SEOUL - NORTH Korea on Monday defiantly rejected a United Nations resolution condemning its human rights record as a political ploy to stifle its socialist system.

'The DPRK (North Korea) resolutely rejects the resolution,' a foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement published by the North's official news agency KCNA.

He denounced the resolution, adopted by a UN General Assembly commission last week, as the product of 'a political scheme to stifle' the North's system.

It is based on 'false and fabricated' data, he said, adding that the hardline communist country would 'firmly' stick to its system and ideology.

The resolution condemned 'the persistence of continuing reports of systematic, widespread and grave violations of civil, political, social and cultural rights' in the North.

Seoul has for the first time co-sponsored the resolution, triggering anger from Pyongyang and worsening cross-border relations, which have soured since a conservative government took office in Seoul in February.

Under past liberal governments Seoul mostly avoided public criticism of the North's rights record, but the new government vowed to raise rights issues and take a generally firmer stance in cross-border relations.

North Korea, one of the world's most impoverished countries, is frequently accused of human rights abuses on a massive scale.

The US State Department's 2007 rights report says the regime is guilty of numerous serious abuses, citing reports of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention and disappearances, harsh prison conditions and the use of torture.

Such resolutions have been introduced to the General Assembly every year since 2005. -- AFP