[Financial News] With just a month to go before the planned North Korea-U.S. summit this November, relations between the two countries are deteriorating to their worst level. North Korea strongly protested against the United States on the 10th, calling its designation of North Korea as the worst country for human trafficking “a grave political provocation involving vicious slander and defamation.” It also threatened to take the toughest possible measures against the United States. Donald Trump has said that he would meet Kim Jong Un during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) event to be held in Shenzhen, China, in mid-next month. However, amid a complete absence of communication between the North Korean and U.S. leaders, the U.S. State Department, a channel of communication with North Korea, designated North Korea as one of the world's worst human trafficking countries. As a result, next month's North Korea-U.S. summit is at risk of falling through. In a statement released that day, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson claimed, “The United States’ vile and malicious intent to politicize and weaponize human rights and make them a basic tool of its hostile policy toward North Korea has once again been clearly confirmed.” In its '2026 Trafficking in Persons Report,' published on the 8th, the U.S. State Department classified North Korea as Tier 3, the lowest rating. Since being designated Tier 3 in the 2003 report, North Korea has been named the 'worst human trafficking country' for 24 consecutive years through this year. North Korea called the U.S. report “a report charade with nothing whatsoever to do with genuine human rights guarantees,” and said, “We regard it as a concentrated expression of a hostile policy that violates our country's sovereignty, interferes in our internal affairs, and harms the rights and interests of our citizens, and we strongly condemn and reject it.” It also described the report as “nothing more than a false document to justify interference in internal affairs and the overthrow of the system.” It warned, “The U.S. anti-North Korea human rights campaign, which seriously threatens the country's sovereign rights and the rights and interests of its citizens, will, along with other hostile acts, be a priority target for the strongest possible response against the United States.” The spokesperson claimed, “Human trafficking is an evil entrenched in American society and passed down through generations, as well as America's own ‘signature product’ that no one else can easily imitate,” and that “the United States is indeed the world's largest human-trafficking criminal state, run and managed by human trafficking organizations on a national scale and prospering thanks to them.” The U.S. State Department, however, pointed out that North Korea forced adults as well as children to perform forced labor in political prison camps and labor-reeducation camps, and that government policies and patterns of human trafficking were present in the imposition of forced-labor conditions on workers sent overseas. [email protected] Kim Gyeong-su, [email protected] Kim Gyeong-su Reporter