In a rare interview with a Chinese state-run media outlet, a North Korean diplomat in Beijing hit back at South Korea and the United States on Friday for their "extremely despicable conspiracy" to stiffen the response by Seoul and Washington to the North's abysmal human rights situation.

North Korea has been in an unusual defensive mode since a landmark U.N. inquiry detailed systematic, widespread and gross human rights abuses in the reclusive state. The North's human rights record was take up as a standing agenda by the U.N. Security Council last December, putting more pressure on the legitimacy of the Pyongyang regime.

In the interview with the Global Times, a state-run newspaper with close ties to China's ruling Communist Party, the counselor at the North Korean Embassy in Beijing criticized South Korea and the U.S. for holding a conference in Washington over its human rights record last month.

Referring to the Feb. 17 conference hosted by Washington-based Center for Strategic & International Studies, the North Korean diplomat, whose name was withheld, said South Korea and the U.S.

have "plotted an extremely despicable conspiracy against North Korea using so-called 'defectors.'"

Defending the country's human rights situation, the North Korean diplomat warned that those who are "trying to discredit North Korea are bound to fail and will be severely punished."

North Korea has strongly protested against the ground-breaking U.N. Commission of Inquiry report, rejecting accusations of human rights abuses as evidence of hostile U.S. policy toward the communist regime. (Yonhap)