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The United States said Tuesday that "more than ample evidence" exists for North Korea's deplorable human rights situation, despite the recent confession from a North Korean defector that some of the accounts of the hard time he had in the totalitarian nation were incorrect.
Shin Dong-hyuk, one of the best-known North Korean defectors, has apologized for lying about some of the timeline and locations of his survival in North Korean political prison camps, admitting that he spent years in the less brutal Camp 18, rather than Camp 14.
Shin has been a vocal critic of the North's human rights violations since fleeing the North. He has also testified for a U.N. investigation that led to the publication of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI) report that called for handling the issue as "crimes against humanity" at the International Criminal Court.
Shin's confession has spurred concern it could raise questions about the credibility of testimony from North Korean defectors and deal a blow to international efforts to improve the North's human rights situation.
"This report should not distract from the issue at hand, which is the DPRK's deplorable human rights situation, for which more than ample evidence exists," a U.S. State Department spokesperson said on condition of anonymity, referring to the North by its official name.
"The U.N. Commission of Inquiry report clearly found that there are ongoing, 'systematic, widespread, and gross' human rights violations in the DPRK, citing hundreds of interviews with victims and other witnesses," the official said.
It was the first U.S. reaction to Shin's confession, which was seen as an embarrassment for Washington because Shin also spoke at a special event the U.S. organized on the sidelines of last year's U.N. General Assembly to highlight the North's human rights abuses.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his South Korean and Japanese counterparts also attended the event.
The spokesperson also cited Michael Kirby, who served as chairman of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry, as saying that Shin's corrections "appear to be related to whether he was in one detention camp or in another. It's a question of whether he was in the most gruesome or simply one that is very gruesome."
The official also urged the North to comply with the COI's recommendations and dismantle political prison camps.
"We will continue to work closely with the international community to sustain international attention on the deplorable human rights situation in North Korea, to press for the DPRK to stop these serious violations, to close its prison camps, to urge greater freedoms for North Koreans and to seek ways to advance accountability for those most responsible," the official said.
North Korea claimed that the U.N. resolution condemning the North's human rights record should be nullified as Shin's confession proves that the COI's report is groundless.
Shin's admission of his lies proves that everything told by North Korean defectors cannot be trusted, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) monitored in Seoul said, calling the COI report "sheer lies."
"So needless to say, all the 'resolutions on the human rights' forcibly adopted against the DPRK on the basis of such false documents are invalid," the KCNA quoted a spokesman at North Korea's association for human rights studies as saying.
North Korea has long been labeled as one of the worst human rights violators in the world. The communist regime does not tolerate dissent, holds hundreds of thousands of people in political prison camps and keeps tight control over outside information.
But the North has rejected accusations of human rights abuses, calling them part of a U.S.-led attempt to topple its regime. (Yonhap)
