 Sharing the second panel will be Greg Scarlatti, the executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. So if you could all make your way back to your seats, please, so that we can begin the second panel, that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. I will now turn it over to Greg to begin our discussions. Thank you, Greg. The mission of this panel's moderator is to aim to look forward to the future rather than provide a retrospective. The focus of the panel will be on the United Nations, but the conversation will also cover the international community's responses and obligations. We will proceed with the same format, and before we proceed, I would like to introduce the members of this Auguste panel. Roberta Cohen is a non-resident senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, specializing in human rights and humanitarian issues. Dr. Cohen is also co-chair of my organization, the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, HRNK. He was one of the co-founders and co-directors of the Brookings Project on Internal Displacement and served as senior advisor to the representative of the UN Secretary General on internally displaced persons and co-authored the first major study on the subject entitled Masses in Flight, published by Brookings in 1998. Dr. Cohen is also a member of the Committee on Conscious of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration, and an adjunct associate professor at American University's Washington College of Law. Delighted to have an opportunity to present Professor Cho Jong-hyun, who is currently an assistant professor at the Center for International Law at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy. His specialties are international law, human rights, and North Korea. He has written on issues including the UNCOI, the protection of North Korean escapees under international law, the norm of responsibility to protect transitional justice and the peaceful use of the Korean demilitarized zone, the DMZ. He was previously a visiting professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security and a research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification. We are delighted to welcome this morning John Sifton, who is the Asia Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch. Previously, he was the director of One World Research, a public interest research and investigation firm. Before joining One World Research, John spent six years at Human Rights Watch, first as a researcher in the Asia Division, focusing on Afghanistan and Pakistan, then as the senior researcher on terrorism and counterterrorism. He also worked for the International Rescue Committee from 2000 to 2001, primarily in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Before that, he worked at a refugee advocacy organization in Albania and Kosovo. My good friend and colleague, Lindsay Lloyd, is program director at the Freedom Collection, the George W. Bush Institute, where he oversees the Freedom Collection website. He builds the physical archive and identifies audiences and develops strategies to reach those audiences. He came to the Bush Institute from the International Republican Institute, where he served for 16 years, most recently as senior advisor for policy. Previously, he was IRI's regional director for Europe and co-director of the regional program for Central and Eastern Europe, which is based in Bratislava, Slovakia. He worked on campaigns, referendums, and parliamentary elections in Eastern European countries, including Romania. And for that, I'm very grateful. Thank you. I would like to begin our panel conversation today by going to Professor Chou and asking him to lay out the areas where, based on the findings and recommendations of the UNCOI, he may be presented with this opportunity to map the road ahead and to proceed with the next steps. Professor Chou. Thank you, Greg. I'm really honored to be here as a panel with these other distinguished colleagues at this very meaningful conference. However, I'm also a little bit nervous now, as you can see, because I'm the only Korean in this session, and I'm not representing my country, my government, or my institute, and the opinions from now on is purely my own. And also, you may know that many other Koreans actually can speak English much better than I, so please understand. And I'm teaching public international law at my academy, so I would like to mention about some international legal implications of the UNCOI report and then try to connect those implications to what to do in the future. I believe that the key word of the UNCOI report would be crimes against humanity. In this vein, we can say the main international legal focus was moved from international human rights law to international criminal law. The COI report's conclusion that many gross human rights violations in North Korea could amount to crimes against humanity is legally important in the following three respects. First, as you know already very well, crimes against humanity is one of the four international crimes under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Although North Korea is not a party state to the ICC law statute and also UN Security Council may not easily adopt a resolution to defer the situation to the ICC, it needs to be stressed that no statute of limitations is generally applicable to this kind of international crime cases. It means that there will be no time limit to pursue criminal prosecution, though probably somewhat delayed. And about the venue, it could be either ICC or Domestic or Hybrid Tribunal or Criminal Courts. Second, crimes against humanity is one of the four related international crimes of the responsibility to protect so-called R2P. As you know, the R2P principle