(EDITORIAL from the Korea Times on Aug. 1) - Unfit panel head

``This is the time to focus on solving the many human rights problems at home
(than leading an international body).'' So said the National Human Rights
Commission (NHRC) Thursday in withdrawing its leader's candidacy for the
chairmanship of the International Coordinating Committee of National Institutions
(ICC).
Given the rapidly backpedaling human rights situation in Korea, the decision
seems as inevitable as it is lamentable and shameful. Watching what the Lee
Myung-bak administration has done to restrict the activities of NHRC as well as
people's basic rights over the past one-and-a-half years, however, most human
rights officials, both here and abroad, must know this country can no longer talk
about others' situations.
A bigger problem is that few ??? if any ??? human rights experts think Hyun
Byung-chul, the new head of NHRC appointed by President Lee a few weeks ago, can
??? or even will ??? try to get the nation's miserably broken human rights
conditions back on the right track.
It really baffles us what made the President name Hyun ??? who admits he is a
total stranger to human rights issues and confessed he was ``stunned'' to hear
about his appointment ??? to head the NHRC. If Lee knew all this but pushed ahead
with the designation, one can't help but think the President has decided to
neutralize the body beyond repair. If not, it only reaffirms Cheong Wa Dae's
incurable defects in personnel management, casting a dark shadow on overall state
administration.
Sadly, we have a hunch that the truth would be closer to the former presumption.
This is an administration that started with an attempt to put the independent
NHRC under the direct control of the Presidential Office, and, after the effort
failed, slashed one fifth of the commission's organization, the workload of which
has more than doubled in recent years, reflecting the increasingly aggravating
human rights situations in inverse proportion to people's growing awareness of
their basic rights.
There are signs aplenty that the conservative administration and its supporters
have looked on NHRC as a thorn in their side. Since its inception in 2001 at the
behest of the United Nations, the commission has supported efforts to do away
anachronistic, cold war-minded anti-Communist laws, while siding with
conscientious objectors and advising that migrant laborers be treated like Korean
laborers, earning the ire of rightists, who thought the NHRC was little more than
a displeasing byproduct of the ``lost decade'' under two liberal administrations.
Most critically, the NHRC all but directly criticized the police crackdown on
candlelit protesters last year, which later led to expressions of concern by
Amnesty International and other global organizations. In contrast, the same
commission under the changed leadership, recently called for the police to
exercise ``caution'' in dealing with Ssangyong Motor's strikers, which shows why
the government has been so bent on compromising its function and authority.
President Lee and his administration should know, however, Korea can only become
the ``advanced country of the 21st century'' that they hope for, when it is based
on such sustainable values and strategies as environmentalism and human rights,
not the enforced uniformity and obedience that characterized the 20th-century
development model of the Park Chung-hee administration.
By abandoning the assured leadership of the ICC, the 120-member body of the
national human rights commissions, due entirely to an unqualified NHRC head and
overall national situation he represents, the country has suffered irreparable
damage on its hard-won reputation over the past decade or so. It is hard to
believe all this has been done by an administration, whose priority is to enhance
the national ``brand" and ``dignity" abroad.
Even more dismal prospect is the nation may have to remain in this regretful
situation for the next three-and-a-half years.
(END)