International experts raised alarm about human rights violations stemming from North Korea’s troop deployment to the war in Ukraine on Monday, even suggesting that leader Kim Jong Un should be tried for war crimes over his support for Russia’s invasion.

But some participants in the 2025 International Conference on North Korean Human Rights, organized by Seoul’s unification ministry, questioned whether global criticism of the regime’s record will be enough to induce change without more proactive steps to spread information to the DPRK people.

In a keynote speech, Song Sang-hyun, former president of the International Criminal Court (ICC), argued that North