Trump meets with North Korean defectors for first time in his presidency

US President Donald Trump meets with a number of North Korean defectors, including Ji Seung-ho, at the White House on Feb. 2. (Yonhap News)

The administration plans to use human rights issues to pressure North Korean leadership

US President Donald Trump met on Feb. 2 with North Korean defectors for the first time since taking office. The meeting, which followed upon an invitation to Trump’s Jan. 30 State of the Union address extended to defector Ji-Seong-ho, appeared intended to signal the administration’s plans to use human rights issues as leverage against Pyongyang.

According to the White House schedule, Trump planned to meet with defectors is his office at 11:30 am on Feb. 2 (1:30 am on Feb. 3 in South Korea). Nine defectors who have settled in South Korea and the US had been invited to share details on actual conditions in North Korea.

A source explained that defectors who had succeeded in establishing themselves in various fields were selected for the event, including Ji, who heads the North Korean human rights group Now Action and Unity for Human Rights (NAUH); Institute for National Security Strategy fellow Kim Kwang-jin; and RFA journalists. George W. Bush also invited defectors to the White House during his presidency, including six-year-old Kim Han-mi and family and Free North Korea Radio director Kim Seong-min in 2006, and US resident Cho Jin-hye and Fighters for Free North Korea president Park Sang-hak in 2008.

North Korean defector Ji Seung-ho lifts his crutch in acknowledgment of President Trump’s use of his story to criticize the North Korean regime over its human rights record during the State of the Union Address on Jan. 30.

The event appears to be tied to the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policy approach against North Korea. Even with allies, the administration has adopted a foreign policy approach of attacking the “weakest links” to get what it wants.

In that sense, the aim behind the meeting appears to be to drive up psychological pressure on the North Korean leadership through a strategic attack on their “reputation” by bringing up human rights issues – regarded as one of Pyongyang’s chief weaknesses – before the international community. In a piece the same day titled “Trump's New Weapon Against Kim Jong Un: A Defector,” the Wall Street Journal noted that the Trump administration had begun actively using defectors in North Korea issues.

To date, Trump has not spoken out publicly against human rights suppressions by Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte or against Myanmar’s Rohingya minority. There is speculation that his particular interest in North Korean human rights may have been sparked by the case of Otto Warmbier, a US university student who died after being freed from detention in North Korea.

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

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