TEHRAN, April 25 - North Korea condemned US criticism of its human rights record as "ridiculous" as a diplomatic whirlwind accelerated ahead of leader Kim Jong Un's summits with the South and with US President Donald Trump.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) – In the latest sequence of messaging before Friday's summit between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in the Demilitarized Zone, Trump demanded the North give up its nuclear weapons -- while describing its leader as "very open" and "very honorable".
Seoul said Moon will brief Trump by phone immediately after Friday's summit, and promised "close coordination" with the United States, AFP reported.
The US State Department's latest rights report on the North, released last week, described "egregious human rights violations" in the authoritarian state from public executions to widespread surveillance of citizens.
In recent weeks Pyongyang has been uncharacteristically reticent in its criticisms of Seoul and Washington, sometimes casting their actions as "chilling the atmosphere for dialogue" as it mounts a charm offensive ahead of the summits.
But it angrily slammed the State Department report for "viciously slandering" the nation, accusing the US of being a "hotbed" of rights abuses itself, beset by "cancer-like" gun violence and "all sorts of injustice, deprivation of rights", AFP reported.
Washington was appointing itself as a "human rights judge", the official KCNA news agency said in a commentary late Tuesday, adding that its "true aim" was to "create a pretext for political, military and economic aggression and pressure".
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