N. Korea slams U.S. human trafficking report as grave provocation

SEOUL, Oct. 10 (Yonhap) -- North Korea on Saturday slammed a U.S. government report on its human trafficking situation as a "grave politically-motivated provocation" revealing Washington's "hostile" policy toward Pyongyang.

The U.S. State Department released the 2026 Trafficking in Persons Report on Thursday (local time), placing North Korea in the lowest Tier 3 group of countries for anti-human trafficking efforts, alongside China, Russia, Iran and Cuba.

It was the 24th consecutive year Pyongyang was placed in the category.

"Recently the U.S. Department of State committed another grave politically-motivated provocation of malignantly slandering the DPRK through the '2026 Trafficking in Persons Report' which is full of lies, fabrications, prejudice and hostility," a spokesperson for North Korea's foreign ministry said in an English statement carried by the country's Korean Central News Agency.

"This clearly proved once again the U.S. vicious and malicious intention to politicize and weaponize human rights and use them as the primary lever for its hostile policy toward the DPRK."

DPRK stands for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The spokesperson said the foreign ministry brands the report as an "intensive expression of the hostile policy encroaching upon the sovereignty and internal affairs of our state and hurting the rights and interests of our citizens, and denounces and rejects it in the strongest terms."

The spokesperson went further to claim such U.S. human rights reports were "false documents" meant to justify interference in the internal affairs of other countries and overthrow their social systems, including North Korea's.

"The U.S. 'human rights' racket against the DPRK, which poses a serious threat to the DPRK's sovereign rights and the rights and interests of its citizens, will be the first target of the toughest counteraction against the U.S. together with other hostile acts," the spokesperson said.

In the report, the State Department said North Korea had "a government policy or pattern of human trafficking in political prison camps and 'labor training centers' as part of an established system of political repression."

It said the North used proceeds from state-sponsored forced labor to fund government operations and that many North Koreans working overseas were subjected to excessive working hours, sometimes in hazardous conditions, and without access to their passports.