North Korea’s Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) said Sunday in a report entitled, “U.S. Human Rights Offensive to Isolate and Smother the Democratic People's Republic of Korea” that it was the “common U.S. invasion strategy” to apply pressure on countries it didn’t like by seizing on human rights issues and then militarily invading them. “The U.S. tried to cause a commotion with the nuclear issue,” said the KCNA, “but as that didn’t work, it is now applying pressure by making human rights issues an international problem.”

North Korea also said Saturday through its website “Uriminjokkiri” that it “made no sense for the U.S. to openly push its strategy to make us collapse and apply pressure on us by carelessly throwing around issues like nuclear development, missiles, religion, and human rights while crying about dialogue,” saying that the passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act had presented an even bigger obstacle in the six-party talks. North Korea, even while suggesting that it possessed nuclear weapons, claimed through the Rodong Shinmun on Saturday that its uranium enrichment plans were a groundless fabrication made up by the United States.

North Korea’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland said through a spokesperson statement Saturday, “It was as obvious as a candle held in front of you who South Korea’s nuclear experiments were aimed at. One cannot expect progress in intra-Korean relations without getting to the bottom of South Korea’s nuclear experiments.” Ahead of this, the committee’s secretariat called the Korea-U.S. relationship “a history of control and submission” on Friday to mark the 51st anniversary of the signing of the Korea-U.S. mutual defense pact.

(Kim In-gu, ginko@chosun.com )