PSCORE & the United Nations
The international community plays a crucial role in empowering North Korean defectors. A larger audience listening to their testimonies encourages action on a bigger scale to guarantee their fundamental rights. In order to make sure that the voices of North Korean defectors are heard by international organizations we strive to raise awareness about North Korean human rights violations in the United Nations.
In 2012, the United Nations Economic and Social Council (UNECOSOC) has certified a very respected consultative status to PSCORE. Ever since, PSCORE has been actively participating in the United Nations human rights related sessions. We usually partake in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) organized by the Human Rights Council and cooperate with the Special Rapporteur and the Commission of Inquiry for Human Rights in North Korea. Furthermore, we participate at the Third Committee of the General Assembly, the Social Humanitarian and Cultural Committee, as well.
Raising Awareness
Every voice matters to us. Every month we hold awareness campaigns to get people’s support and recognition of North Koreans’ people’s human rights. We have organized campaigns at Yonsei University, Yongsan station, Itaewon, and Hongdae amongst many other locations. During the campaigns we inform people about the human rights conditions in North Korea through boards and documentation, we gather signatures for petitions for more recognition in South Korea of the situation in the North, and try to get financial support for our activities. PSCORE has taken advantage of its participation to the United Nations to hold some campaigns in Geneva and in New York.
We are passionate in what we do, and we try to diversify our audience as we believe that the ongoing human rights abuses in North Korea should matter to everyone. Through charity Rock concerts, we raise funds for supporting our activities and inform people of North Korea’s human rights violations.
reports and projects
In order to prevent the global community from forgetting North Koreans’ voices, we inscribe their stories on paper and share them with the world. We collect testimonies, analyze them following the guidelines established by human rights charters, and pass our reports on to the UN Special Rapporteur on the DPRK. We have published these reports in Korean, English and French and are willing to translate the next ones in more languages to broaden the circle of people supporting the improvement of North Korean people’s human rights.
To make the testimonies more tangible, we have set up a project using Google Maps. The project is documenting human rights abuses in North Korea. The information for this project has been gathered by PSCORE from interviews with North Korean defectors. During the interviews, defectors voluntarily accounted for human rights abuses they have encountered and helped us to locate these incidents by using Google Earth. The information shared is naturally very sensitive and all identifying information has been changed or concealed. What is presented by this second project is only a small, but no less important, part of the picture of life and death inside North Korea.