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NKorea suspected of using prisoners
to build nuclear facility
AFP
Monday May 21, 2007
North Korea may have used political prisoners to build an underground
facility for its nuclear test last year, a rights group said Monday.
A work camp in the northeastern county of Gilju could be the source
of the labour force used to build the site of the nuclear test last
October, the Committee for Democratisation of North Korea in Seoul
said in a report.
Experts say the test was conducted in a mountain in Gilju.
"Testimonies from defectors suggest political prisoners may
have been used to build an underground tunnel for North Korea's
nuclear test," the committee said.
The report was based on interviews in South Korea with former North
Korean prisoners who escaped or defected after their release.
"After collecting testimonies from North Korean defectors
in China, we have concluded the North Korean regime used its class-A
political prisoners camped near the testing site to build the facility,"
Kang Cheol-Hwan, vice chief of the committee, told Yonhap news agency.
None of the North Korean defectors who had lived near the site
spoke of noticing any sign of construction or received evacuation
orders, he said.
"It's very likely that Pyongyang chose to use captured individuals
for the construction to prevent any information from leaking,"
Kang said, citing a defector who claimed to have been a security
guard at the camp.
In a separate report, Freedom House, a US-based rights group, estimated
that up to 200,000 people were being held without trial and subjected
to forced labour.
Prisoners "are subjected, usually for a lifetime, to forced
labour under extremely severe circumstances, beginning with the
provision of below-subsistence level food rations," it said.
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