(Cornell Chronicle) – Judge Sang-Hyun Song, president of the International Criminal Court (ICC), focused on the court’s preventive potential to make genocide, use of child soldiers and human rights violations unacceptable in an Oct. 9 campus talk.When Song was nine years old, armed conflict broke out in his home country of Korea and his family hid for three months during the Battle of Seoul. Song said he was “old enough to realize the horrors of war,” and his childhood experiences inspired him to devote his life to the “search for justice and improvement of society through the rule of law.” Joining the ICC in 2003, Song was again confronted with war atrocities, such as genocide and the use of child soldiers. He said the ICC is instrumental in preventing and deterring these crimes, but that’s a small task: “Changing the world for the better is really hard work.”
