North Korea on Sunday slammed the United States and the United Nations for having raised the issue of Pyongyang’s human rights issue recently at the UN Security Council and the regime’s missile provocation, the Yonhap news agency reported, citing North Korea’s state media.
On Friday, the US co-hosted an informal meeting at the UNSC highlighting the human rights violations in North Korea. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres criticized North Korea’s recent test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile as a violation of UNSC
resolutions.
In response to the meeting, North Korea’s mission to the UN said in a statement that Pyongyang “will counter the illegal ‘human rights’ campaign by the US and its followers with the most powerful means,” Yonhap news agency reported, citing Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
The mission stressed that it defines the “pressure campaign” as a violation of the dignity and sovereignty of the North and “resolutely denounces and rejects it,” as per the KCNA report. Reacting to the UN Secretary-General’s statement, Pyongyang’s foreign ministry accused Antonio Guterres of “adding fuel to the flames” and “far from helping ease the tension in the Korean Peninsula and the region,” Yonhap news agency cited a KCNA
report.
In a separate statement, North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister for International Organizations said, “I think it is good for defusing tension and for himself that the UN secretary-general remains silent rather than meddling in the Korean Peninsula issue as now.”