The ongoing detente between North Korea and the United States has done little, if anything, to improve Pyongyang's abysmal rights record, the U.N. independent investigator on human rights in the nuclear-armed country said Tuesday, just weeks before the expected passage of a Japan-led resolution condemning the situation there.

"The human rights situation at the moment has not changed on the ground in North Korea despite this important progress on security, peace and prosperity," Tomas Ojea Quintana, the U.N. special rapporteur on North Korea, said at a televised news conference.

"It is the time for North Korea to show commitment to the human rights agenda in some way or another."