If there’s one topic North Korea cannot stand, it’s criticism of its record on human rights.

That much was evident when Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency came out with a colorful string of adjectives to say what the North Koreans think of the newly confirmed American envoy on human rights in North Korea, Julie Turner.

No sooner had Congress approved the appointment of Ms. Turner as the first person to hold the position in six years than North Korea fired off a statement, attributed to an official with the Korea Association for Human Rights Studies, describing her as “a woman of ambiguous origin and nationality.”

That was North Korea’s racist way of observing that Ms. Turner, of Korean ancestry, was adopted by an American family. As one of approximately 112,000 Koreans raised as sons and daughters of their American adoptive parents, Ms. Turner can now expect non-stop insults from Pyongyang before she’s even had a chance to dive into the job.

She makes a particularly vulnerable target considering North Korea’s frequent denials of human rights abuses. At the United Nations Council on Human Rights at Geneva, North Korea’s envoy has often described such criticism as “fabrications.”

Already, according to North Korean news agency, Ms. Turner  has “gained notoriety for plotting anti DPRK ‘human rights’ schemes” — a reference to her mission of uncovering and analyzing violations of human rights within the DPRK, initials for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

‘The fact that such a wicked woman was appointed as an ‘envoy for the human rights issue,’” said the official, “shows how hostile the administration is toward” North Korea.

It’s not hard to find the evidence that Ms. Turner is indeed committed to picking up all the information and insights she can dredge up about North Korea’s dreadful record of human rights abuses.

At her confirmation hearing in May before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, she described the human rights situation in North Korea as “one of the most protracted human rights crises in the world.” 

The Covid pandemic, she explained, has enabled North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, “to tighten his control over all aspects of life in the isolated country.”

Enlarging on the danger, Ms. Turner, who spent 16 years at the State Department before her elevation envoy with the rank of ambassador, said North Korea’s worsening human rights record was “inextricably linked to its weapons programs” — which, she noted, were “funded through the exploitation and abuse of the North Korean people.”

The Pyongyang regime summoned up all the invective in the North’s inventory of anti-American rhetoric in attacking Ms. Turner.

She “should know that she was chosen as a political housemaid and scapegoat for the ‘human rights’ plots to pressure the DPRK, “ said North Korea. It was “the miserable end of envoys for the human rights issue in North Korea,” the communist agency added, that they “would retire in dishonor without any achievements during their term.”

NK News, a website in Seoul that tracks North Korea, noted that North Korea “has been known to resort to sexist and racist insults when criticizing the U.S. and South Korea.” 

The North’s state press, NK News reminded readers, “compared Barack Obama to a monkey” and often “hurled sexist remarks” at a former South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, who was ousted, impeached and jailed in 2017.

A North Korean researcher at Kookmin University in Seoul, Fyodor Tertitskiy, said the statement showed “a bias against people of mixed background.” 

The statement was “motivated primarily by anger of what Ms. Turner does,” while choosing to “belittle Ms. Turner” for her ancestry, Mr. Tertitsky told NK News.