North Korea Reacts To U.N. Bill, Vows Nuclear Build-Up

North Korea said yesterday that it would build up its nuclear deterrent to defend its sovereignty following the passage last week of a UN resolution condemning human rights abuses in the communist country.The UN General Assembly adopted a U.S.-led draft resolution expressing strong concern over North Korea's weak human rights record by a vote of 88 to 21, with 60 abstentions. It was the first resolution specifically citing North Korea's human rights violations to be adopted by the UN. "The U.S. is a typical criminal state that politicizes human rights issues and applies selective double standards concerning them," a spokesman for the North's Foreign Ministry told the Korean Central News Agency, the communist state's official news outlet. The draft expressed serious concern about Pyongyang's "systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights," including torture, execution and forced labor; sanctions on repatriated North Korean citizens; restrictions on freedom of thought and religion; trafficking of women for prostitution and forced marriages.
The spokesman said, "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea will increase its self-reliant defense capacity including nuclear deterrent, pursuant to the Songun [military-first] policy, to cope with the escalated U.S. policy to isolate and stifle us with the nuclear and human rights issues as pretexts."