SEOUL, June 7 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's opposition parties expressed their objections Thursday to a bill designed to help improve North Korea's dismal human rights record.

   The move came days after a ruling Saenuri Party lawmaker submitted the bill to the National Assembly that also called for South Korea to send humanitarian aid to North Koreans.

   Rep. Park Jie-won, the interim head of the main opposition Democratic United Party, said the human rights bill is not yet necessary for South Korea, suggesting the proposed bill would not have any actual effectiveness.

   Rep. Kim Han-gil, who is running for the DUP's chairmanship, said human rights are universal values, though they should not be allowed to threaten peace on the Korean Peninsula.

   Kang Ki-kab, the interim head of the left-wing minor Unified Progressive Party, also questioned the effectiveness of the bill. "Will the legislation make North Korea think again about its human rights?" Kang asked in a radio interview.

   The development illustrated the deep divisions in South Korea over how to deal with its communist neighbor that is accused of being one of the world's worst human rights abusers.

   Last month, the U.S. State Department said in an annual report that the North's human rights conditions remain "extremely poor."

   The report said that North Korea subjected its 24 million people to rigid controls over many aspects of their lives and that there continued to be reports of a vast network of political prison camps in which conditions were often harsh and life threatening.

   Amnesty International, a London-based human rights advocacy group, has also estimated in its separate annual report that up to 200,000 prisoners were held in horrific conditions in six sprawling political prison camps.

   The North has flatly denied accusations of its alleged rights abuses, describing them as a U.S.-led attempt to topple its regime.

   "We bitterly condemn the despicable human rights report worked out by the U.S.," the North's Foreign Ministry said last week, dismissing the U.S. report as a "product of the U.S. hostile policy" toward the North.

   In recent years, similar bills on North Korea's human rights were scrapped in South Korea as liberal lawmakers have shied away from the issue of the North's human rights out of fear that it could strain inter-Korean relations.

   Tensions still persist on the divided peninsula after the North carried out two deadly attacks on the South in 2010.

   In 2004, the United States passed legislation on North Korea's human rights.

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