North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and four other Pyongyang are ready to register a North Korean guards citizen and criminal allegations against the officials who kept them in custody for detained abuses in the country.
Choi Min-Kung fled to China from North Korea in 1997, but was forcibly reversed in 2008. He said that he was sexually abused and tortured after his return.
The South Korea-based rights group said that the case, which will be filed on Friday, is taking legal action against the North Korean-birth defector regime for the first time, assisting Ms. Choi.
The South Korean courts have ruled on claims similar to the misuse by South Korean people against North Korea in the past, but such decisions are largely symbolic and have been ignored by Pyongyang.
NKDB says it is planning to take Ms. Choi’s case to the United Nations and International Criminal Court.
According to a statement by the Database Center of North Korean Human Rights (NKDB), “I wish honestly to be a foundation for this short step for this short step for the restoration of freedom and human dignity.
“As a torture victim and a survivor of the North Korean rule, I take a deep and immediate responsibility to blame the Kim dynasty for crimes against humanity,” he said.
Ms. Choi again fled to North Korea in 2012 and settled in the south. She said that The Ordal is a psychological trauma and she continues to trust the drug.
For years, international rights groups have documented violations of alleged human rights by North Korea, from misuse of political prisoners to systemic discrimination on gender and class.
NKDB Executive Director Hannah Song told the BBC Korean that the trials were important as they were making “parallel” criminal allegations in civil cases.
The previous court case against North Korea was “limited to civil litigation”, he said.
In 2023, a Seoul Court ordered North Korea to pay 50 million ($ 36,000; £ 27,000), exploiting every three South Korean men who were carried as prisoners of war in North Korea during the Korean war.
In 2024, the North Korean government was also ordered to pay 100 million to each of the five Korean Japanese convicts. He was part of thousands of people who left Japan for North Korea in the 1960s and 1980s.
He said that he was lured in North Korea decades ago on the promise of “Earth on heaven”, but instead he was detained and forced to work.
North Korea did not respond to any trial.
But from NKDB, Ms. Song argued that the rulers offered the plaintiff very important to stop.
Ms. Song said, “Everything we understand through the years of work on accountability is that the victims do not really only look for financial compensation – this is acceptance.”
“A court makes a lot of meaning by giving a verdict in their favor. It tells them that their story does not end with them – it is accepted by the state and has officially recorded in history.”
