S. Korea Passes Bill on N. Korean Human Rights

South Korea's parliament on Wednesday passed long-delayed legislation addressing the human rights situation in North Korea -- a move likely to anger Pyongyang with tensions already running high on the divided Korean peninsula.

The bill, first proposed in 2005 but stalled for more than a decade by rival party bickering, has modest aims, including funding for civil activist groups and the creation of an official archive to track and detail rights abuses in the North.

The funding could be extended to defector groups that regularly float anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border with helium balloons -- a practice strenuously condemned by the North.

While conservative legislators have long advocated a "name and shame" approach toward Pyongyang's rights record, liberals have argued the bill would inflame tensions and prevent inter-Korean dialogue.

But hopes of engagement with the North have faded following Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test on January 6 and a long-range rocket launch last month that was widely condemned as a ballistic missile test.

In a televised speech on Tuesday, South Korean President Park Geun-Hye said North Korea must "pay the price" for pushing ahead with its nuclear weapons program, and warned that denuclearization was the only path open to guarantee the North Korean regime's survival.

Pyongyang is extremely sensitive to criticism of its human rights record which was the subject of a scathing 2014 report by a U.N. Commission of Inquiry that concluded Korea was committing rights violations "without parallel in the contemporary world."

On Tuesday, North Korea announced it would boycott the U.N. Human Rights Council on the grounds that it was repeatedly being singled out for censure.

Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong accused the United States and its allies, including South Korea, of targeting the North with a politically-motivated "human rights racket".

On Wednesday, the North's Uriminzokkiri propaganda website said the South Korean bill was "an attempt to disgrace our politics that is based on the love of our people".