Arab News Japan

TOKYO: North Korea has attacked the United States and the West for “interference in domestic affairs and hegemonic ambitions,” stating that “the tragic situation in the Middle East today reminds us once again that without national sovereignty, even the most basic human right—the right to life of the people—cannot be protected.”

A statement released in the name of Kim Seon-kyung, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs for International Organizations of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, accused the West of standing up for human rights while only granting such rights on a selective basis.

“The spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which represents the consensus of humanity, is fading day by day due to the illegal and unlawful US-style human rights standards that divide ‘human rights violators’ from ‘model countries’ based on whether they are pro- or anti-American,” Kim said. “If the abnormal practice of turning international organizations such as the UN into a window for the hegemony of a particular country’s power and tyranny continues, the authority and status of international organizations will be lost and they will lose their raison d’être.”

Kim accused the United States and the West of selectivity and double standards that “breed distrust, conflict, confrontation, and division all over the world.”

“The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea will not tolerate any of the hostile forces’ despicable ‘human rights’ schemes and will firmly safeguard the state’s sovereignty, security interests, and socialist system.”

The outburst was prompted by South Korea assuming the June presidency of the UN Security Council. Kim termed South Korea “a colonial pawn that has completely entrusted all sovereignty to the United States and has neither the rudimentary ability nor the slightest will for international peace and security.” He said the US and South Korea were places “where human rights are being violated to a terrible extent.”

He concluded: “The United States is a criminal nation that should be in the human rights dock because it condones and encourages widespread, systematic human rights violations such as racial discrimination, gun crimes, child abuse and forced labor at home, and forces immoral human rights standards on other countries abroad. The United States and South Korea must make it their top priority to rid themselves of their country’s filthy human rights problems.”