North Korea condemned Washington’s appointment of a special envoy on DPRK human rights in a statement laced with sexist and racist language on Tuesday, a move experts say reflects Pyongyang’s inherent biases and long-standing opposition to criticism of its rights abuses.

In the statement released through state media, an unnamed spokesperson for the Korea Association for Human Rights Studies described new U.S. envoy Julie Turner, a Korean American adoptee, as a “woman of uncertain origin and ethnicity,” a “wicked woman” and a “political housemaid.”

Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University and director at Korea Risk Group, said the