NEW YORK: The UN Security Council held an open meeting to discuss the human rights situation in North Korea for the first time in six years Thursday at the request of Japan, the United States and other countries.

In the meeting, calls were made for North Korea to immediately return Japanese abductees and to halt its nuclear and missile development programs that have been implemented at the expense of the welfare of its people.

Meanwhile, China and Russia expressed dissatisfaction with the meeting.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, who joined the meeting online, said North Korean nationals, including children, are forced to work to “support the military apparatus of the state and its ability to build weapons.”

On Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea decades ago, he said: “I sympathize deeply with the families of those who were abducted or disappeared, and who now are or would be aged in their 80s and 90s. It is imperative that we exert all efforts to ensure some measure of justice, before it is too late.”

“We cannot have peace without human rights,” US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the meeting, demanding North Korea improve its human rights situation.

After the meeting, 52 countries, including Japan, the United States and South Korea, as well as the European Union, issued a joint statement condemning North Korea’s human rights violations and weapons development as unacceptable.

In the meeting, a Chinese representative said that the UN Security Council should not deal with human rights issues. A representative of Russia claimed that the meeting is a shameless attempt by Western countries.

“It is very meaningful for the UN Security Council to question (Pyongyang’s) stance of not allocating precious resources to people in need and instead focusing on nuclear development,” Kimihiro Ishikane, Japan’s ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters after Thursday’s meeting.

The UN Security Council held open meetings on North Korean human rights issues from 2014 to 2017, but in recent years the meetings have remained informal due to opposition from China and Russia.

On Tuesday, a senior official of North Korea’s Foreign Ministry released a statement condemning the plan to hold the open meeting.

JIJI Press