UNITED NATIONS (AP) North Korea publicly
acknowledged the existence of its labor camps, an admission that appeared to
come in response to a highly critical U.N. human rights report earlier this
year.
North Korea's deputy U.N. ambassador Ri Tong Il said
the secretary of his country's ruling Workers' Party had visited the EU, and
that "we are expecting end of this year to open political dialogue between
the two sides." The human rights dialogue would follow.
In Brussels, an EU official confirmed a recent North
Korea meeting with the EU's top human rights official, Stavros Lambrinidis, but
said any dialogue currently planned is limited to rights issues.
Choe Myong Nam, a North Korean foreign ministry
official in charge of U.N. affairs and human rights issues, said at a briefing
with reporters that his country has no prison camps and, in practice, "no
prison, things like that."
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But he briefly discussed the "reform through
labor" camps. "Both in law and practice, we do have reform through
labor detention camps, detention centers where people are improved
through their mentality and look on their wrongdoings," he said.
Such "re-education" labor camps are for
common offenders and some political prisoners, but most political prisoners are
held in a harsher system of political prison camps.
The North Korean officials took several questions
but did not respond to one about the health of leader Kim Jong Un, who has made
no public appearances since Sept. 3 and skipped a high-profile recent event he
usually attends.
The officials said they don't oppose human rights
dialogue as long as the issue isn't used as a "tool for
interference." Their briefing seemed timed in advance of the latest
resolution on North Korea and human rights that the EU and Japan put to the
U.N. General Assembly every year.
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