"Trafficking in Persons Report" of United States under Fire
Pyongyang, October 2 (KCNA) -- Ri Jin, researcher of the Korea Association for Human Rights Studies, Thursday issued the following article titled "'Trafficking in Persons Report' highlights only the incurable maladies of the United States":
Recently, the U.S. Department of State released again a "report" that willfully assesses and classifies the practices of "human trafficking" in the DPRK and all other countries of the world.
The "report", as in the past, repeated its slander against the sovereign states, citing the data of "human trafficking" in other countries and labeling them as "model states" or "backward states" after grading the countries in order of the governmental efforts for eradicating "human trafficking" and their results.
Last year we had already branded the annual "Trafficking in Persons Report" of the U.S. which was run through with the obsolete fabricated data as a diagnosis of mental derangement of the U.S. addicted to the politicization of human rights.
The U.S. still tries to style itself a "human rights judge" though it is breaking the world's worst human rights record every year. It is stunning the public.
It is illogical that the U.S., where horrible shooting incidents occur at schools, churches and shops almost every day and tens of thousands of people are being taken to prisons due to the policy of expelling immigrants, assesses the situation of human rights in the world.
This is not the only thing.
It is, indeed, a tragicomedy that the U.S. government made a "judgment" upon the world situation of "human trafficking" at a time when the whole world is astonished at a U.S. millionaire's hideous underage sex trafficking.
The reality clearly proves that the U.S. "Trafficking in Persons Report" is nothing but a means for veiling its records of human rights violation and politicizing human rights to justify the pressure on different countries and interference in their internal affairs, and has nothing to do with the substantial efforts to eradicate human trafficking.
It is by no means fortuitous that not only the anti-U.S. and independent countries but also the "countries sharing their mind" with the U.S. are openly criticizing the U.S for its deceitful and contradictory gibberish about "human rights".
Today when the world aspires after multi-polarization, the DPRK and many other countries are directing efforts to promoting human rights conforming to their own history, culture and socio-economic environment.
The U.S. is well advised to clearly understand the reality and realize that the old-fashioned and inefficient behavior of a "human rights judge" is no longer appropriate, and it moves to internationalize and politicize the "human rights" issues of other countries would only result in self-harming consequences of bringing its miserable human rights situation to a focus.
We will in the future, too, not lend an ear to the U.S. deceptive "human rights" rhetoric but do our best to defend the most advantageous socialist system of our own style and the genuine rights and interests of the people. -0-
www.kcna.kp (2025.10.02.)
http://kcna.kp/en/article/q/808ef0024f06d2846b521d478fa50c2c.kcmsf
https://archive.is/pm9pA (kcna)
The context of this is that the US published an annual global Human Trafficking report which listed DPRK as a tier 3 country, worst rank. US also gives tier 3 rank to China, Cuba, Iran, and Russia.
This article from KCNA is a response to the US state department report. KCNA is the state news agency of DPRK. The article mocks the US for being a judge of human trafficking while openly covering up human trafficking. I believe "the whole world is astonished at a US millionaire's hideous underage sex trafficking" is a clear reference to Epstein.
Even DPRK is saying "Release the Epstein files".
https://archive.is/zkrDA (state department report on human trafficking in north korea, 2025)
spoiler
This article has a bit more context. Keep in mind, that NKNews is a anti-DPRK propaganda site.https://archive.is/HUVRi (nknews)
How the fuck is the DPRK worst rank in human trafficking if it's a hermit kingdom that you can't get into or out of? You can't be closed and also somehow incredible human traffickers.
Reminds me of this junk article about scary North Koreans infiltrating the remote work pipeline.
Basically, North Koreans are so poor they are stealing remote jobs from Americans. This is actually very scary, because they're spies for the North Korean government. But, also, the North Korean government is lacking behind in their cyber-capabilities. Though, they're also using cutting-edge AI tactics regular people can't detect.
The article is functionally a remote working hit piece but implies many different, conflicting things about NK.
Oh, so a regular old slow news day in the West, then. That tracks.
Maybe they're counting every instance of a North Korean worker going to Russia/China as an instance of human trafficking, or considering every single DPRK citizen as having been "kidnapped" from South Korea.
