UN official slams "abysmal" N Korea rights record

North Korea`s human rights record remains "abysmal" and more than one third of its people go hungry despite abundant natural resources, an expert told the United Nations on Thursday.

New York: North Korea`s human rights record remains "abysmal" and more than one third of its people go hungry despite abundant natural resources, an expert told the United Nations on Thursday.
"The freedoms from want, from fear, from discrimination, from persecution and from exploitation are regrettably transgressed with impunity by those authorities, in an astonishing setting of abuse after abuse," said Vitit Muntarbhorn, the UN`s special rapporteur on human rights in the North.

Muntarbhorn`s report to the General Assembly also said almost nine million of the country`s 24 million people go hungry, with the World Food Programme able to reach fewer than two million due to a shortfall in international aid.

The shortage, it said, was undoubtedly a response to this year`s nuclear and missile tests.

Muntarbhorn, who described the regime as "repressive and cruel", told reporters the North`s exports last year were worth several billion dollars and its natural resources were more abundant than South Korea`s.

"The country is not poor and yet the money is not spent on the people," the Thai academic said.

A report this month by South Korea`s unification ministry estimated the value of undeveloped mineral reserves in the North at USD 5.94 trillion.

Muntarbhorn said people in the communist state are subject to persecution, clampdowns, collective punishment, torture, arbitrary executions and public executions.

"The pervasive repression imposed by the authorities ensures that the people live in continual fear," he said.

Citizens were pressured into informing on each other, authorities engaged in extensive surveillance and even officials lived in fear as colleagues were encouraged to inform on one another.

"Throughout the years, the authorities have bred a culture of mistrust and a policy of divide and rule that permeate families and communities," Muntarbhorn wrote in his report, which also highlighted severe censorship and "an enormous propaganda machine".

Bureau Report

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