UN special rapporteur for North Korea human rights to visit Panmunjom next week

Elizabeth Salmon, director of the Institute for Democracy and Human Rights of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Korea Times file

Elizabeth Salmon, newly appointed U.N. special rapporteur for North Korea's human rights, will visit the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom during her first official trip to South Korea next week, a unification ministry official said Thursday.

Salmon will also visit Hanawon, a state-run resettlement center for newly arrived defectors from the North, on Aug. 30 before visiting the Joint Security Area of Panmunjom inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) the following day, according to the official.

On Friday, she will meet Unification Minister Kwon Young-se to discuss the human rights situation in North Korea.

The special rapporteur position was first created in 2004 to investigate and report to the U.N. Human Rights Council and General Assembly on the human rights situation in the reclusive regime in light of international human rights law. (Yonhap)