North Korea proposes U.N. inspector visit to avoid Kim Jong Un trial

North Korea raised the possibility of allowing a United Nations human-rights investigator to visit the country for the first time if the world body backs off steps to put leader Kim Jong Un on trial for crimes against humanity. Four North Korean diplomats met Marzuki Darusman, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, yesterday in New York to “unexpectedly” discuss a potential visit by Darusman and U.N. high commissioner for human rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, Darusman told reporters yesterday. They said the trip could be “enabled on the understanding” that Darusman help revise a draft U.N. General Assembly resolution to address their “concerns” about its call for trying Kim before the International Criminal Court in The Hague, he said.

There’s been a lot of skepticism about the way the North Koreans go about in their interaction with the international community - initiatives but also reversals - and so there has to be some way of allowing a measure of trust but also a larger measure of verification.

Marzuki Darusman, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea

The European Union and Japan earlier this month presented the draft resolution that argues for Kim’s court referral on the basis of a 400-page landmark report by an independent U.N. commission of inquiry. The report documented a network of political prisons holding 120,000 people and atrocities such as “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence.” Darusman and his predecessor Vitit Muntarbhorn have never been allowed to visit Pyongyang.

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