North Korea: We have the 'most advantageous human rights system'

North Korea has "the world's most advantageous human rights system," the country declared in a lengthy report released on Saturday.Its political system "bestows upon (its citizens) priceless political integrity." Its economic system "ensures people an independent and creative working life, as well as affluent and civilized living standard," according to a report by the DPRK Association for Human Rights Studies.


The 53,000-word report -- which repeats the phrase "human rights" over 700 times -- paints a rosy picture of the country
North Korea issued a vehement defense of its human rights record, in response to a damning U.N. Commission of Inquiry report, released in February. That report criticized North Korea's authoritarian rule and said the state "terrorizes" its own citizens.
The U.N. Commission of Inquiry issued its conclusions after listening to testimonies from more than 100 victims, witnesses and experts regarding North Korea. It also examined satellite imagery and listed a stunning catalog of torture and widespread abuse "that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world."
North Korea had declined to participate in the inquiry.
READ: In North Korea, we were forced to eat grass and soil.
   North Korea says human rights is an excuse used by the United States to interfere in its affairs. The report repeatedly takes aim at the United States, saying Washington is plotting to "eventually overthrow the social system" and also accused the Americans of invading North Korea in 1950 and starting the Korean War.
   The war began in 1950 after Communist forces attacked the south.The report denies the litany of the state's abuses saying these are "racket kicked up by the hostile forces" and derived from non-credible witnesses, who were paid to "cook up groundless stories."
   "Pyongyang frames all criticism of their human rights situation as a politicized attack from hostile forces," said Sokeel Park, director of research and strategy at LINK (Liberty in North Korea), an international NGO that works with North Korean refugees.
North Korea's version of its human rights report was published ahead of Tuesday's U.N. General Assembly, where a discussion and vote on North Korea's human rights situation is expected.

   "Pyongyang knows they are increasingly diplomatically isolated and they are trying to reverse that tide," Park told CNN. "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."This includes releasing their own "human rights report" to counter the U.N. Commission of Inquiry Report," he said.