Pyongyang Bashes UN Term Extension

North Korea continued its offensive against the international community and South Korea on Saturday lambasting the extension of the mandate of the United Nations’ special rapporteur on North Korean human rights.

Its renewed criticism has come on the heels of the expulsion of South Korean officials from the Inter-Korean Exchanges and Cooperation Consultation Office in the Gaesong Industrial Complex and the missile launches into the West Sea.

When the U.N. Human Rights Council passed a resolution extending the term of its expert who deals with North Korea’s human rights issues, the communist regime’s Foreign Ministry said, “The passage of such a resolution is the result of the anti-North Korea political trick perpetrated by the EU and Japan, who are under the direction of the U.S.” and added that it flatly rejects the resolution.

A spokesman of the North Korean Foreign Ministry said, answering to a reporter of North Korea’s Central News Agency on Saturday, “The council condemned our republic’s human rights situations, and passed a resolution extending the ghost-like special rapporteur’s mandate by another year,” and strongly criticized the resolution as “a political scheme filled with fallacy and fabrication.”

The spokesman then took issue with human rights status in the U.S. and Japan. He said that the U.S. is the most outrageous country that tramples on human rights and that Japan continues to “avoid its responsibilities for crimes against humanity committed on an unprecedented scale in the past.” The spokesman went on to argue that North Koreans’ human rights are “protected here in our own socialistic society by law and institutions.”

Separately, Pyongyang said in a telephone notice sent on the same day to Seoul under the name of the representative of general-level military talks (Lieutenant General Kim Yong Chol) that the remark of Gen. Kim Tae-young, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was little short of declaring a “preemptive attack,” and asked to retract the remark and apologize for it.

It also said, “If the South fails to meet our demand, we will translate it as the South’s intention to suspend all inter-Korean dialogues and contact,” and added, “In response, our military will take decisive action to forbid South Korean officials including military figures to pass the Military Demarcation Line.”

In response, an official with South Korea`s Defense Ministry said, “The ministry will calmly react to the North’s demand in a principled manner. If we send a reply, we won’t go further than expressing our regret over Gen. Kim’s remark, saying it is not true.”

“Gen. Kim mentioned a general concept of military reaction in case of the worst-case scenario, but the North is making a fuss out of nothing,” said another ministry official on the condition of anonymity.

The South Korean government reportedly plans to hold a working-level meeting Monday to coordinate security measures and decide whether to reply to North Korea’s letter and how to respond to its recent provocations.

At a parliamentary confirmation hearing on March 26, to the question posed by Grand National Party lawmaker Kim Hak-song that “how will you respond in case North Korea attacks the South with small nuclear weapons?” Gen. Kim answered, “What matters is to identify where the North hides nuclear weapons and strike the sites.”

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