North Korea calls defectors 'human scum' in bid to deflect UN rights probe

North Korea argued today that the admission of inaccuracies in the memoir of a high-profile gulag survivor rendered any existing or future UN resolution on Pyongyang’s human rights record “invalid”.

Defector Shin Dong-Hyuk acknowledged this week that some elements of his story as told in the best-selling book Escape from Camp 14 were inaccurate, although he stressed that the crucial details of his suffering and torture still stood.

But a spokesman for North Korea’s Association for Human Rights Studies, said his admissions “self-exposed” the flimsy foundations of efforts by the United States and other “hostile forces” in seeking to censure Pyongyang for its rights record.

In a statement carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency, the spokesman noted that Shin was among those defectors who had testified last year before a UN Commission of Inquiry that concluded North Korea was committing human rights violations “without parallel in the contemporary world”.

The commission’s report formed the basis of a resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly last month that urged the Security Council to consider referring Pyongyang to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The North Korean spokesman said Shin’s recent retractions proved that the commission’s report was “a false document cooked up on the basis of false testimonies made by human scum”.