In this undated photo released in 2009, North Korean Leader Kim Jong-il, right, inspects an infantry division of the Korean People's Army at an undisclosed location in North Korea. (Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service/Associated Press)

More than one-third of North Korea's people go hungry as a result of the country's oppressive regime and a shortfall in foreign aid, a United Nations rights envoy said on Thursday.

Vitit Muntarbhorn, the UN's special envoy on human rights in North Korea, described its government as "repressive and cruel" and said its human rights record remains "abysmal."

"The freedoms from want, from fear, from discrimination, from persecution and from exploitation, are regrettably transgressed with impunity by those authorities, in an astonishing setting of abuse after abuse," he wrote in a report to the General Assembly on Thursday.

The communist state has been at odds with most of the international community since it invaded South Korea after the latter state declared its independence in 1950. In 1953, the two sides agreed to a ceasefire but tensions have remained for more than half a century.

Many of the North Korea's food shortages stem from frequent natural disasters that severely cut production. In 1996, severe floods led to widespread famine, while in 2001, North Korea grappled with one of the worst spring droughts in its history. In 2007, it was again ravaged by floods.

Muntarbhorn said sanctions in response to North Korean nuclear and missile tests have also made the situation precarious for the North Korean people, as the World Food Program was only able to reach fewer than two million people because of a shortfall in international aid.

Muntarbhorn estimates as many as nine million of the country's 24 million people go hungry.

N. Korean official rejects report

Muntarbhorn said the country's natural resources were more abundant than South Korea's, and that the country sold several billion dollars worth of exports last year.

"The country is not poor and yet the money is not spent on the people," he said.

North Korea's deputy UN ambassador, Pak Tok Hun, rejected the report as a "politically conspired document full of distortion, lies, falsity, devised by hostile forces."

Muntarbhorn's assessment was one of three human rights reports delivered Thursday to the United Nations. The other two reports focused on people living in Burma and the Palestinian region.

Tomas Ojea Quintana visited military-ruled Burma, also known as Myanmar, twice and described the human rights situation as "alarming," saying the prevailing impunity that authorities act with allows for continued violations.

Envoy Richard Falk's report focused on the Palestinian territories during the conflict in December and January but he was unable to enter after Israel barred his entry. He said a blockade of the Gaza strip meant basic necessities weren't reaching the population.