A spokesman for the Central Committee of the Korean Federation for the Protection of the Disabled (KFPD) made public a statement on Tuesday in this regard.

This is an intolerable abuse of the DPRK and an unbearable insult and mockery of the disabled people, the statement noted, and went on:

The DPRK government has consistently respected the human dignity of the disabled and provided them with all conditions and circumstances so that they may enjoy equal social and political rights with the ordinary people and take active part in the state and social activities.

The Central Committee of the Democratic Blind Alliance of Korea was formed in February, Juche 37 (1948) and has since conducted brisk activities. Since its founding the DPRK has taken a series of legal and institutional steps for preferential state treatment and protection of the disabled and spared no investment in implementing them.

The Central Committee of the KFPD was founded in 1998 with an objective of sincerely helping the state shape and implement the policies of protecting the disabled and controlling and guiding the work for protecting the disabled in an integral manner.

Sanatoriums are found everywhere for the disabled so that they are given free functional rehabilitation service. The modern Munsu Functional Rehabilitation Clinic appeared in Pyongyang City in 2013 to render comprehensive functional rehabilitation service to the disabled.

The DPRK Law on the Protection of the Disabled adopted on June 18, 2003 and amended and supplemented in November, 2013 provides a legal guarantee for their rights.

It has been confirmed by foreign experts and media persons of AP, APTN and other Western media through their visits and news coverage activities that the rights, dignity and interests of the disabled are satisfactorily ensured both on a legal basis and in their life thanks to the correct policy of the DPRK government.

The hostile forces' racket over "issue of the disabled" is nothing but a poor attempt to stir up the atmosphere of international pressure on the DPRK over its "human rights" even by picking up a new "human rights issue".

The reckless trumpeting made by "defectors from the north" to get a petty amount of dollars is not worth even a passing note. But it is more ridiculous for politicians of Britain and other Western countries to chime in with their propaganda, utterly ignorant of the reality.

Those hostile forces had better stop at once their mean and poor smear campaign for meeting their sinister political purposes.