North Korea scrapped plans to attend next month’s University Games in South Korea to protest the opening of a UN human rights office in Seoul, South Korean officials said yesterday.

The boycott shows that the UN office tasked with monitoring the North’s alleged rights violations will be another source of animosity on an already tense Korean Peninsula.

Pyongyang, which considers any criticism of its human rights a US-led campaign to topple its government, has called the office a grave provocation and threatened unspecified retaliation.

The office, the first of its kind, is set to open today. Its creation was recommended by a landmark UN commission of inquiry report last year that found that North Korea’s human rights situation “exceeds all others in duration, intensity and horror.”

The inquiry documented killings, torture and political prison camps inside North Korea.