it tries to invade their brains as well as their action it tries to get into their loyalties and even miniscule disrespect to the Kim family can lead to extremely grave consequences and therefore in a few weeks we're going to face the crunch time for human rights in North Korea and in response to the suggestion well nothing's going to happen because the two P5 members are going to be against any action in response to that I think that can't be absolutely sure in the case of the Russian Federation they had a lot of connections with North Korea during the Soviet time but since the end of the Soviet regime they have not given aid to North Korea which used to prop up the regime in North Korea they have very little trade with North Korea and they've got lots of other matters on their plate at the moment which are occupying their attention so it's not at all certain that the Russian Federation would take the serious step of preventing the Security Council from acting in a strong way against North Korea as the report suggests as to China, China certainly has very substantial trade with North Korea it now is the main backer of North Korea it has geopolitical reasons for wanting to have if possible a buffer state but North Korea has the fourth largest standing army in the world North Korea has reportedly 20 nuclear warheads North Korea is developing a missile system which can deliver its warheads not only within its own country but also to South Korea which is immediately a butting into China itself into Japan and into if not now very shortly the west coast of the United States of America so North Korea is a very dangerous country and it's also a violent country the murder of Kim of Jang Song-tik the uncle of the supreme leader last December the second or third most powerful man in the land arrested in the Politburo dragged out under the television lights put before a military tribunal put on trial according to the North Korean news agency the judge is screaming at him that he was lower than a dog convicting him and then executing him by firing squad all within four days is an unusual way to solve a political issue as we can understand it Jang's error was he was urging that North Korea should go the China path and he had a lot of dialogue in and with China and so I suggest that it's not at all certain what China will do in the time that China has had the the People's Republic has had the China seat in the United Nations it has used the veto in the Security Council 10 times that contrasts with the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation which have used it 350 times the United States of America 250 times the United Kingdom and France about 100 times France 78 times and China 10 the veto is not generally the way China does international law and international policy and therefore what is really needed is the kind of leadership and action that we saw in respect of MH17 because that was a very serious matter which affected very closely the Russian view of the world and its borderlands and those people of Russian ethnicity who are close to it and yet thanks in part to leadership on the part of Australia as by chance a Security Council member and the United States and other members of the Security Council a resolution was found and that resolution opened the way towards the investigation that will now take place what we need now in the case of North Korea is a second endeavour of this kind and I'm far from saying that the international community will fail in this endeavour this is going to be a very important test for the United Nations and its machinery and in that test so far I have to say to you and I report to you as Australian citizens that the United Nations has done everything it should have done it set up a completely independent commission it gave that commission an excellent secretariat of devoted and hardworking and independent officers it delivered a report within time very efficiently the report is readable the report collects very serious crimes against humanity delivered to the Human Rights Council it has sent them with a strong endorsement to the General Assembly and now the question will be what does the General Assembly do and what does the Security Council do but in every way the charter of the United Nations has worked as it is expected to work and the question will now be what will happen next and for that all I can say is watch this space thank you now we have about a quarter of an hour or so for questions and perhaps a little longer so I'd ask you you don't have to mention your name if you don't want to to speak into the microphone and then I'll endeavour to answer the question there can be questions or comments you don't have to agree with anything I've said you're not going to be dragged out of here under cleag lights and nasty things happen to you and you can disagree that's the nature of a democracy anybody have any questions or comments could somebody ask the sound technician to turn up the microphones please what motivates I'm concerned that on another occasion the community might be looking at the answers within China therefore they're concerned about interference in domestic affairs well I can't of course comment on the psychology of China or what might motivate China China is criticised in the commission of inquiry report because a large number of people who fled into China were returned under a memorandum of agreement between North Korea and China that provided for them to be sent back into North Korea China is a party to the refugee convention and protocol and therefore it's bound by the obligations of the refugees convention China asserts that the people who came into China from North Korea are economic refugees and that it doesn't owe them the protection of the convention in the case of well-founded fear of persecution if they're returned even though there is an ample evidence including now in the commission of inquiry report that one could have a well-founded fear of persecution for a convention reason China does not really co-operate with the high commission of refugees so China's concerns could relate to criticism of itself on the other hand China itself according to what one reads in China media including in blogs which are now increasingly freer in China where Chinese citizens are saying why are we supporting this terrible regime why should we and that's the point China has itself come a long way and it's come a long way including in greater openness about human rights issues and therefore the question will be does China really want to have a semi-violent and dangerous country on its borders with 20 nuclear warheads ongoing serious crimes against humanity which