South Korea's unification ministry will simultaneously seek to improve North Korea's dismal human rights situation and provide humanitarian assistance to North Koreans this year, officials said Friday.

The move is part of Seoul's 2017 action plans to implement a three-year strategy to improve Pyongyang's abject rights situation, in line with a new law on North Korean human rights that went into effect in September last year.

The ministry said that it will take a dual-track approach of calling on North Korea to enhance its human rights records and seeking humanitarian engagement for those who are vulnerable in the North.
 

"The government plans to consistently seek to offer humanitarian assistance regardless of political situations and will simultaneously make efforts to improve North Korea's human rights records," the ministry said.

Seoul said that a center tasked with probing human rights violations will do its work in a full-fledged manner after it was launched in September 2016 in accordance with the relevant law.

The law on the North's human rights was enacted and went into effect last year under the conservative government of Park Geun-hye, an ousted president on corruption charges.

The 2017 action plan reflects the liberal Moon Jae-in government's stance on how to handle North Korea's human rights violations.

Critics said that previous liberal administrations in 1998-2008 shied away from taking issue with the North's human rights violations out of concern that it could strain inter-Korean relations.

Last week, Seoul approved a plan to provide US$8 million in aid to North Korea via UN agencies, citing a serious humanitarian crisis facing infants and pregnant women.

It also said that the ministry will seek cooperation with UN bodies over the North's rights issue, adding that it will make efforts for the adoption of resolutions condemning North Korea's human rights at the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council.

The action plan does not include Seoul's push for holding inter-Korean dialogue on human rights and identifying human rights perpetrators. Such plans were originally laid out in the three-year road map.

North Korea has long been labeled one of the worst human rights violators in the world. The North does not tolerate dissent, holds hundreds of thousands of people in political prison camps and keeps tight control over outside information.

Under the law, the government opened the Center for North Korean Human Rights Records, an agency to investigate and collect data on Pyongyang's rights situation.

But the government has yet to launch a foundation to support relevant civic groups' activities and do research on the North's human rights violations due to a delay of the parliamentary process to recommend candidates for board members. (Yonhap)