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03/28/2024 01:22:09 pm

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North Korea Has ‘The World's Most Advantageous Human Rights System’

Kim Jong Un

(Photo : REUTERS/KCNA) North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (C) visits the Ryugyong Dental Hospital and Okryu Children's Hospital in Pyongyang in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) March 22, 2014.

North Korea on Saturday published a report saying the country has the "most advantageous human rights system." The report was to counter a condemning report by the United Nations ahead of the scheduled assembly on Tuesday to discuss human rights situation in the country.

According to the five-chapter report by the DPRK Association for Human Rights Studies, North Korea's political system allows its citizens "political integrity" while its economic system "ensures people an independent and creative working life, as well as affluent and civilized living standard."

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In also cited its universal compulsory education policy, free housing, and free medical care for its citizens. The authoritarian government claimed to base the report from human rights experts and credible institutions.

But the U.N. Commission of Inquiry's accusation of the country "terrorizing" its own citizens was too grave to overlook just because the new report says it has a "superior" human rights system.

U.N. in February interviewed more than 100 citizens, including "victims" and witnesses and experts about North Korea. It also looked at files detailing torture and abuse in the country and examined satellite images.

U.N.'s report described torture in the country as having no "parallel in the contemporary world."

According to reports, Pyongyang did not participate in the inquiry. Instead, it came up with its own report, which experts clearly see as projecting only the good as it left out details of its justice system and food shortages.

Moreover, Pyongyang made several accusations against the United States in the report. For one, it said human rights inquiry was United States' way to "eventually overthrow the social system" of the country.

It also accused U.S. of invasion and starting the Korean War in 1950.

International NGO Liberty in North Korea (LINK) top official, Sokeel Park, said that North Korea project criticisms on their human rights system as a "politicized attack" from external and hostile forces.

"They see the growing international consensus on the seriousness of their human rights violations as one facet of that diplomatic isolation, so it makes sense to try to counter that explicitly too," Park said.

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