South Korea’s unification ministry will not release its annual report on North Korean human rights abuses to the public this year in a sharp departure from recent practice, citing the limited impact of criticism-heavy approaches in the past.

A ministry official said on Tuesday that the results of the human rights survey will be kept as internal documents and transferred to the Ministry of Justice for preservation.

“We think that the aggressive and confrontational North Korean human rights policies, which focus mainly on public condemnation, have had minimal effect on the actual improvement of the human rights situation for North