SEOUL, October 03 (AJP) - North Korea rejected the United Nations' latest report on its human rights record on Saturday. It also warned that it would not tolerate the same treatment under the next secretary-general.
The report was submitted by Secretary-General António Guterres to the 81st session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly and released Friday. It found that human rights conditions in North Korea had continued to worsen, and that authorities had expanded their use of advanced technology to tighten surveillance and control over residents. It urged North Korea to investigate and punish those responsible for abuses. The report covered the period between June 1, 2025, to May 31, 2026.
North Korea's Foreign Ministry responded a day later. In a statement carried by the state-controlled Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), a ministry spokesperson accused Guterres of submitting a report "consisting entirely of vicious slander and smear propaganda by hostile forces." The ministry said it "resolutely condemns and rejects" the report "in the strongest terms."
The spokesperson called the report "a typical product" of an anti-North Korea human rights campaign by "hostile forces led by the United States." The document was "conspiratorial in content, stereotyped in form and illegal in its very reason for existence," the statement said.
The ministry then turned to Guterres himself, whose second five-year term ends Dec. 31. During his tenure, the spokesperson said, the UN had become an unequal and undemocratic body that served the exclusive interests of certain countries and minority groups.
Looking past Guterres, the ministry said North Korea "will never tolerate in the slightest" the "prejudiced and provocative practice of politicizing human rights issues" continuing under the next secretary-general. The UN Security Council is now in the process of choosing his successor.
"For us, human rights are national sovereignty, an absolute sovereignty that cannot be surrendered under any circumstances," the spokesperson said.
The statement warned that anyone who damages North Korea's "dignity and system" and "touches the interests of the people" would be committing "a grave act of sovereignty infringement" and "will bear due responsibility."
The UN report also raised concern over arbitrary detention. It named three South Korean missionaries held in the North, Kim Jung-wook, Kim Kook-kie and Choi Chun-gil, whose cases appear in reports by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. It also named Kim Cheol-ok, a North Korean defector whom China forcibly returned to the North in October 2023.
Kim Jung-wook had been working with North Korean defectors in Dandong, China, before North Korean authorities arrested him in October 2013. Kim Kook-kie and Choi Chun-gil were arrested in October and December 2014, respectively. In June 2015, both were sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor.
AJP Takeaways
- North Korea's Foreign Ministry on Saturday rejected a UN report on its human rights record, released Friday under Secretary-General António Guterres, and said it "will never tolerate in the slightest" the practice of politicizing human rights continuing under the next secretary-general.
- António Guterres, whose second term as UN secretary-general ends Dec. 31, submitted the report to the UN General Assembly, finding that North Korea's human rights conditions had continued to worsen as authorities used advanced technology to tighten surveillance and control over residents.
- Kim Jung-wook, Kim Kook-kie and Choi Chun-gil, South Korean missionaries named in the report, were arrested by North Korea in 2013 and 2014, and Kim Kook-kie and Choi Chun-gil were sentenced in June 2015 to life imprisonment with hard labor. AJP added these details from earlier public reporting, and they were not part of the UN report summary or the North Korean statement.
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