PYONGYANG, July 7 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Friday retaliated against a "trafficking" report, saying the U.S. is the "kingpin of flesh trafficking."
The Korean Central News Agency quoted a researcher at the Human Rights Institute of the Institute for International Studies here as saying that the African slave trade has been replaced with modern-day slavery in America, whose main victims are women and children.
"Endemic in the U.S. professing to be a 'champion of human rights' ... is a modern-day slave trade, making it top the world list of flesh trafficking," said the article written by a researcher named Kang Kum Chol.
Flesh trafficking in the U.S. is now more concealed through the use of the Internet, Kang said.
Kang quoted Polaris, a Washington-based non-governmental organization engaged in fighting human trafficking, as saying that flesh trafficking in U.S. increased by 35.7 percent in 2016 against the previous year.
"What is all the more serious is that the U.S. administration connives and does not take legal action against flesh traffickers, thereby fostering the crime," the researcher said.
The U.S. State Department recently published a "2017 report on trafficking in persons" which accused the DPRK of "human trafficking with forced labor."