themselves can cause international political repercussions but how this will work out in the symbiosis of the security council is the question and that is something which I think it's premature to assess one hopes that China will act with the responsibility that is expected of one of the P5 members of the security council and that certainly has been their practice up till now they do not use the veto often and therefore we shouldn't assume that China will do otherwise than to take its responsibilities in the security council seriously the interrelationship of universal human rights and international peace and security is signalled in the charter itself and it's also reflected in the universal declaration of human rights and in many of the treaties many of which China and DPRK North Korea have signed so it will be an important question to be addressed and I hope that China will respond with the responsibility of such an important country such a leading country in Geneva the Chinese mission was always most correct and courteous in its dealings with the commission of inquiry but in the end they would not allow us access to China they would not allow our request to go to Beijing to speak with their state officials and would not allow us to go to the border areas to look at the areas where Korean national refugees are so it is a sensitive question in China but what we have to hope is that the interaction of our our own excellent diplomats in the United Nations will produce an outcome as happened in MH17 which will be one which is protective of fundamental values and human rights. People what? Well first of all it was no part of the work of the commission of inquiry to stimulate or suggest or require a revolt the decision on the governance of North Korea is a matter for the people of North Korea and DPRK constantly says that the human rights measures of the United Nations are designed to overthrow the regime they are a member state of the United Nations we had to accept them as a member state of the United Nations and we did so but said if you're a member state you have to comply with the fundamental principles of universal human rights and you're not doing that you've got to bring yourself into conformity now your question was an interesting one because one of the features of the testimony was on the part of a number of the witnesses that they would say that they loved Kim Il-sung these are people from North Korea who have fled North Korea they would say he was a great leader and we love him but everything went downhill when Kim Jong-il took over and so today that was interesting because you would expect if they were human scum who were just opposed to the regime they would come along and create a party line and criticise everything about North Korea but they didn't not all of them did some did but not all of them did and I think that was one of the indicia that these were people who were sincerely trying to tell things as they saw it and that was interesting that a number of them had this reaction but if you live in a totalitarian system where all you get is the worship of the Kim family and that that is part of the received wisdom of the society that every home has to have two portraits of Kim Il-sung and the current leader and they have to be kept clean and must never be damaged and so on then it's not all that surprising that they get into their minds a sort of infatuation with respect of which some of these witnesses gave evidence and another question Yes Regarding international aid to try to prove the human right situation in North Korea given the fact that the North Korean regime has known for systematic the version of any aid to the military and regime how would you say that any international efforts to improve the humanitarian situation North Korea will be effective Well this was one of the shocking features of the famine that North Korea in the midst of this terrible partly natural partly man-made catastrophe was spending huge amounts of capital on acquiring nuclear weapons and missile systems and supporting the fourth largest standing army in the world North Korea has a population almost exactly the same as Australia but it has an army people under arms more than a million people and it's an extremely well armed society so they were spending their money on this rather than on feeding the population but they were notwithstanding at the time of the famine the international community came good with lots of food aid North Korea when the bags of flour would arrive with the United States flag on it spread the word that this is reparations for the wrongs done to North Korea because the United States was liberated and this was their reparation but in fact it was food aid which was granted and a lot of western countries including the Republic of Korea gave generously food aid the problem was North Korea would not conform to the protocols for the monitoring of the food aid and one of the real concerns of the international community was that the food was going not to the hostile or the wavering class and not to some areas of Korea North Korea where there are significant numbers of the hostile class up in the northeast of the country and therefore ultimately international donors both United Nations and private began to withdraw food aid because they couldn't be sure what was happening to it and this was the problem of getting the food out and humanitarian aid is something that should not be disturbed the report of the commission of inquiry was strongly affirmative of the right of the people of North Korea who've suffered a lot suffered enormously not to be further punished but notwithstanding that some efforts have to be made of food aid and also to monitor the moves towards human rights respect but North Korea will not engage North Korea will not accept the single one of the 187 recommendations that the Human Rights Council has put up and you say well we should reach out and engage how do you do that to a country that doesn't permit any of its citizens to have access to the internet the only people who have access to the internet in North Korea the only people who can read the report of the commission of inquiry in North Korea the elite the ordinary citizens can't see our public hearings can't see our report can't access the transcript doesn't know what the body set up by the United Nations says about their country we offered to go there we sent our report and that was ignored North Korea does not engage and it's following a strategy which so far has been brilliant and has been rewarded with great success the world not knowing looks to other things and that's what the commission of inquiry is seeking to undo