On the 22nd of October the PSCORE Team went to the United Nations Headquarters to pick up their groundpasses for the UNHQ. Here they enjoyed a tour through the building and watched the DPRK’s speech at the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly Third Committee. This committee deals with matters concerning human rights and humanitarian affairs so it was a very interesting part of the day.
The 23rd was the main event day for PSCORE, where we held a successful event at the United Nations Headquarters! At this event we had our Executive Director Kim Tae-hoon present a speech about the human rights violations in North Korea as well as a North Korean defector mr. Roh that shared their stories of escaping North Korea. This event celebrated the 70th Anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and we are very thankful for all those that came to the event and showed their interest in our cause.
On the 25th we spent strengthening ties with organisations and delegations that are in our field of interest in order to establish a network of cooperation. In the morning our team met with the delegation from the European Union, that has been working on a resolution for Korean reunification. We are looking forward to working with them in the future as well and thank them on their continuous support for these issues.
After meeting with the EU delegation, our team went to meet with Korea Society, another NGO based in the United States dedicated to the promotion of greater awareness, understanding and cooperation between the people of the US and Korea. They have content about wide variety of issues and in meeting with them we hope they have learned more about North Korean Human rights issues.
Finally on today’s schedule was a meeting with US Lawyers that support North Korean Human Rights. Through meeting with them we have established stronger ties with our supporters in the US and we seek to extend our activities in the US through meeting with them.
In conclusion, today’s day was filled with networking and we hope we have made more people aware of our concern for North Korean Human rights and hope we shared this message to all people we meet during this trip to New York.
On the 26th, was the conclusion of PSCORE’s time in New York with two events lined up to finish off the busy week.
First up was a Press conference at the National Press Club, where defector Rho shared his story and perspective to several news outlets and gave them the chance to ask questions to a north Korean Defector. We will post the links to these News articles shortly!
Next at 6pm we had a Speech event at New York University where we were invited by NYU Freedom For North Korea. they strive to raise awareness and instigate tangible action regarding the North Korean human rights crisis. At this speech event we introduced the participants to our organisations and had a North Korean defector share their perspective and story, with a Q & A session at the end. We are always very happy to be able to speak in front of so many students that are interested in these issues. We hope to have inspired many today to be more passionate about advocating for human rights issues and we are very thankful to NYU Freedom For North Korea for the invitation and organisation of Friday’s event and please check out their Facebook page for more information on NYU FFNK.
This concludes PSCORE’s trip to New York. We want to thank all of you that came to our events during the week and all people we have met during our days in New York and at the United Nations Headquarters.