North Korea last week issued a rare report on its own human rights situation. The report rebutted international criticism of its rights record and defended the oppressive regime’s policies as guaranteeing the “genuine rights of the people.”

The North went to extra lengths to explain the reasons for releasing the report. The paper aims “to help the public properly know about the efforts exerted by the country to protect and promote human rights, to lay bare the false and reactionary nature of the reckless anti-North Korean human rights racket and to wipe out the prejudice and misunderstanding,” according to its state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The release of the report apparently suggests Pyongyang may be feeling heavy pressure in the face of growing international criticism of its dire rights conditions. A report issued by the U.N. Commission of Inquiry in February held its leaders responsible for “widespread, systematic and gross” violations of human rights.

The North’s move appears designed particularly to brace for an international ministerial-level meeting on its rights record, which is scheduled to be held later this month in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. South Korea’s Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry are expected to attend the conference, the first of its kind.

If the ministerial-level discussion leads to the UNGA adopting a resolution addressing the North’s rights conditions, the communist state isolated from the international community would be driven into a more severe predicament. Pyongyang’s decision to send its foreign minister to attend a U.N. session for the first time in 15 years seems to have a more immediate purpose of countering the build-up of momentum toward global action against its human rights violations.

Highlighting the rights situation in the North may give Seoul and Washington useful leverage to put pressure on the recalcitrant regime that refuses to abandon its nuclear weapons program. But the allies may also feel the need not to push the issue to the point of driving the North to make provocations in response.

It should certainly be made clear that denuclearizing North Korea and improving its rights conditions are compatible goals that are not exclusive or contradictory to each other. Still, it will be a delicate strategic task to take a balanced approach between them.

Issuing the self-justifying report, the North pledged to improve its people’s living standards and thus provide them with better conditions for enjoying their rights. Keeping the promise would require a fundamental change to its course of action.