is made up of three pillars. The first pillar is the territorial state's primary responsibility to protect its own populations from international crimes. And the second pillar is the International Community's responsibility to assist the territorial state. So this is just a secondary responsibility, not overcoming the primary one. On the other hand, the third pillar of the R2P denotes that when the state concerns is manifestly failing to do its primary responsibility, the International Community may instead take that responsibility even using some coercive measures such as the referral to the ICC and imposing some target sanctions, and even more, as you can see from the case of Libya. The COI report clearly pointed out that the North Korean regime has failed in doing its primary responsibility. So the International Community, probably represented by the United Nations, should fulfill its third pillar responsibility now. However, at the same time, the report pointed out that still various second pillar cooperative measures should be pursued. In this context, we need to find out how to balance between third pillar and second pillar measures, how to balance between coercive and cooperative measures, and how to balance between activities at UN Security Council and General Assembly in New York City and at UN Human Rights Council and OHCHR in Geneva. I believe while pursuing criminal punishment through the Security Council, we should also take this momentum as an opportunity for more cooperative mechanisms such as human rights dialogues, technical cooperation, and even humanitarian assistance. The third and last implications relating to crimes against humanity is about transitional justice. Korean people need to prepare for not only just physical or political unification but also substantial integration after the reunification. Even if we may go more towards some reconciliation measures rather than criminal punishment about the past wrongdoings, some kind of blanket amnesty will not be allowed in terms of international obligations, and at least key perpetrators of crimes against humanity must be punished according to relevant international obligations. In this context, how to get more reliable sources and how to build on more effectively relevant human rights violation database is another very important task ahead of us. I hope that newly established OHCHR field office in Seoul could play some important role in this respect as well. Thank you, Professor Cho. John, Professor Cho has mentioned the ICCR2P. Human Rights Watch was the one organization that was the driving force behind efforts to establish the UNCOI, the organization that supported the work of the UNCOI that continues and will continue to remain very active. Well, as stated on the previous panel and on this panel as well, where we are right now is that the UN General Assembly resolution on North Korean human rights was passed last year, this issue of human rights has been included in the UN Security Council agenda where it stands next to nukes and missiles. But my question to you is, where do we go from here at the UN and at the Security Council? What is next? Thank you. I would just, I want to argue with one point you said, which is that we were one of the only groups. We were only one of many, many groups pushing to get to where we are today at the UN Security Council. I think it's important that while it's cliche to say that successes have a thousand fathers, in this case success actually did have a thousand fathers, there were groups from ICNK, Seoul, Japan, to the Jacob Blaustein Institute, to your group, Craig, pushing on this for a long period of time and getting over obstacle after obstacle after obstacle to get first the COI, but then to get the most extraordinary result imaginable, a debate in the Security Council within mere months of the COI. For anybody who's unfamiliar with the UN Security Council, that's an extraordinary achievement given that timeframe. It is not common to be able to achieve a debate so quickly. And I certainly wouldn't want to pat myself on the back, although I may pat some of my colleagues on their backs for their work to make that happen. But where do we go from here? I mean, the looming issue in the background is of course the potential for any kind of veto by Russia or China over any resolution that might be introduced to UN Security Council to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court. That is a political reality, a geopolitical reality, which of course cannot be ignored. But it's also important to understand that all of us who've been working to get us there have never thought that that was the idea that sort of immediately a member state would table a resolution to refer North Korea to the ICC and that there would vote would be taken and that somehow China would decide to abstain. None of us are that naive, although journalists sometimes ask us the question as though we were. We have other ideas, I think. It's important to understand that the debate itself is a good. The debate itself in the UN Security Council has an impact. It's had an impact in North Korea. Their reaching out has been a direct result of the UN Security Council debating the North Korea human rights situation. The debate also serves an important purpose, which is preserving the momentum that has been achieved. I think anybody who's worked in politics or law or similar fields knows that when an idea is on the table, it's that much easier for it to be accepted when a moment presents itself where it actually is possible to make something happen. So if the idea of a referral to the ICC sits on the table and is preserved, then when the opportunity does present itself, it will actually happen. If it's not even sitting there on the table