ICC Note:  No doubt among the human rights abuses cataloged in North Korea will be those abuses that have targeted Christians there.  This is an encouraging first step toward addressing the serious problems in the regime that is widely considered to be the world’s worst offender of human rights and religious freedoms.  Pray that other nations will not stand in the way of genuine investigation and decisive action.

By Brian Padden

06/23/2015 North Korea (VOA)

The United Nations officially opened a new field office in Seoul Tuesday to document human rights abuses in North Korea. The world body has been trying to increase pressure on the repressive Kim Jong Un regime to end ongoing systematic human rights violations that it calls “without parallel in the contemporary world.”

Phil Robertson, with the non-government group Human Rights Watch, called the opening of the U.N.’s field office in Seoul a critical step forward in the campaign to hold North Korea’s leaders accountable for committing crimes against humanity.

“This is something that Kim Jong Un should be staying awake at night thinking about, because he is going to be facing a determined team of professional investigators looking and speaking to people to find out the abuses that are taking place against them,” said Robertson.

International pressure has been intensifying on Pyongyang since the release of a U.N. report last year documenting a network of political prisons in North Korea holding 120,000 people and a list of atrocities that include murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, and rape.

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