At the Sejong Institute's 9th Colloquium of May 14th, 2024, Peter Ward, Research Fellow, and Hanna Song, Director of the North Korean Human Rights Information Center, presented “How to Engage North Korea on Human Rights Issues? Challenges and Potential Opportunities of the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR)”

The Colloquium was moderated by Seong Chang Cheong, Director of the Center for Korean Peninsula Strategy.  

North Korea violates human rights, yet it is a country that has ratified five of the international human rights treaties, it is a contradiction that has led to the establishment of the Commission of Inquiry and the annual passage of the resolution on the human rights situation in North Korea adopted in 2003.

As for the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR), he emphasized that it is a system of evaluations between states, which has the problem that it reflects the claims of the evaluating state party regardless of the validity of the claims, but it allows human rights to be evaluated universally.

In addition, the origins and development of the UPR, North Korea's participation in the UPR, and ways to improve human rights in North Korea were reviewed and discussed in-depth. ​