as an idea, then it makes it that much more possible, excuse me, it makes it that much more impossible when the opportunity presents itself. What is the opportunity that might present itself for a UN Security Council resolution referring North Korea to the International Criminal Court? I have no idea. It could be anything. It could be a regime collapse. It could be atrocious videos or satellite overflight pictures showing mass atrocities in progress. I don't know. But the idea is to keep the issue alive so that when an opportunity presents itself where China and Russia would be geopolitically unable to veto that that opportunity could be grasped. And then the other thing is it's not simply the debate. You referenced the nuclear and the proliferation issues. It is now the case that UN Security Council members are debating the human rights situation not only in the security council as such, as human rights issues. But the human rights situations are now being brought up in the context of the regularly scheduled discussions on the non-proliferation issues, which happen every 90 days in the UN Security Council. That is another opportunity for this issue to be kept alive. And then the third thing that we need to be mindful of is that the continuing debates in the UN Security Council provide an opportunity for the UN, either through the special rapporteurs or the commission of inquiry members, or via the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights themselves, to brief the Security Council on the activities of the office in Seoul that is continuing to gather information about the human rights situation inside of North Korea. That office in Seoul and the special rapporteurs mandate and the UN system as a whole have a very important role to play in just gathering evidence to preserve it for the day when it might be utilized for accountability down the line. But that information has a dual use. It can also be used to brief the Security Council and keep the discussion going with respect to the need for accountability. And that's another opportunity. With that said, though, I do want to remind everybody in the room that the special rapporteur has an extraordinary mandate and the office in Seoul has an extraordinary mandate, which is somewhat unusual compared to the special procedures that the UN usually uses in countries of concern, like North Korea. In this case, the office in Seoul and the special rapporteur need to not only collect information about the general human rights situation inside of North Korea, but they need to catalog and file the information for possible use as evidence in a tribunal or other accountability mechanism at a later date. This is a very, very important key point that I think often gets overlooked. The fact that this office is gathering information is a very important logistical point that needs to be remembered. So the road ahead involves keeping this momentum going. And that sounds kind of, I suppose, it sounds a little bit like it's not much to hope for. You want a more concrete roadmap. But the fact of the matter is we've come so far that just the notion that we can continue to keep the idea or referral on the Security Council's mandate is an extraordinary achievement. Will there come a time when the General Assembly will have to explore alternative methodologies for accountability? Some kind of ad hoc tribunal set up by willing member states? Yes, possibly. Maybe the General Assembly next year or the year after will have to start thinking about that. And there are models and analogies for that discussion. But right now, I think the key issue is to keep the momentum and the Security Council going. I think all of us who want human rights issues to be kept alive on the North Korea issue need to explore the Russia DPRK dynamic, the growing relationship there, the changing relationship there, and the China DPRK relationship to see what can be done to tailor our work to circumvent it, if that's possible. And there are other things that need to be done. I think a lot of attention needs to be paid to the Seoul office and what it's doing. There are procedural issues which need to be worked through with respect to whether the special rapporteur can brief the Security Council directly, which is somewhat unusual in UN procedure, but conceivable, or whether the high commissioner should do it via the special rapporteur. These are discussions that need to be worked through, but they're procedural discussions. The big picture is to keep this on the agenda. And the final word I'd say about that is the debate at the UN Security Council is probably the only opportunity for the UN system as a whole and the international community as a whole to speak directly to the North Korean government about its human rights situation and to possibly have what it says heard. And it should be grasped fulsorotably in the sense that you're not merely speaking to the absolute leadership of the North Korean regime, you're speaking to the jail wardens, the prison guards, security force officials, and telling them they have a choice to make if they continue to take part in this regime and be complicit in crimes against humanity, they may be held accountable ultimately in a tribunal or a court. But if they start to show small acts of mercy towards the North Korean people, if they, to the smallest amount possible, they can actually do under the limited circumstances that they are in, in a totalitarian state, that they disobey orders to the little extent they can and show these little acts of mercy, then we will have achieved more than anything we've achieved so far. So again, the UN Security Council is probably the only opportunity to speak directly to those people and have it be coming straight from the international