Why not both? Every DPRK citizen was kidnapped, and also anyone who leaves or enters the country is considered trafficked. If a DPRK citizen goes to another country and comes home, that counts as three separate instances of human trafficking.
Oooooooooo that would totally make sense actually, any workers the DPRK sends abroad to work on projects in other countries would be counted as human trafficking those poor slaves of the state.
As the KCNA article says, the report is a way for the US to slander their enemies. The example given in the state department report is "forced labor". The US State Department report is alleging that DPRK traffics people internally.
The report also says that DPRK has up to "200,000 persons in political prison camps". Our "prisons" vs their "political prison camps". Through coded language, the US is accusing DPRK of things that the US does.
https://archive.ph/zkrDA
https://web.archive.org/web/20251001113243/https://www.state.gov/reports/2025-trafficking-in-persons-report/north-korea/
Oh ok so every single prisoner currently doing any kind of work in american for profit prisons is human trafficking too then, making the US the #1 human trafficker in the world by far.
Probably if I had to guess (not reading that US State Dept dreck lmao) they are likely claiming that any DPRK citizens who go abroad for seasonal work are being coerced (much like they claim with Cuban doctors). They probably also claim that internal movements of workforces for planned projects is also "human trafficking".
Basically, the normal operations of any state involve massive amounts of human movement. If you don't like a state and think they're illegitimate, you can make all kinds of spurious claims about "forced" "trafficking". Kind of similar to how you can declare a state you don't like a "terrorist" nation and all the actions of their military are "terrorism", but they're not functionally different than the normal violent functions of a typical military. They do this with the IRGC.
So irs a closed off super secretive surveillance state where everyone harvests rice while singing songs in praise of the Glorious Leader to go home to a meal of rats and brainwashing but it's also a hub of black market activity?
Western depictions of "scary commie heckholes" always fascinate me so much. The Western liberal minds that invented the idea of communist propaganda far more effective than any of it's ever been, because they simply couldn't comprehend that maybe people living under socialism genuinely like their economic and political system better than what it replaced and what other countries around them have. The idea that "commies are all just brainwashed!" and "these people never get any real information, just constant communist propaganda!" Oh no, how scary, the commie states filter out Western nonsense and tell the civilian population only what they actually need to know. Judging from the quality of most liberal biased "information", I probably want the communist "propaganda" version of the news, thanks.
"Noo! The commies couldn't possibly have a better system than us! They must all be starving and brainwashed! They can't possibly genuinely like socialism! If communism isn't evil, then my entire worldview falls apart!"
I wish that kind of "commie brainwashing" was real. Maybe we could use it on these idiot liberals and bring about the revolution, lol. Or just use it on ourselves to completely wreck the left's collective Overton Window (if every communist genuinely believed Stalin was at the far point of acceptable liberty and economic-right, and the true far left was a great deal further left and more authoritarian, we'd all say some crazy "extreme left" stuff all the time, that'd be really fun for some of us), that'd be neat.
The idea literally came from Korean War soldiers who got captured and re educated no longer thinking they should be invading and instead of thinking maybe the Koreans had a point and expressed it well they did MK Ultra.
Yeeppp. That was a big mess. "Do you think maybe we shouldn't be doing these anti-communist terror campaigns, as those soldiers called 'em?" "No way, fightin' the commies is totally righteous, those guys are just brainwashed, let's waste a bunch of resources and damage a ton of people to try to find out how the damn commies did it!"
(Kinda wish "re-education" actually worked the way Western anti-communist nonsense describes it. I know a few truly ghoulish neoliberals who really need that treatment.)
errm, two things can be true at once
And therefore they are
Yeah but none of the black market stuff comes home due to their strict observance of work/life balance
"The Evil Commies don't let people bring work home with them! How are teachers supposed to get all their grading done!? How are office workers supposed to pinch pens, sticky notes, and the occasional package of printer paper?"
I'm so glad that human trafficking in the DPRK has nothing to do with any other country deliberately subsidizing trafficking that targets their citizens.
I wonder how Ukraine ranks . . .
Depends on whether they're ~~following what we tell them to do~~ 'putting in effort to crackdown on things'