North Korea has slammed the US administration in its annual white paper released by official Korean Central News Agency, saying, "The US, 'guardian of democracy' and 'human rights champion', is kicking up the human rights racket but it can never camouflage its true identity as the gross violator of human rights."
"Racial discrimination and misanthropy are serious maladies inherent to the social system of the US, and they have been aggravated since Trump took office," Pyongyang's white paper on human rights violations in the US reads, apparently referring to the 2017 violent protests in Charlottesville.
According to the DPRK, while working-class Americans were "hovering in the abyss of nightmare," are deprived of homes and jobs and facing soaring medical fees, several top officials of the President Donald Trump's administration are "billionaires from conglomerates", with senior public servants' total assets worth $14 billion.
READ MORE: 'Max Pressure' on N Korea and Other Highlights of Trump's State of the Union Address
"The anti-popular policies the Trump administration pursued openly in one year were, without exception, for the interests of a handful of the rich circles," the paper concludes.
The release of the document, which focuses exclusively on the US, has coincided with the US president's annual State of the Union address, during which Trump praised a defector from North Korea.
"Seong-ho, I understand you still keep those crutches as a reminder of how far you have come." Pres. Trump recognizes North Korean defector during #SOTU; Ji Seong-ho hoists crutches in first lady's gallery box as he is met with ovation #POTUS #NoKo pic.twitter.com/VDxeCxyEgQ
— Prime Politics (@Prime_Politics) 31 января 2018 г.
In his speech, Trump said that North Korea’s "reckless pursuit of nuclear missiles" could very soon threaten the United States, adding that, his administration is "waging a campaign of maximum pressure to prevent that from happening."
Washington issues an annual human rights report which consistently ranks North Korea among the world's worst offenders of human rights, a claim denounced by Pyongyang.