community and it should be grasped full-throatedly. Thank you. Thank you, John. Roberta, the next question is going to go to you. John has emphasized the importance of the UN Security Council in addressing this critical issue of accountability. He has also mentioned the challenges that we face in the process. I wonder, are there opportunities for coordination, broader coordination within the UN system, coordination amongst other agencies? And how could such coordination contribute to implementing the recommendations of the UN Commissioner of Inquiry? Thanks, Greg. Let me try to tap into the whole UN system and talk about it in terms of advancing human rights in North Korea. John has talked about the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights and the sole office and the special repertoire on human rights in North Korea. So that office is the human rights office, but what about all the other specialized agencies, offices, funds, programs? There are many at the UN and some of their work directly involves North Korea and even though the human rights part of the House has found a wide array of crimes against humanity in North Korea and described it as a country whose human rights record has no parallel in the contemporary world, these other parts of the UN don't necessarily take into account in their programs and their agenda and their frameworks these human rights findings, even though they have very much relationship to food, to healthcare, to development with which many of these agencies are involved. What is needed? In 2013, the UN Secretary General announced a rights upfront approach it was called. It was meant for situations where there are severe human rights violations and it intended to really coordinate and bring together all the UN agencies, the UN as one, the UN system as one, a coordinated strategy that would take into account and focus on the human rights element and try to prevent and to promote and to protect if possible. Now, the Commission of Inquiry has asked for the application of this rights upfront strategy to North Korea and the special rapporteur on North Korea, Marzuki Darisman in his report to the General Assembly called on the whole system to rise to the challenge. And he called for a UN system-wide strategy, coordination, information sharing and said that the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has expressed support for this application to North Korea. Now let me give you a few examples and now this is just me speaking, not the United Nations, of what this might mean in terms of different agencies or areas. Take a look, say, at health problems. World Health Organization has a health in prison program that they apply in other countries. Well, it's interesting, North Korea has acknowledged this past year reeducation through labor centers. They said they exist. Those are not the prison camps we generally talk about but they are detention centers. Well, what about a health organization beginning to strategize about how they could introduce their health in prison program into reeducation through labor centers? It's just a thinking, a beginning to look at that. Or what about raising the question of tuberculosis that North Korea has a very high rate of tuberculosis and one can assume that the camps are real breeding grounds for tuberculosis. And I've seen an article asking, well, why doesn't a health organization try to get into the camps to look at tuberculosis because this can affect their programs in other parts of the country? So it's a kind of a way of seeing the health programs in a human rights lens as well. And we can say the same thing with regard to children. UNICEF is on the ground and they do very fine work with regard to orphanages, with regard to stunted children. But if they're really trying to reach all vulnerable groups and they read the COI report, one could well ask, well, what about the children in the camps and the detention centers? They are probably the most vulnerable children in North Korea. But there's a certain blinder on when it comes to a lot of these agencies in terms of seeing beyond what it is they do exactly on the ground. What about food programs? Now again, North Korea has agreed to certain recommendations in what's called the Universal Periodic Review. This is a review of the human rights of all countries in the world, including North Korea. And in the session on North Korea, they agreed with the recommendation of free and unimpeded access to vulnerable populations and to access to food distribution that would be nondiscriminatory. Now, here's something for a food agency, World Food Program or others to take a look at. Maybe this gives them an entry point in discussions about what happens with the distribution of food. Is it prioritized to certain areas of the country? Are certain groups favored? These are findings in the COI report. To what extent are the food agencies relating it to the activities they have on the ground? There are tremendously high rates of death in detention in North Korea. And much from deliberate starvation of prisoners, but also from the terrible health problems that arise. So it would be the right thing to do for these agencies to begin to look at the findings of the COI report and begin to see how this relates to what they are doing on the ground. This morning, Michael Kirby said the North Koreans have the right to know. Well, there is the United Nations Educational Scientific Organization. They do human rights education, they do human rights training. What about with North Korea? Isn't it time to think about disseminating within North Korea very basic human rights documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And the particular Human Rights Treaties North Korea has ratified. Shouldn't