North Korea’s human rights situation is a major international problem, and the United Nations has adopted resolutions criticizing the country’s treatment of its people regularly since the early 2000s.

But too often the country’s security risk trumps the human rights issue, with international criticism of Pyongyang focusing on the ballistic missiles, not on political prison camps or the severe limits it places on the personal freedoms of its citizens.

Justice Michael Kirby and the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) from 2013 to 2014 hoped to change all this, with its stark concluding message