North Korea Acts to Stop U.N. Resolution on Rights Worried about a looming United Nations vote on human rights that could possibly lead to criminal charges - or at least acute humiliation - North Korea has countered in recent weeks with an unusually robust mix of diplomacy, denials and threats. On Monday, the eve of the vote, human rights activists and diplomats at the United Nations said that they had rarely seen such frenetic action by the reclusive North, which often dismisses any United Nations action against it as meaningless or as a plot by the United States. This time, however, a resolution that could hold North Korean leaders accountable for egregious rights violations, notably a prosecution for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, has elicited a far more anxious reaction. "They're using whatever leverage they can to knock the wind out of this resolution," said Param-Preet Singh, the senior international justice counsel at Human Rights Watch. North Korea Seeks to Host a Weight Lifting EventNOV. North Korea to Send Senior Envoy to RussiaNOV. Kenneth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller, Released by North Korea, Are Back on U.S. SoilNOV. U.N. Rights Investigator Says North Korea May Allow a VisitOCT. Kim Jong-un Gave Order to Free American, North Korea SaysOCT. Over the past four weeks, the North has released all three Americans held in its penal institutions. It has shown new openness to talks with the United States, Japan and South Korea. It has described North Korea's citizens as the freest people and denied reports that it operates a system of prison camps. It has dangled the possibility of permitting a special United Nations investigator to visit for the first time - if the offending language in the resolution is withdrawn. It also has sent an envoy to Russia, a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, to improve relations. In a darker side to its effort, the North has distributed what appears to be a hastily made video seeking to malign one of its chief accusers, an escaped prisoner named Shin Dong-hyuk. It called him a liar and thug who had fabricated the entire account of his ordeal. "They're doing whatever they can to discredit my testimony," Mr. Shin, 33, said in an interview at The New York Times. They concocted a video full of lies. Mr. Shin's detailed disclosures about killings, torture, starvation and other deprivations in North Korea's penal system, including the execution of his mother while he was forced to watch, are the subject of a 2012 book, "Escape From Camp 14." They also are an important component of a devastating report on North Korea's human rights record published by a United Nations panel of inquiry nine months ago. The 400-page report is the basis for the resolution to be voted on Tuesday by the General Assembly committee that oversees human rights issues. Diplomats said the resolution had attracted strong backing and was expected to pass. A simple majority among the 193 members that choose to vote is required for passage. In what appeared to be a desperate maneuver by one of North Korea's few allies, Cuba introduced an amendment last week that would nullify the resolution's language on accountability. A vote on that amendment will come first, but the resolution's supporters said they believed it would be defeated. While the resolution is nonbinding, its passage would put enormous pressure on the Security Council, which is empowered to refer member states to the International Criminal Court for suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity. Such pressure would put both Russia and China, the two Security Council members most likely to exercise their veto power, in uncomfortable positions. Last week, Human Rights Watch and eight other rights organizations sent a letter to all member states urging a yes vote on the resolution. Mr. Shin, who lives in South Korea but was visiting New York to attend a Human Rights Watch awards dinner, said he was shocked at the video impugning him, titled "Lie and Truth," in which one of his accusers is his 70-year-old father, also a prisoner. "My only crime is that I escaped from prison camp," he said. If I have a sin, it is that I left my father in prison camp.