this be a UN responsibility to make sure that these documents get into the country? There's a UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. And they hold training programs for North Koreans on business management. They do much of this for other countries as well. But in these programs, is there any discussion of transparency, of freedom of information, of workers' rights? Shouldn't all these agencies that have to do with the United Nations, shouldn't they be thinking a bit more broadly to relate human rights which is a core pillar of the United Nations into the programs and activities they have? I would just make a brief reference to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. In some countries, UNHCR is actually able to follow those that return to the country and what happens to them, or those who are forcibly returned to the country. Well, why isn't there a lot of effort to try to mobilize UNHCR as having an entry pointed to North Korea to look at those refugees who are returned to the country or forcibly returned by China? Now, one area that I would hope very much that there could be a sharing of information and a strategizing and a look to the future is where humanitarian organizations come together to look at how prisoners, political prisoners would be protected if there were a closing of the prisons which has been called for, if there is a collapse in North Korea. There should be some plan in place for people who are starved and traumatized. And this is the kind of discussion that should take place among UN humanitarian organizations. Now, NGOs are needed tremendously to prod the United Nations and to prod these organizations to begin to take steps, to strategize, to act. There will be a good deal of resistance because many of these organizations have their own method of operation. They fear expulsion, they fear that their access will be jeopardized. These are legitimate fears, but there have to be creative ways of bringing together the main, the human rights pillar, a core pillar of the United Nations together with all their programs, goals, activities. Their diverse mandates have to come together. And here I think a lot of good thinking is needed by many people in this room on how to do that. And my concluding remark on this is that in the Rights Up Front strategy itself, it demands courage and confidence to support the values in the charter. Well, if courage and confidence are needed to support the UN charter values, then that's what will be necessary. And I think that reinforcing the spine and the orientation of a lot of different parts of the UN will be needed. And I think that non-governmental organizations can play a very important role here. And Lidzi, building on Roberta's remarks pertaining to the important role that NGOs will continue to play as she put it in prodding UN agencies. In light of the remarks that Justice Kirby made earlier today that the North Koreans can no longer afford to simply ignore these issues, these issues are here to stay, you conducted a very thoroughly researched, interesting and most helpful study together with CSIS based on extensive surveys. And I believe that one of the goals of this exercise was to assess awareness and to improve awareness of North Korean human rights as an important critical step toward maintaining this momentum. Could you please share a few of your findings and recommendations with us? Sure, yeah, Judge Kirby gave us a little bit of a shout out on this earlier when he talked about the fact that the opinion poll we conducted in October of the American public showed that only 13% had heard of the COI report. That's the bad news. The good news is that there's a sympathy, I think, for this issue. If people hear about it, if they learn about it, they're prepared to become more active on this issue. Just from a very basic standpoint, over 90% of those we talked to agreed that every human being, regardless of where they live, is entitled to the same freedoms. That's a good base to start from. We had almost 70% said that the international community has a responsibility to act on behalf of those whose human rights are being violated. And 70% agreed that North Korea doesn't respect the basic human rights of its people. So that's a good base to start from. We asked people which country had the worst human rights record in the world? North Korea was the leading answer. Roughly a third of those named North Korea as having the worst record in the world ahead of places like Russia and China and Syria and others which also have rather dismal human rights records. A little bit over half said or claimed that they had heard of the prison camps in North Korea. With any public opinion poll, sometimes there's a little bit of fudging that goes on, but a large number of people have heard of the prison camps. They may not know about the issue in depth, but at least there is an awareness there that we can build on. And I think this is where civil society's role becomes so important. If you look at past issues similar to this, the anti-apartheid campaign against South Africa, the movement of the American Jewish community to highlight the refuseniks in the Soviet Union, you had civil society becoming the voice of those who had no voice. I think it's here where civil society can do the same thing for the North Koreans that are living in such dire circumstances. The report that we put together looked at sort of five general areas where civil society can play an important role. Some of this is happening already, first of all in raising awareness through the traditional media, but probably more importantly in today's world through social media, through technology and so forth to raise awareness. We saw how viral the Kony campaign went a few years ago where