North Korea's top diplomat to the United Nations strongly protested the UN General Assembly's passage of a resolution on Thursday calling for international efforts to improve human rights in the communist regime.

Prior to the adoption of the resolution, North Korean Ambassador Kim Song stated that the North equates human rights to national sovereignty, denouncing claims of rights abuses put forth by the U.S. and its allies as groundless.

The diplomat stressed that such rights violations cannot exist in a country where individual rights are institutionally guaranteed and those rights are freely exercised by its citizens.

He slammed the UN for infringing on his country's sovereignty and engaging out political provocation, saying the resolution is the product of a hostile policy against Pyongyang by Washington and its allies.

Led by the European Union(EU) and co-sponsored by South Korea for the first time in four years, the resolution expressing concerns over rights abuses and illegal detention, torture and execution of foreign nationals was unanimously adopted without a vote.

It is the 18th consecutive year that the UN has adopted a resolution on North Korean human rights.

[Photo : YONHAP News]