The U.S. State Department has omitted laying direct responsibility on the North Korean government for the country's human rights situation in its 2019 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices released Wednesday.

In its 2017 report, the U.S. State Department accused the North Korean government of inflicting "egregious" human rights abuses on its citizens. However, this description was removed in the 2018 report and in this year's as well.

Washington appears to be adjusting its level of criticism of North Korean human rights issues amid stalled nuclear negotiations between the two countries. Pyongyang has reacted sensitively to discussions of its human rights situation.

However, the report criticized North Korea for failing to explain the death of Otto Warmbier, the U.S. college student who in 2017 was returned to the United States in a comatose state and soon died after being detained in North Korea for 17 months.

The 28-page report also calls North Korea a dictatorship led by the Kim family since 1949 and cites a list of "significant human rights issues" in the country. The word "significant" was not in the previous year's report.