young people wanted to get involved in some way to speak out to say something. Here's an area where I think civil society can make a real difference and where groups like Liberty and North Korea are already doing that. They're putting out materials, they're putting out campaigns that appeal to the interests and the ways that young people communicate. Second way that civil society, I think can really become engaged is by helping to find champions. There is no sort of one face or one spokesperson that's really associated with this cause out there. I think it behooves all of us to see are there celebrities from the entertainment world, from the sports world, the refugees themselves, becoming advocates, becoming better known, putting a face with what is essentially a very abstract issue and a difficult issue to comprehend. A third area is spotlighting the role of women. If you look at the story of North Korean refugees, it is really the story of women. The majority of refugees that have made it to this country are women the people I think who are really leading change in terms of the markets and new ways of doing business in North Korea are women. So civil society can really help to emphasize their role and highlight their role. Fourth way, we touched on it earlier, is getting information inside North Korea. This is already happening with private radio groups, NGOs and so forth, the balloon campaigns, technology campaigns. I mean, our response is all of the above. There's no one method that is gonna be the solution to this, but there are a lot of different ways that we can be getting more information inside. And then lastly, aiding the refugees themselves. There's a small population of about 220 give or take here in the United States. By and large, they're doing very well, but they need help. They need human services, things like language training and job training to help them make the adjustment here. They need, we need to expose the fact that there is actually a pathway for refugees to come to the United States if someone makes it to China or to Vietnam or another third country to know that that pathway is there, that there are resources in place to help them make that transition. And then also in helping them to find their voice in becoming more effective ambassadors or advocates for this cause, who better than to hear from someone who's lived the horrors of North Korea. Thank you, Lindsay. I would like to address the next question in particular to Professor Cho Jong-hyun, but also to the other distinguished panelists. Earlier, Justice Kirby mentioned freedom of religion as one issue that deserves more attention. Professor Cho, could you suggest other areas that could probably benefit from further attention, from enhanced attention? Yes, returning to, I basically agree that there are many human rights violation issues in North Korea, not only civil and political right, but economic, social and cultural rights as well. But returning to the crimes against humanity issue again, among items relating to crimes against humanity, there are many other issues in addition to political prison camps. So I believe that more attention should go to abduction for the disappearances issues. So compared to the starvation issue, which is also included in the crimes against humanity case, but political prison camps and abduction issues are all the same in respect that it is still ongoing issues. So last year we mostly have said about political prison camps, but this time how about returning to another very important issue such as abduction issues. And also very recently we have seen some report about some North Korean overseas workers cases. Yeah, it may have some delicate issues including it, but anyway, from now on we need to be carefully considered about that issue and more detailed research on it will be necessary. So and about religious freedom, yes. I also believe that the religious persecution could amount to another kind of international crime, such as genocide. So it is also another kind of international crime. Although the COI report itself didn't mention about that, but anyway it is another crime. So the possibility of genocide is another agenda for us in the future. Thank you Professor Cho. John, you have addressed the field-based structure. Taking into account such possible additional issues, I know that HRW has expanded research capabilities on North Korea, well already existing, very significant research capabilities. What advice would you have to NGOs that are willing to support the activity of the field-based structure in Seoul? Well at the outset, again the key issue is to remember that it is a complex office, not your typical UN office. They have a role both in keeping attention on North Korea but also in just the simple mundane task of collecting information that may one day be used for prosecution. So even if it's the most seemingly mundane thing, like the date of birth of a prison guard or a prison warden who is complicit in abuses, little pieces of information like that are of immense value when you're compiling a database that may be used by a prosecutor one day. So any group that is conducting research to just give everything that they can to this field-based structure, you never know what a prosecutor may find useful one day. That's one thing. On the advocacy point of view though, I think there's a lot of advocacy that's gonna mean to be done just to preserve the momentum that we've gotten to so far. And we can talk a lot about what to do here in the United States and I think Bush Institute has done this great work with these recommendations for within the United States increasing attention on this issue. But we need to remember as well that the UN Security Council has many members rotating members, they