Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what discussions he has had with the North Korean Ambassador to the UK on the North Korean government's acceptance of the recommendations of its recent Universal Periodic Review.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Ministers have had no substantive meetings with the North Korean Ambassador to the UK since the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in May 2014, although senior FCO officials have met with the Ambassador to discuss a range of subjects. Following the adoption of the DPRK’s Universal Periodic Review report in September 2014 the United Kingdom issued a statement via our Mission in Geneva welcoming the DPRK’s engagement. We urged the DPRK to fulfil the commitment it made to respond to the 185 recommendations which it agreed to examine, and to take concrete steps to implement all the UPR recommendations. It remains of serious concern that 83 UPR recommendations did not enjoy the support of the DPRK, particularly those related to the findings of the UN Commission of Inquiry, co-operation with the Special Rapporteur, the treatment of political prisoners and closure of political prison camps.