North Korea slams UK over sanctions on children's camp

North Korea criticised Britain on Friday for imposing sanctions on one of its children’s facilities over alleged actions involving Ukrainian youngsters, accusing London of seeking to tarnish Pyongyang’s image and undermine its ties with Russia.

Since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022, human rights activists have raised concerns that Ukrainian children from Russian-occupied territories were subjected to political indoctrination.

According to a 2025 report by the Ukraine-based Regional Center for Human Rights, two children from regions of Ukraine — a 12-year-old boy named Misha and a 16-year-old girl named Liza — were sent to North Korea’s Songdowon International Children’s Camp.

There, they were taught to “destroy Japanese militarists” and met with Korean veterans who attacked a US Navy ship in 1968 and killed and wounded nine American soldiers, the report said.

Britain imposed asset-freeze sanctions on the Songdowon camp on May 11, saying it suspected the facility of “engaging in and providing support” for Russia’s programme for the “forced deportation and re-education of Ukrainian children”, according to its Foreign Office.

Britain also accused the North Korean facility of providing “support for policies or actions which undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty or independence of Ukraine”.

North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency said Friday Britain’s such actions were “conspiratorial moves to demonise Russia” and amounted to “an intolerable insult” to Pyongyang.

The acts were “heinous unethical politically-motivated provocation to tarnish the external image of our state and disparage the DPRK-Russia relations of friendship”, the statement said, using North Korea’s official name.

Songdowon International Children’s Camp is believed to have been established to promote North Korea’s political system to young visitors, and KCNA on Friday described it as “a sacred base for education and growth of children”.

The KCNA report, quoting Pyongyang’s unnamed foreign ministry spokesperson, accused Britain of “unreasonably linking our children’s camping facility with the groundless issue of ‘forcible migration’ of Ukrainian children”.

British tour operator Koryo Tours says on its website that the camp, near the eastern city of Wonsan and opened in 1960, was created to help foster international friendship by hosting overseas children.

The website says the camp can accommodate up to 1,200 students at a time and receives around 400 foreign visitors annually from countries including Russia, China, Thailand, Mongolia and Mexico.

Since the war erupted in 2022, 2,318 Ukrainian children remain missing, while 20,570 have been deported or forcibly displaced and 704 killed, according to a Ukrainian government portal.