Washington ? North Korea’s nuclear threats are purposely masking the communist nation’s starvation, persecution and murder of its own people, Sen. Sam Brownback said after a trip to China that took him along the North Korean border.

In a speech Thursday at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Capitol Hill think tank, the Kansas Republican called North Korea “one of the key proliferators, the bad guys, around the world.”

“They want us to focus on this issue exclusively, but we should not be so easily fooled — again, I might add,” Brownback said, pointing out this year marks the 50th anniversary of the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War.

Only when the international community comes to the aid of North Korean refugees “through a sustained and public advocacy of their plight will the North Korean problem and the threat it poses be solved,” Brownback said.