The international community needs to consider extending aid to North Korea as a "quid pro quo" to get the communist country to improve its human rights, a Dutch professor specializing in Korean history said Monday.

Remko Breuker, professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands, told a forum on North Korea's human rights that there is a need to connect development aid to the issue of North Korea's human rights.

"If you want to do business with North Korea, it needs to be quid pro quo in terms of human rights," Breuker said.

Breuker is in Seoul to attend the forum on the North's rights record, which is designed to mark the first anniversary of the establishment of the U.N. office.

The U.N. opened its field office on June 23 last year in the South Korean capital in a bid to better monitor North Korea's human rights violations, as recommended by a landmark report by the U.N.

Commission of Inquiry on the North's dismal human rights record.
The report calls for the U.N. Security Council to refer Pyongyang's "crimes against humanity" to the International Criminal Court.

The scholar said that the international community should focus on the North's governing mechanism, which systemically violates human rights, along with holding the North's leadership accountable for crimes against humanity.

"We should not just look at symbolic accountability. ... There is a much greater system at work. We need to look at the architects of the system," Breuker said.

Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director at the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, also echoed this view by stressing that the world should not only consider the "symbolic target" -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-un -- but also other officials, including his younger sister Kim Yo-jong, should be held accountable for grave violations of human rights in the North.

"It is very important to adopt an approach toward accountability that relies on full and deep understanding of the mechanism on human rights denial from the top down," Scarlatoiu said.

Meanwhile, North Korean defector Ko Young-hwan, now vice president at the Institute for National Security Strategy in South Korea, said that attention should be focused on the North's leader when it comes to the responsibility for right abuses.

"If North Korean officials at organs, including the ruling party, are extensively blamed for the violations, internal solidarity could even be strengthened as they would show allegiance to leader Kim Jong-un," he said.

North Korea has long been labeled one of the worst human rights violators in the world. Pyongyang has bristled at such criticism, calling it a U.S.-led attempt to topple its regime.

The communist regime does not tolerate dissent, holds hundreds of thousands of people in political prison camps and keeps tight control over outside information.

Lee Jung-hoon, the South Korean ambassador for human rights, said that the opening of the U.N. office took on a symbolic significance in advancing the goal of punishing North Korean perpetrators.

Signe Poulsen, a representative of the U.N. office, said that in the coming year, she hopes her office will "broaden and deepen" its work on monitoring Pyongyang's rights record and raising awareness about the issue. (Yonhap)