SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is to send a personal envoy to Russia, state media said yesterday, the latest in a series of diplomatic moves by the isolated country as it fends off accusations of crimes against humanity.
North Korean diplomats have been on a vigorous campaign in recent months to counter a UN resolution urging the country’s referral to the International Criminal Court, a move which it has dismissed as part of a US-led plot to destroy its political system.
The short one-paragraph dispatch said Choe Ryong Hae, a high-ranking member of the ruling Workers’ Party widely seen as a close confidant of Kim, would visit Russia “soon”, without elaborating further.
A statement on the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs website said Choe would visit Moscow on Monday, followed by a visit to the far eastern cities of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok before ending his trip on November 24.
A UN inquiry concluded in a February 17 report that North Korean security chiefs and possibly even Kim himself should face international justice for ordering systematic torture, starvation and killings.
Russia shares a short, remote land border with North Korea and has in recent years completed the refurbishment of a railway line and seaport in the north east of North Korea.
REUTERS
