Shin Dong-hyuk, the West’s most celebrated North Korean defector, has been caught lying to the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and the world.

According to his own statements, he purposefully falsified the main chronological and geographical aspects of his life story—a fantastic story of inhuman “gulags” in North Korea that has been broadcast all over the world as the central argument that Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, in the words of the UN’s Commission of Inquiry on North Korea, “Is the worst human rights violator on the planet.”

This is a very significant development. Shin Dong-hyuk is literally the global voice and face of the human rights campaign that Western countries are waging against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—a campaign that is part of a wider strategy to overthrow the government and bring all of Korea under U.S. neo-colonial control.

The exposure of Shin Dong-hyuk’s falsehoods should bring an immediate end to the entire shoddy “human rights” campaign against North Korea.

The United Nations has referred the DPRK to the International Criminal Court for “Crimes Against Humanity” solely on the basis of witness testimony and some fuzzy satellite pictures. Shin Dong-hyuk was literally “Witness #1” at the UN’s Commission of Inquiry on North Korea. This commission’s findings led to the proposed ICC charges.

Shin Dong-hyuk’s lies have been amplified a million-fold by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, 60 Minutes, the New York Times, CNN, Amnesty International and many, many, many others. His “life-story” was turned into a best-selling book, “Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Journey from North Korea to Freedom in the West.” The book has been translated into 27 languages.

According to Blaine Harden, the author: “On Friday, Jan. 16, I learned that Shin Dong-hyuk, the North Korean prison camp survivor who is the subject of ‘Escape from Camp 14,’ had told friends an account of his life that differed substantially from my book.”

Shin Dong-hyuk’s sensational stories of torture and cruelty in the DPRK started to unravel late last year when his father spoke on North Korean television claiming that Shin Dong-hyuk had never been in a prison-camp at all.

End the phony human rights campaign against North Korea

In making their case against North Korea, the UN and HRW have both stated forcefully and repeatedly that Shin Dong-hyuk is “The single strongest voice on the atrocities taking place in North Korea.” Seriously?

Everyone should be drawing the same conclusions here: If the number one spokesperson, a defector who has been feted around the world and given human rights awards from the UN, HRW and many others, is lying, then how much credence should we give any of the testimony made before the UN’s Commission of Inquiry on North Korea? My answer: not a lot, if any. In fact, the UN has made little to no attempt to verify the accuracy of any of the witnesses against the DPRK.

Why should we trust the commission at all, especially when you consider that the human rights campaign against the DPRK is completely inseparable from the U.S. strategy to bring the country to its knees and move the U.S. military, already 27,000 strong in South Korea, to the very doorstep of China?

The falsehoods of Shin Dong-hyuk should bring to mind the numerous occasions when the United States and the West have used lies, racist demonization campaigns and phony human rights justifications to provide cover for their imperialist agenda of dominating the world’s peoples, markets and resources.

The people of the world must demand an immediate end to all Western campaigns to seize Korea for the benefit of Wall Street, including the hollow ICC case against the DPRK.