N. Korea slams U.S. human rights report; vows to boost nuclear deterrent

SEOUL, July 2 (Yonhap) -- North Korea lashed out at the United States Saturday for releasing what it claims is a fabricated report on human trafficking as it vowed to bolster up its nuclear deterrent for self-defense.

"The U.S. is the veritable tundra of human rights plagued by extreme human rights abuses that stun the world people," an unidentified spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in an English-language comment carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency.

The spokesman claimed that the U.S. has worked hard to fabricate such documents to try to bring down North Korea's social system.

"The more openly the U.S. lays bare its intention to do harm to the (North's) social system, the more strongly the latter will maintain its line of simultaneously pushing forward economic construction and the building of nuclear force to steadily bolster up its nuclear deterrent for self-defense both in quality and quantity," the spokesman said.

The angry reaction came after the U.S. designated North Korea as one of the world's worst countries for human trafficking for the 14th straight year on Thursday, saying the communist nation subjects its people to forced labor at home and abroad.

The State Department's annual "Trafficking in Persons Report 2016" put North Korea in the lowest Tier 3 of its four-step classification of countries. The North has been classified in the lowest category since the annual report began including it in 2003. Other Tier 3 countries include Iran, Russia, Sudan and Syria.

colin@yna.co.kr
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