Under Trump, the State Department and America's envoys around the world have often had to downplay human rights and other basic democratic values in dealings with authoritarian leaders. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Even so, the President has on occasion shown some knowledge of the situation inside North Korea, speaking last year about the "horror" of life there and meeting in February at the White House with eight North Korean defectors. Last week, he promised Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that he would raise the issue of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea and held for decades. Improving human rights is the only way to get the North Koreans to move in the direction of a normal state. Robert Gallucci, Georgetown University Trump and Kim shake hands with their advisers by their sides.

It was not clear, however, that Trump would actually raise such issues once face-to-face with Kim. "Trump has said all the right things about North Korea human rights. On the other hand, he has such a fondness for dictators, I don't know which side is going to come out in Singapore," said David Hawk, the author of several reports on the North Korean prison gulags, ahead of the meeting. Loading Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, said the issue has too often been "sacrificed on the altar" of higher-priority nuclear and missile negotiations. "For almost 30 years, human rights have been excluded from talks with North Korea that didn't work. So how about giving it a try this time?" Scarlatoiu said.

"Kim Jong-un seems to want security guarantees ... but how can the US or any other liberal democracy guarantee the survival of a regime that treats its people the way Kim Jong-un does?'' The victims include his own family members: Kim has been accused of executing his uncle and other top aides with anti-aircraft artillery and of assassinating his half-brother by a nerve agent in a Malaysia airport. Kim Jong-un's half-brother Kim Jong-nam was assassinated at Kuala Lumpur airport last year. Credit:AP More broadly, an estimated 100,000 political prisoners are held in fetid gulag-style prisons, "re-education" camps and forced-labour centres. Many are killed through torture or starved to death, according to defectors who have fled North Korea.

In this year's human rights report by the US State Department, North Korea stands out for the deplorable conditions described. "Mothers were in some cases reportedly forced to watch the infanticide of their newborn infants," the report states. Rape and other forms of torture, beatings and brutal interrogations were also common for people whose alleged crimes might have been nothing more than falling asleep at a political event or playing foreign music. Kang Chol-hwan, left, an investigative journalist in South Korea wrote the first account of the North's gulag by a survivor. Credit:LA Times/File The North Korean people, the report said, also face "rigid controls over many aspects of [their] lives, including arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, and correspondence, and denial of the freedoms of speech, press, assembly, association, religion, and movement; denial of the ability to choose their government." Some experts, as well as the government of neighbouring South Korea, have counselled against raising human rights or any other issue not directly related to the nuclear arms that threaten South Korea's very existence. They said "overloading" the agenda would be a distraction and slow down any progress.

Especially under President Moon Jae-in, South Korea values rapprochement with North Korea and reducing the nuclear threat as primary goals. Japan, on the other hand, is intent that North Korea be forced to account for its kidnapped citizens. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un embraces South Korean President Moon Jae-in after their summit in the Demilitarised Zone on May 26. Credit:AAP Trump and many Republicans railed against the multinational Iran nuclear agreement that former president Barack Obama brokered in 2015 because it failed to deal with human rights abuses and other behaviour by Tehran. Some Republican lawmakers say there is no need to tackle human rights now with North Korea, though there are dissenters. A South Korean man holds American and North Korean flags as he calls for an improvement in the human rights situation in North Korea near the Capella hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore on Tuesday. Credit:Reuters Republican Senator Orrin Hatch writing for Fox News, said failing to link the issues of rights and nuclear disarmament would be a "moral and political mistake".

"We also show a lack of seriousness about ourselves and our history," Hatch added, "having faced but remained silent amid such crimes against humanity in the past." Loading John Sifton, Asia advocacy director for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, argued that a 2016 law obliges Trump to discuss human rights in his meeting with Kim. The law imposes sanctions and black-listing of any North Korean involved in weapons proliferation or who "knowingly engages in, is responsible for, or facilitates serious human rights abuses."

Sifton also argued that, under the law, sanctions cannot be eased on Kim's government until it changes its longstanding repression and draconian control of its people. November 29, 2017: North Korea tests a Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile, and vows to never give up its nuclear weapons as long as the United States and its allies continue their “blackmail and war drills”. Credit:KNS/AP That raises the question, how can the Trump administration offer North Korea private investment in return for nuclear disarmament moves - as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has hinted at - if it's illegal for US companies to do business with North Koreans so long as the nation continues to violate human rights? Past Republican administrations were able to address human rights while also negotiating tricky treaties. Abraham Cooper of the Simon Weisenthal Centre, which advocates for human rights, noted that during Reagan-era talks about strategic arms reduction with the former Soviet Union, US negotiators always brought up the subject of Jewish "refuseniks". "It is not like we can't walk and chew gum at the same time," Cooper said. "You can leverage human rights as a litmus test to determine their seriousness about disarmament."

Kim inherited the gulag system in 2011 when he took over after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, but he has done little to nothing to dismantle the abuses of the system. North Korean soldiers march across Kim Il-sung Square during a military parade in Pyongyang, to celebrate the 105th birth anniversary of Kim Il-sung, the country's late founder and grandfather of current ruler Kim Jong-un. Credit:AP Although the current Kim has given his people greater economic freedom, he hasn't loosened the restrictions on speech or civil liberties. North Koreans are still imprisoned for watching movies, making phone calls outside the country or trying to cross the border into China. They are not allowed to use the internet. "I think Kim Jong-un's formula is economic reform without political opening,'' said Hawk, the expert on the gulags. "Maybe in five to 10 years, if Kim Jong-un feels secure, he will allow more freedom, but I don't think he is going to extend the rights to his people to have passports, to leave and return, like you saw with China and Vietnam." The biggest single issue is an extensive North Korean gulag believed to hold 80,000 to 120,000 men, women and children, some of whom were imprisoned only because of political offences of family members. The gulag's population has fallen somewhat in the past decade because Kim Jong-il eased up on a system in which three generations of a family were punished for political crimes.

The remaining gulags are so large that they are clearly visible on satellite photographs. A North Korean prison camp. Credit:File "If we have a human rights dialogue, we have to ask them what is the explanation for those facilities and to ask them to provide access," Hawk said. Following a harshly critical 2014 report by the United Nations, North Korea has been more cooperative on issues such as the rights of women, children and the disabled, showing at least keen awareness of international opinion. They have stone-walled queries about their political prison system, however. Robert Gallucci, a professor of foreign relations at Georgetown University who led 1994 denuclearisation talks with North Korea for the Clinton administration, said in retrospect that it was a mistake not to put human rights on the table then.