Seoul, October 08: North Korea Thursday blasted US President Barack Obama’s nomination of a special envoy on its human rights record, saying Washington is stepping up its hostile policy.
The accusation came two weeks after Robert King was chosen as Obama’s special envoy on North Korean human rights issues. He replaced Jay Lefkowitz, who left his post in January after serving under then-president George W. Bush.
If confirmed by the Senate, King will work as part of a team headed by the special representative for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth.
His nomination “testifies that the United States is not confining its hostile policy towards our republic to the nuclear area, but is trying to extend it to the human rights area,” the cabinet newspaper Minju Joson said.
“It is not a secret that the US has used its ‘human rights diplomacy’ as an important policy tool to interfere with internal affairs of other countries and to achieve its goal to invade and control them,” said the article which was carried by the North’s official website, Uriminzokkiri.
The paper described what it called a US human rights offensive as “nothing but a euphemism for its policy to stifle” North Korea, and insisted there are no human rights problems in the communist country.
North Korea is frequently accused of abuses on a massive scale.
The US State Department has described its rights record as abysmal, charging that authorities were even killing some babies at birth in a vast network of prisons.
In its latest report it said authorities are believed to have conducted “numerous” arbitrary killings, including of perceived opponents of the regime, defectors and possibly citizens who merely made contact with foreigners.
—Agencies