North Korea has signed a United Nations protocol that protects children from trafficking and sexual exploitation, a U.S.-based media report said Thursday.

According to the report by Voice of America, Ja Song-nam, the North Korean ambassador to the U.N., signed the optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child at the U.N. headquarters in New York on Tuesday.

The protocol, comprised of 17 articles, calls for the prohibition of trafficking of children, child prostitution and child pornography.

The North previously signed and ratified the convention in 1990 after it was signed by the U.N. a year earlier. The optional protocol to the convention has been ratified by more than 160 countries.

More recently, the North signed a separate U.N. convention on the rights of people with disabilities in July 2013 in a possible move to quell international condemnation over its poor human rights records.

The North's latest move also comes after the U.N. Human Rights Council urged the communist state to ratify the optional protocol at a periodic review of its rights record in May, to which the North replied favorably.

If the North ratifies the protocol, it will have to submit a report outlining its progress to the U.N. Children's Fund every two years. (Yonhap)