North Korea denounced the new US special envoy on the country's human rights issues, Julie Turner, as a "wicked" person who has resorted to "mudslinging" while interfering in other countries' internal affairs.
An unnamed spokesperson of what North Korea's state media called the Association for Human Rights Studies said Turner had earned "notoriety" for "mudslinging" over human rights issues and "spitting out coarse invective" against the country.
"Her absurd remarks are nothing but grumbles of either a person ignorant of even the concept of human rights or a human rights abuser embodying the inveterate bad habit of the US which revels in meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign state and slandering it," the spokesperson said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.
The appointment of "such a wicked woman" highlights Washington's hostile policy toward Pyongyang, it said, warning of "retaliatory action of justice."