Jay Lefkowitz serves as Special Envoy on Human Rights in North Korea, a position to which he was appointed by President George W. Bush on August 19, 2005, following the North Korea Human Rights Act of 2004.

Mr Lefkowitz is also a senior partner at Kirkland & Ellis, LLP, where he serves clients in trial and appellate litigation. In addition, he provides strategic counseling to corporations and individuals, and conducts internal investigations.

Previously, Mr Lefkowitz served as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and General Counsel in the Office of Management and Budget for President George W. Bush. He was also Director of Cabinet Affairs and Deputy Executive Secretary to the Domestic Policy Council for President George H.W. Bush.

In 2004, Mr Lefkowitz was appointed to be a member of the U.S. delegation to the International Conference on Anti-Semitism in Berlin, Germany, sponsored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Mr Lefkowitz has also served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland.

Mr Lefkowitz is a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia Law School. He is the author of numerous essays about law, politics, and religion which have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, The Public Interest, The Jerusalem Report, Commentary and other publications.

This interview was conducted following the Asia Society conference North Korea: Placing Human Rights on the Security Agenda on May 24th, 2006.

How did your previous political and legal experience prepare you for the position of US Special Envoy on Human Rights in North Korea?

I think my legal experience obviously has prepared me, because as a trial lawyer, I am constantly being asked to learn complex issues and translate them to other people, whether judges or juries. The situation in North Korea is not only complex in international relations terms, but it is an issue many Americans know little about. The public diplomacy aspect of my job is simply a question of communicating the human rights situation in North Korea to the American public, and to a broader audience as we try to build a coalition.

Obviously my experience in government over the last several years has sensitized me to the fact that there are different interests in the United States government-and even within the executive branch-that have to be accommodated and navigated. There is no single right answer to a lot of troublesome foreign policy issues. In fact, almost any issue can have multiple approaches. In trying to carry out the President's approach to human rights in North Korea, I have to be sensitive obviously to the interests of the other countries affected by North Korea, and also the interests of our own Congress in enacting the North Korean Human Rights Act as well as the interests of the current administration.

So is the principal mandate of the position a domestic one?

No. I think the principal mandate is to try to help bring about a change in human rights policies by the North Korean regime. Part of doing that is obviously to work closely with the countries in the region, and the countries that have the greatest impact and influence on North Korea are China and South Korea. So I have done a lot of work relating to those two countries and their relationships with North Korea.

There is obviously also a public diplomacy component to this which is international in terms of developing a broader coalition, working within the United Nations community, and also working in the international community. Many countries have undergone changes from authoritarian regimes to democracy in the last 25 years, and many of those countries are very strong advocates for human rights in North Korea. But there is a domestic component. Obviously, to the extent Congress and the President have decided this is an American interest, part of my job is to communicate that to the American people.

Was there a provision for this position in the North Korea Human Rights Act of 2004?

Yes. The North Korea Human Rights Act actually established this position. Then, about six months after the law was enacted, the President asked me if I would fill the role.

You have just said that part of your mandate is to persuade the American public that human rights in North Korea are in fact an important issue. What do you think accounts for Congress and the President determining at this point that North Korean human rights are an important issue? In other words, why was the North Korea Human Rights Act passed in 2004 rather than 1994? What changed?

I think human rights in North Korea have actually deteriorated. North Korea went through a period of significant and severe famine in the late 1990s, and I think the regime cracked down even harder, saving whatever scraps of food were available for the military, trying to convert whatever foreign assistance they were able to get for military purposes and to sustain the regime. Of course, the people who suffered were the regular citizens of North Korea, the people largely out in the country who were starving to death and being deprived of basic, fundamental freedoms. These included freedom of worship, freedom to travel, freedom to emigrate, freedom even to listen to a radio and get uncensored news and information.

It is important to note that this Act was passed unanimously by Congress, so it is not just a Republican initiative, but a bipartisan one. Congress and the President recognize that human rights in North Korea is both a noble end in itself and a means to an end. It is an end in itself because we have the opportunity now to try to avert the suffering of millions, and really help save human lives, whether by helping them escape North Korea to freedom, sheltering them as they escape through Asia, or as we have now seen, welcoming them into the United States as, in effect, refugees.

There have only been a handful of North Korean refugees in the United States.

Yes, we have just started, but I am confident that there will be a lot more refugees coming to the United States. Even more important than the refugees who come to the United States, I think the fact that the United States is accepting refugees sends a message throughout the region that there is an opportunity for brave people to escape from North Korea and reclaim a measure of freedom in their lives.

