Trump Officials Block U.N. Meeting on Human Rights Abuses in North Korea

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has refused to support a move by members of the United Nations Security Council to hold a discussion Tuesday on North Korea’s rampant human rights abuses, effectively blocking the meeting for the second year in a row.

The American action appeared aimed at muting international criticism of Pyongyang’s human rights record in the hope of preserving a tenuous diplomatic opening between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the authoritarian leader of North Korea. Tensions between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim have broken out into the open in recent days.

On Monday, North Korea called Mr. Trump a “heedless and erratic old man” after the American president warned that Mr. Kim could lose “everything” if he resumed military provocations like nuclear or long-range missile tests before the 2020 elections in the United States.

A proposed meeting of the Security Council on Tuesday had been intended to put a spotlight on North Korea on Human Rights Day, which is held every Dec. 10 to mark the day in 1948 when the General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Eight of the council’s 15 members had signed a letter to schedule the meeting but needed a ninth member — the minimum required.

United Nations diplomats, confirming a report in Foreign Policy, said the United States had declined to sign.

Asked on Monday about the administration’s blocking of the meeting, a State Department spokesman said any discussion of North Korea by the Security Council should cover recent developments on the Korean Peninsula, including missile launches by Pyongyang and a test at a satellite launch site. The council plans to discuss them on Wednesday.

The absence of American support for a discussion of human rights in North Korea is a conspicuous change under the Trump administration.

In 2014, after a United Nations commission released a report on widespread rights violations in North Korea, the Americans supported an annual meeting on the council devoted to the subject. The North Korean government was infuriated.

But last year, the Americans withdrew its support for such a meeting as Mr. Trump made diplomatic overtures to Mr. Kim, according to officials and diplomats, and no meeting was held.

Mr. Trump’s critics say the action is consistent with what they regard as a transactional approach to foreign policy that diminishes concern for human rights. The president has embraced authoritarian leaders who oversee widespread abuses in their countries and rarely talks about rights violations. Mr. Trump has blocked sanctions on Chinese officials for running internment camps holding at least one million Muslims, for example, to try to reach a trade deal with China.

“North Korea and other abusive governments that the United States is going easy on are undoubtedly elated that the days of U.S. criticism of their human rights records appear to be over for the time being,” said Louis Charbonneau, United Nations officer at Human Rights Watch.

Even with the derailment of the human rights meeting, the North Korean government has intensified its recent invective aimed at Mr. Trump.

Kim Yong-chol, a hard-liner who speaks for the North Korean military, issued a statement criticizing Mr. Trump hours after the American leader warned on Twitter on Sunday that Kim Jong-un had “far too much to lose, everything actually, if he acts in a hostile way.”

Mr. Trump also ​warned that the North Korean leader should not “void his special relationship with the President of the United States or interfere with the U.S. Presidential Election in November” by resuming ​hostile acts.

The messages came after North Korea announced on Sunday that it had carried out a “very important test” at its missile-engine test site. Analysts said the test probably involved a booster engine that could be used to propel a satellite-delivery rocket or an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Kim Yong-chol, who is chairman of the North’s Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, said in response to the president’s comments that “Trump has too many things that he does not know about” North Korea, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

“We have nothing more to lose,” he said.

The North Korean official also said​ that​ Mr. Trump’s latest Twitter messages showed that ​the president was “an old man bereft of patience.” He accused Mr. Trump of ​trying to buy time before the Dec. 31 deadline set by Kim Jong-un for Washington to return to negotiations with concessions, including the lifting of sanctions.

“As he is such a heedless and erratic old man, the time when we cannot but call him a ‘dotard’ again may come,” Kim Yong-chol said, referring to personal insults and threats of nuclear war that ​Kim Jong-un and Mr. Trump exchanged two years ago.

In 2017, amid escalating nuclear tensions between Washington and Pyongyang, Mr. Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea” if it threatened the United States, and called Kim Jong-un a “little rocket man” on a “suicide mission.” Mr. Kim retorted​ that Mr. Trump was “a mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”

Relations between the American and North Korean leaders later warmed — but the new attack on Mr. Trump underscored the tensions.

Kim Yong-chol visited Mr. Trump at the White House in June 2018 and again in January this year to deliver letters written to the president by Kim Jong-un. In the months after ​Mr. Trump and Kim Jong-un held their first summit meeting in Singapore in June 2018 to discuss ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, ​the American leader said he and the North Korean leader had fallen “in love.”

Even as subsequent talks stalled, Mr. Trump continued to claim a “good relationship” with Mr. Kim.

But in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has also revived his old “rocket man” taunt. Last week, while urging North Korea to keep its promise to denuclearize, Mr. Trump warned that the United States would use military force if necessary.

On Thursday, North Korea’s first vice foreign minister, Choe Son-hui, said that Mr. Trump’s use of the “rocket man” insult was a sign of “the relapse of the dotage of a dotard.” On Saturday, the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations, Kim Song, issued a statement that suggested North Korea would no longer discuss denuclearization, Reuters reported.

North Korean officials have warned that their government might end its self-imposed moratorium on intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear tests if Washington does not meet Mr. Kim’s Dec. 31 deadline. A vice foreign minister of North Korea warned last week that it was up to Washington to decide what kind of “Christmas gift” it would receive from Pyongyang.

On Monday, Kim Yong-chol, the North Korean official, warned that the United States should be ready to be “surprised.”

Edward Wong reported from Washington, and Choe Sang-Hun reported from Seoul, South Korea. Rick Gladstone contributed reporting from New York.