North Korea slams US ‘anti-people empire of evils’ in attack on Washington-led human rights push at UN

A Pyongyang official warned any countries ‘blindly following the US’ to ‘behave themselves’ amid plans for a Security Council meeting on North Korea
Washington’s ambassador to the UN said the council ‘must address the horrors, the abuses and the crimes being perpetrated’ by Kim Jong-un’s regime

North Korea

Associated Press

Published: 10:39am, 16 Aug 2023

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North Korea has denounced US-led plans for an open meeting of the United Nations’ Security Council on its human rights record as “despicable” and only aimed at achieving Washington’s geopolitical ambitions.

Pyongyang’s Foreign Vice-Minister Kim Son-gyong called the United States a “declining” power and said if the council dealt with any country’s human rights, the US should be the first “as it is the anti-people empire of evils, totally depraved due to all sorts of social evils”.

The US, which holds the Security Council presidency this month, scheduled the meeting on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name, for Thursday.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un holds an assault rifle during an inspection of the country’s munitions factories earlier this month. Photo: Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP

It will be the first open council meeting on the DPRK rights issue since 2017. US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters last week that UN human rights chief Volker Türk and Elizabeth Salmon, the UN’s independent investigator on human rights in reclusive North Korea, would brief council members.

The Security Council “must address the horrors, the abuses and crimes being perpetrated” by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s regime against its own people as well as the people of Japan and South Korea, Thomas-Greenfield, flanked by the ambassadors from Albania, Japan and South Korea, said when making the announcement.

Nate Evans, the spokesman for the US Mission to the United Nations, responded to Kim Son-gyong’s remarks by reiterating that North Korea’s ongoing human rights violations and abuses “go against the very principles of the UN Charter and are directly linked to Pyongyang’s unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programmes.”

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“North Koreans are suffering while the DPRK regime diverts a large share of its budget and resources to weapons development,” Evans said in a statement.

Russia and China, which have close ties to North Korea, have blocked any Security Council action since vetoing a US-sponsored resolution in May 2022 that would have imposed new sanctions over the North’s spate of intercontinental ballistic missile launches. The council therefore is not expected to take any action at Thursday’s meeting.

China and Russia could protest holding an open meeting, which requires support from at least nine of the 15 council members, but US officials have said the meeting will take place.

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Kim, the DPRK’s vice-minister for international organisations, warned countries “blindly following the US” to “behave themselves properly”. And he called on all council members “to take a correct stand and attitude”, and said they should understand that the real US intention “has nothing to do with the universal conception of human rights protection and it is only for realising its narrow-minded and hegemonic geopolitical purpose”.

Kim also warned that North Korea would “resolutely counter any hostile act of the US threatening peace and security on the Korean peninsula and the rest of the world and absolutely defend the sovereignty of the state, the supreme human rights, and the interests of the popular masses”.