North Korea recently criticized the U.S. over human rights issues, refuting some contents of the 2024 Human Trafficking Report released by the U.S. government, including college tuition fees.
According to the Korean Central News Agency on the 27th, in the report titled “Diagnostic Report on the Mental Disorder of the White House Addicted to the Politicization of Human Rights,” 2024 Human Trafficking Report Researcher Ri Jin of the Korean Human Rights Research Association analyzed the human rights report as “it is merely a tool for the U.S. to publicize human rights conditions in other countries to cover their own poor human rights situations and to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states.”
Ri also pointed out, “Despite the international community’s condemnation and rejection, the U.S. has once again remained faithful to its chronic bad habit of publishing the Human Trafficking Report, one of its various human rights conspiracy documents.”
Ri argued that the U.S. report’s use of the phrase students who cannot pay college tuition fees is a mistake that proves their claims are completely false. He refuted, “In our country (North Korea), not only primary and secondary education but higher education is also free. As we have a well-established social education support system, there is no such terminology as college tuition fees.”
He also mocked, “There are suspicions that the report writers did not mistake the national title when pointing out the reality of South Korea.”
Ri further claimed that the U.S. State Department made ridiculous assumptions by associating forced labor with normal personnel visits between North Korea and neighboring countries. He refuted, “As friendly ties and solidarity among sovereign states are strengthened, it is a natural course of events for political, economic, cultural, and human interchanges to become active. These are based on reciprocity and equality. It has nothing to do with forced labor.”
He argued, “The U.S., which has completely lost even the basic qualifications to mention human rights issues in other countries, should reflect on how the international community is evaluating its own human rights situation and should prioritize solving their problems.”
Earlier, the U.S. government classified North Korea as a Tier 3 country, the lowest rank, in the 2024 Human Trafficking Report released on the 15th (local time) stating, “The Government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so.”
This is the 22nd consecutive year that North Korea has been classified as a Tier 3 country. Tier 3 is classified as countries that do not fully meet the minimum standards and do not make efforts to do so.