have new members since the last debate happened and educating not just the elite diplomats at the UN mission in New York, but the people of those countries is an important task. So just to run through a couple examples, Malaysia is now on the UN Security Council this year. It also happens to be hosting the East Asia Summit and ASEAN Summit later this year. It's on the world stage. Its leader is quite embattled right now but the fact of the matter is this is a country which is on the world stage this year, will be on the Security Council for the next few years and it's very important that they are in favor of these debates and so a certain amount of education of the Malaysian people or politicians back in Kuala Lumpur is important. Spain is on the Security Council now, New Zealand has come on, we lost Australia which was a huge champion on these issues last year. It would be great if New Zealand could somehow be shamed into matching its neighbor's zeal for this issue. Angola is now on, that's a problematic situation. Angola's human rights situation itself is quite bad but its diplomats can perhaps be brought along. Jordan is still there. All these countries on the Security Council they need to be convinced and it's important for advocacy groups that are doing work on this whether it's in Seoul or in Geneva or wherever to remember these other member states as well. I mean then just a final word about other issues. Freedom of religion I think is a great opportunity. Religious persecution is a great issue to seize on but another thing that I've noticed tends to interest diplomats at the highest levels in an important way is drawing the connections between human rights abuses and proliferation issues. Drawing the actual linkages. Not just the conceptual linkages like the fact that no functioning democratic state would invest so much effort into building nuclear weapons in this situation and obviously the totalitarianism of North Korea goes hand in glove with its regime's pursuit of nuclear weapons. Not just the conceptual linkage but the actual logistical linkages. If intelligence communities in any country have information about these linkages, about the use of forced labor to actually build rockets or centrifuges or what have you that information needs to be brought out into the. That type of information will be extraordinarily useful in convincing UN member states who might be sitting on the fence of the need to take this issue seriously not just see it as a kind of a gratuitous charitable issue but as an issue of international peace and security. And then last one last thing about that just talking about the threat of atrocities in the event of the regime breakdown or partial breakdown. I think is another thing that groups need to talk about. It's a little bit difficult to talk about something which you have to theorize about but to bring it into the discussion is important to remind people that this isn't just the human rights situation on domestic level. North Korea poses a threat to international peace and security. Robert, you have been very active writing about North Korean refugees protecting North Korean refugees. This has continued to be one of your major concerns. Would you have any comments pertaining to this particular issue? Well, I think that the refugee issue is one that needs more attention. The COI report was extraordinarily bold and honest really in looking at where refugees are being forcibly repatriated from and that's China. And the report actually warns China in a letter that its officials could be possibly seen as aiding and abetting crimes against humanity by forcing North Koreans back to a situation where they are punished severely and persecuted. Now, China's role in this for political reasons is never mentioned in any UN resolutions. Only the issue of non-Rofoul Mon comes up in the resolution and it's generally referred to all states or occasionally neighboring countries but no reference is made. But I believe that there should be much more of a political push to try to engage China in conversations on the refugee issue so that it can be worked out as a multilateral issue, not just an issue between China and North Korea but one that is worked out with other countries where there can be proposals to actually bring in some of these refugees to other countries and to try to allay some of Chinese fears but also to try to deal with the fact that they are violating international law and the refugee convention. And this whole way, a whole process is needed to try to deal with this subject and it often gets lost in the discussions on the COI report and I think it should point us to trying to work out very important strategies. We agree that since this panel began a little bit late we will continue until 12. We are now ready to take questions. Please remember to keep the questions brief and please remember to mention to whom on the panel you're addressing those questions. Well, since our distinguished participants seem to need a little bit more time to think about a question, let me take the liberty of going back to Roberta and asking her this question. Earlier we mentioned this press release issued by the North Korean mission at the UN and the recent reaction to this very conference. There was a pattern there. There was a diplomatic offensive, a diplomatic offensive that began months ago. How do you assess the North Korean response to all UN COI related developments over the past few months? Robert King said earlier that the North Koreans feel obliged to respond. And I think the context of this, of course, has been the resolutions of that call for the referral of North Korea to the Security Council and to the International Criminal Court and involve their leaders. They felt obliged to