The two Koreas are poised to face off at the U.N. in Geneva this week as the South plans to ratchet up pressure over the North’s grim human rights record while Pyongyang wages a campaign to undercut an upcoming resolution against it.

Seoul’s Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul is scheduled to deliver a keynote address on Tuesday at a high-level meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which kicks off Monday for a four-day run. He is expected to stress the need for follow-up measures in line with last year’s General Assembly resolution calling for perpetrators to be brought to the International Criminal Court.
 

Shortly before Cho’s speech, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong will take the podium and likely attempt to undermine a landmark survey by the U.N. Commission of Inquiry, emboldened by a recent retraction of some testimonies by Shin Dong-hyuk, one of the best-known North Korean defectors and a key witness in the report.

The 400-page document detailed harrowing accounts from defectors and witnesses of rape, murder, torture and other “systematic, widespread and gross” rights violations entailing crimes against humanity in the reclusive country.

The North has blasted the study as a “fabrication” designed to overthrow the country. Shin’s confession has apparently helped fuel the North’s argument, though members of the U.N. panel and other officials and experts elsewhere dismissed the issue, saying the absolute majority of the findings and testimonies stand true.

Ri’s delegation is also stepping up diplomatic efforts to water down a council resolution to be adopted at the closure of the session later this month. The text is currently being authored by longtime sponsors the European Union and Japan in consultation with South Korea, the U.S. and other countries.

Last year, the 47-member council endorsed a text recommending the U.N. Security Council to take appropriate action including referring the situation to an “international criminal justice mechanism.”

“The resolution has been adopted for years so North Koreans would try to persuade other countries, especially those with close ties, to vote against it,” a Seoul official said on customary condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

“I think Ri’s participation per se represents how significant this issue is to them, and their resolve that they cannot sit idle when their ‘highest dignity’ is coming under threat.”

During his speech, Cho is also predicted to call on Japan to resolve the issue of its sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II, highlighting this as part of the universal agenda of women’s rights.

Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se struck a relatively tough tone last year, criticizing Japan by name and calling its wartime sexual slavery an “unresolved problem that is still haunting us today.”

The level of this year’s message is being fine-tuned, the Seoul official noted.

“What I can say now is that the issue will be raised in the context of universal women’s rights.”

Later this week, both Cho and Ri are slated to attend the Conference on Disarmament, also in the Swiss city. Cho plans to give a speech calling for Pyongyang to renounce its nuclear ambitions and for global efforts to strengthen the nonproliferation regime, according to the Foreign Ministry.

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)