North Korea slammed President Bush's recent meeting with a North Korean defector as a "cheap charade," warning Bush's raising of human rights issues may jeopardize the nuclear disarmament talks.
The North's state-run Korean Central News Agency also smeared North Korean defector Kang Chol-Hwan as "human trash."
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North Korean defector Kang Chol Hwan, the author of 'The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag.'
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North Korea's angry reaction to the Bush-Kang meeting reflects Pyongyang's fear that the United States will step up efforts to improve human rights conditions in the North, according to the current editions of Geostrategy-Direct.com and East-Asia-Intel.com.
"North Korea has been concerned that international pressure over human rights issue may cause more North Koreans to resist the totalitarian regime," Kang said upon returning to Seoul.
Bush invited Kang, who endured 10 years in North Korea prison camps, to the White House on June 13 to discuss human right abuses in the communist country.
Bush's concern about human rights violations in North Korea was reportedly fueled by Kang's testimony about the North's gulag. Kang, 37, who was born in Pyongyang, was imprisoned in Yodok concentration camp in the communist nation when he was only nine years old.
Kang escaped to South Korea in 1992 and is now working for South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper. He is the author of "The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years In The North Korean Gulag."
North Korea said Bush's meeting with Kang was an "act of throwing a wet blanket on the efforts to resume" the nuclear talks.
South Korea's ruling lawmaker Kim Won-Ung also blasted Bush's meeting with the defector, saying it would disrupt the prospect of reopening the six-nation nuclear talks. "The United States is also responsible for the famine in the North," Kim told a parliamentary session.
"What matters here is: why they are making such painstaking efforts and spending precious time for such a cheap charade?" the KCNA said in a commentary on June 23.
"The U.S. oft-repeated 'human rights' issue is quite contrary to the purport and the agenda of the [six-nation nuclear] talks," the commentary said.
"The United States should clearly understand that bringing such issues to the negotiating table will only result in confusing the talks."
Referring to Kang as "human trash," the KCNA said "the human rights piffle again let loose by the U.S. high echelon suggests that Washington is not firm in its stand to recognize [North Korea] as its dialogue partner and respect it."
Returning to Seoul after meeting Bush, Kang said North Koreans need freedom, not food, to escape from the daily agony and suppression by the dictatorship under which they live.
"North Koreans are poor and starving. It is not because South Korea is not helping them, but because they don't have freedom," he told a forum.
The United States has already enacted the North Korean Human Rights Act aimed at promoting freedom in that country. It allows North Koreans to seek refugee status in the United States and provides $4 millions to expand American radio broadcasts into the North to promote democracy and human rights.
