The UN Human Rights Council prepares for its fourth universal periodic review of North Korea in November. The council will collect information from member countries to compile a complete profile of human rights abuses that occur in the hermit nation.

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Republican Steel, born in South Korea, submitted a letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday outlining her main concerns and those of the large contingent of Korean immigrants in her district.

Among the concerns listed were the forced repatriation of escaped North Korean refugees, as well as past abductions of Japanese, South Koreans and other foreign nationals by the North Korean government.

North Korea’s kidnapping of foreign nationals has been widely documented in the decades since the Korean War, particularly in the border cities of South Korea and the coastal regions of Japan. Those people, most of them held in the country for decades, have been almost completely lost in the opacity of North Korean society.

Furthermore, in recent years, China has adopted a policy of cooperating with the North Korean regime to return fugitive North Korean nationals when they are caught trying to flee through its territory.

The situation amounts to a kind of prison state: those inside have difficulty escaping, while many outsiders have been quietly ushered inside and kept in isolation for most of their lives.

China and Russia have benefited greatly from the control exercised by the North Korean government, Steel notes in the letter. The two regional allies regularly import North Koreans for work, defying long-standing UN resolutions.

Steel urged Blinken in the letter to make clear that Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un’s regime has not followed through on previously agreed improvements to its human rights conditions, such as stopping the use of torture.

He california legislator he told the Washington Examiner that these issues are particularly close to her as a South Korean immigrant born to two fugitives from the North.

“Decades after my parents fled following the communist takeover, the North Korean government continues to abuse basic human rights and aggressively persecute its own citizens,” Steel said.

He continued: “Innocent North Koreans, defectors, and detained foreign nationals need America’s help now more than ever.”

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North Korea’s criminality on the international stage has taken on new urgency as the United States, South Korea and the UN have confirmed evidence that North Korean troops will be deployed to aid Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.

Thousands of military personnel have been documented traveling by boat from Pyongyang to the Russian port city of Vladivostok. They are expected to join the fighting taking place in Russia’s Kursk region, currently held by Ukrainian forces.