(MENAFN- The Peninsula) North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, under pressure over Pyongyang's human rights record, has toured a museum dedicated to alleged atrocities by US forces during the Korean War, state media said yesterday.
The visit to the Sinchon Museum of United States War Atrocities was aimed at rousing the whole country "to an all-out anti-US struggle," the state-run KCNA news agency said.
It comes a week after the United Nations adopted a landmark resolution urging the Security Council to refer North Korea's leaders to the International Criminal Court for possible indictment for crimes against humanity.
Pyongyang had flexed all of its limited diplomatic muscle to try to block the bill, which it condemned as a political "fraud" orchestrated by the United States.
The museum Kim toured commemorates what North Korea says was the murder of some 35,000 civilians in Sinchon county by US forces in late 1950, at the start of the Korean War.
"The massacres committed by the US imperialist aggressors in Sinchon showed that they are cannibals seeking pleasure in slaughter," KCNA quoted Kim as saying.
The ruling party's official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, carried a front-page picture of Kim talking to museum officials in front of a wall displaying pictures of victims and the slogan: "US imperialists massacred 35,383 people".
It was believed to be Kim's first visit to the museum since he took power following the death of his father, Kim Jong-Il, in December 2011.
The resolution adopted last week drew heavily on the work of a UN inquiry, which concluded in February that the North was committing rights abuses "without parallel in the contemporary world".
Pyongyang's top military body has threatened "catastrophic consequences" for supporters of the resolution, with the United States, South Korea and Japan the primary targets.
Referral to the ICC is likely to be blocked at the Security Council by veto-wielding permanent members China and Russia, both of whom voted against the resolution.
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