respond, but the response is very difficult always to understand. It's not a coherent response. Part of it are threats. Part of it are threats, even to the point of suggesting there could be another nuclear test if the issue is placed on the Security Council agenda and it has been. Then there is an engagement part of the response and the North Koreans want to be at meetings and they have engaged and they have sent a senior person to address the Council on Foreign Relations and they perhaps wanted to come here today. I don't know all the details of that. And so there's a kind of wanting to come and they went to the panel seminar in Indonesia as Marzuki Darusman told us. So there's an effort to come and say something and talk. And then there's a kind of concessions, I would say. Concessions that are proposed in a barter arrangement so that there will be a dialogue, they will say, a human rights dialogue with the European Union. The Special Rapporteur will be invited to visit. There will be technical assistance programs with the High Commissioner for Human Rights but you have to remove from the resolution the clauses that have to do with crimes against humanity and accountability. So the concessions and there are more of them have been in the context of barter and the 116 states in the General Assembly did not choose to barter. They wanted to vote their resolution as it was but they did acknowledge the fact that North Korea has come forward raising dialogue and visits and entry and I think it's important to hold them to that and follow up on that. Dialogue should not be, there's no price that should be paid for a dialogue. After all, a human rights dialogue is a part of diplomatic discourse. You don't get paid for it. But they should be encouraged to take part to open their country, to open the prisons, to open the reeducation through labor centers they've acknowledged and I think that that part of it should be held to by the rest of the world. This is a very important, Michael Kirby said before there was silence and the silence has now turned into a rather incoherent response but one that I think we ought to build on. Fantastic. Well, we will go to Amanda Schnitzer. I'll stand even though I'm in the front. Thank you. So Greg, I've heard you say on more than one occasion in a very eloquent way that what this issue needs is sort of the momentum of the kind although very different situations but a momentum of the kind that you saw with the anti-apartheid movement. What I'm wondering is and certainly public opinion and public momentum behind that issue was important but there were lots of other things that were happening, levers that were being pulled by government, by society and by others. I'm interested, maybe this is a question for John but really for all of you, what is there a tipping point that you can see on the North Korea issue? Is it the COI report? Is there another tipping point that you're looking for or is it again sort of this coordinated multi-lever approach that at some point we will see that tipping point but we don't know what it is? Do you know what it is when you see it or is there something that even in your experience in other parts of the world that what that tipping point might be? Thank you. John? Every country is different but I think there are some lessons to be learned from what happened with Burma. Things have not come out very well in Burma but the procedural lesson is still there which is that over a decade long period the pressure simply increased on a regime and PhD students will be writing theses for the next 10 years, 20 years about what exactly happened causally but it looks as though the military junta in Burma recognized that the costs were too great and that they needed to make changes. Now whether they then engaged in a very sophisticated and cynical way of pretending to change but then bait and switch not changing reaping all the rewards of international engagement with a few of the responsibilities remains to be seen but the causality is still there that was increasing pressure. The tipping point has already been reached I mean we've gone farther on DPRK than we got with Burma in some respects past the COI but I think that one area that again and again gets mentioned is ratcheting up the international sanctions regime which this was discussed in the Bush Institute report a little bit but the misunderstandings about the sanction regime are huge people expect the sanctions regime against North Korea to be immensely robust and prophylactic it's not the case it's actually not a very strong sanctions regime at all and there's a lot of work that can be done to strengthen that and then domestic actions whether in the EU, the United States, Japan and others to tighten up sanctions as well is definitely an area. What the tipping point will be will require a psychological profile of the leadership of North Korea which is probably beyond the can of this group but there is a tipping point that's the important point I guess we may not know exactly where it is but it lies somewhere down the line when that international pressure increases we can't just debate North Korea again and again in the Security Council and hope that someday they'll throw up their hands and say enough is enough but we can increase the lepership through discussion of sanctions and by continuing to get briefings from the Secretary General but it may not be that the tipping point may not even be necessary it may be that the regime will collapse as all totalitarian regimes do before the tipping point is reached. Thank you John that said if lunch has arrived please join us for lunch we will continue at 12.30 with a video presentation lunch and keynote addresses and an award ceremony please join me in thanking our panelists.