The UN Security Council(UNSC) held a meeting to discuss human rights abuses in North Korea, where most of the 15 members of the council condemned North Korea for pursuing a nuclear program at the cost of the human rights of its people. 

The Security Council held the meeting on Wednesday morning, presided over by South Korea’s Ambassador to the UN Hwang Joon-kook, this month’s rotating UNSC president. 

The Council last met on the issue in August 2023. 

In the meeting, Hwang said that the North Korean regime seeks to keep its people in darkness and extinguish the light of the outside world with brutal control and nuclear weapons, but darkness cannot destroy light, it only brings it into sharper focus.

Hwang added that North Korea is like a "two-headed chariot" driven by nuclear weapons and human rights violations, stressing that if human rights violations stop, nuclear weapons development will also stop. 

Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that in recent years, suppression of freedom of movement and expression has intensified in North Korea, and social and economic living conditions have become unbearably harsh due to food shortages.