Could you repeat the second part of your question?

The other part of the question was about the timing of the passage of the North Korea Human Rights Act.

We don't want a situation where some filmmaker ten years from now makes a film called Hotel Pyongyang, after the world has sat by silently while millions of people have been killed or starved to death by an immoral regime. But human rights is also a means to end, because what we are ultimately in pursuit of is broader freedom throughout the world, and particularly in Asia. To the extent that the people of North Korea gain fundamental freedoms, they will ultimately have the tools themselves to shape their own lives and form of government.

Who proposed the bill?

It was a group of Senators and Congressmen who proposed the bill.

Was Senator Brownback one of them?

Yes, Senator Brownback was one of the strongest advocates and chief sponsors of the bill, although he certainly had a great deal of support throughout the Congress.

Is the present interest in human rights connected in any way to the concerns raised about North Korea's nuclear problem, or are the two completely distinct?

I think they are distinct and related. They are distinct in the sense that the United States has significant and grave concerns about North Korea's nuclear arsenals, and we have grave concerns about North Korea's human rights record. They are distinct in the sense that we would like to make progress on either one of these fronts if we could. But they are also related. Ultimately a nation that starves and deprives its own people of basic freedoms is a lawless nation. A lawless nation at home is a greater threat to the international community. A nation that violates international standards and is building a nuclear arsenal and threatening its neighbors is also a lawless nation and a threat. So I think these issues are related but divisible.

How would you compare the situation in North Korea now to the situation in Iraq in 2003 prior to the US invasion?

I think there are a lot of geopolitical differences in terms of the countries threatened by Iraq in the early 1990s. Obviously, if you recall the early 1990s, Iraq had actually invaded Kuwait. We are in a different situation with respect to North Korea. North Korea is obviously a menace, a lawless state, a state that is counterfeiting US dollars-the latter of which is something that hasn't occurred since Nazi Germany. But we are in a different region of the world, and there is a different group of nations that are most immediately affected. Our national interests with respect to the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula are obviously not identical. So I am not sure you can look at the two issues and find many parallels.

Do you think the fact of these differences between US interests in the Middle East and in the Korean Peninsula might also account for why North Korea's nuclear program has not provoked the same anxieties as Iran's has over the past few years?

Again, I think there are clear differences. There are differences in terms of the strategic positions of these countries as they relate to not only US interests but the interests of other countries. They are different regimes. The North Korean regime is the most closed regime in the world. Very few countries have any significant amount of economic interdependence with North Korea, and that is obviously different from the big oil-producing countries of the Middle East. We are really talking about apples and oranges. But obviously the North Korean regime's nuclear arsenal is of grave concern to the United States, as is its human rights record.

But even though the nuclear arsenal is a grave concern, you don't think the United States would ever consider a military strike against that arsenal?

I don't think that that is something that's in the cards right now.

How best do you think the US should engage with North Korea?

I think the United States obviously needs to engage on this issue with the help of its friends, allies, and peace-loving nations around the world. There was a very strong resolution condemning North Korea at the United Nations last fall. Not all of the countries that should have joined in that resolution did, but I think we will get better turnout and participation this fall. I also think there are countries engaging in policies that may have the unfortunate effect of helping the North Korean government in ways that may not be productive; unrestricted economic assistance to North Korea may not be the best policy right now. I think we need to work with our friends and allies to adopt a set of policies that will put the maximum amount of pressure on North Korea to change its policies. Our objective here is not regime change, it's policy change.

With regard to problems of giving unrestrained aid to North Korea: Is it not the case that the famine in 2002-3 became as dire as it did precisely because foreign aid was not as forthcoming as agencies like the World Food Program had been anticipating? Or was the aid being diverted?

I am not sure, nor am I sure we will ever have an accurate answer to that question. But I certainly think the evidence suggests that the North Koreans had been playing political games with donor aid and money for many, many years, often without any concern for the collateral consequences on their own population.

What do you think would be the benefit, if any, of the US engaging North Korea bilaterally?

I am not sure there is a benefit to bilateral engagement at this point. Obviously, one of the things contemplated in the North Korea Human Rights Act is the possibility of discussions on human rights issues with North Korea, and that is something under consideration. But given the North Korean regime's track record of lawlessness, it is not clear that that would be productive at this stage.

Interview conducted by Nermeen Shaikh of AsiaSource.