Activists, diplomats and North Korean escapees took to the podium at the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) to testify about Pyongyang’s systematic abuse of human rights on Tuesday, including its dispatch of soldiers to fight Ukraine, in the first-ever meeting of its kind devoted to addressing the Kim regime’s record.

The gathering at the U.N. Headquarters in New York, which followed the passage of a resolution in December calling for a high-level meeting, featured speakers who linked DPRK rights violations to global instability and the country’s development of nuclear weapons, as well as calls for further investigation into abuses.

But while