Here is another sign that there is new leadership in the Korean Blue House:

South Korea said on Tuesday it had joined the sponsors of a U.N. resolution criticising North Korea for its suspected human rights abuses in a move likely to anger its prickly neighbour and further chill already frosty ties.

“Our government joined to support the EU-led resolution based on our principle that human rights, as a common value, must be handled separately from other issues,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Under liberal presidents over the past 10 years, South Korea has walked on egg shells when it came to human rights, feeling that open criticism of its communist neighbour would derail improving ties between the states technically still at war.

South Korea had mostly abstained from other votes on U.N. resolutions on rights abuses in North Korea but a new president who took office in February pledged to take a tough line toward Pyongyang and rethink a quiet approach to diplomacy.  [The Star Online]