The United Nations appeared to move a step closer on Thursday to holding North Korea’s government accountable for what an investigative panel has called a history of crimes against humanity and egregious human rights abuses, as the Security Council convened a special session to hear the panel’s views on what should be done.

It was the first time that the Security Council had taken up the question of human rights in North Korea, the world’s most isolated country, which is already under heavy international sanctions because of its nuclear weapons and missile activities.

Diplomats and rights activists who were invited to attend the session, which was closed to the news media, said they believed at least 10 of the 13 Council members who attended would be inclined to refer North Korean leaders to the International Criminal Court at The Hague for prosecution — and at the least, to debate such a decision. China and Russia, veto-wielding members of the Council, did not attend, but rights advocates said they were encouraged nonetheless.

The Security Council session came two months after the United Nations investigative panel, a three-member commission led by a retired Australian judge, Michael D. Kirby, issued a damning report about what it described as North Korea’s vast system of slave-like prison camps and other forms of state-sanctioned torture, intimidation and repression.