A United Nations investigator on North Korean human rights says the country's power elite are maintaining for themselves a lifestyle that is in stark contrast to that of most citizens who suffer from starvation and government repression.
That's according to a United Nations' Special Rapporteur on North Korea Vitit Muntarbhorn who submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Council on Monday.
Mr. Muntarbhorn urged the international community's prudence on the draconian government's human right violations and pointed out that North Korean authorities are never punished and that they create an environment which condones and instigates human rights abuses hiding from the suffering of the people they govern.
The UN official says close to 7 million North Koreans did not receive adequate food earlier this year due to a now-chronic shortage of food resources.
Muntarbhorn describes the reclusive North's overall human rights situation as "dire and desperate."
He gave examples of how Pyeongyang has outlawed the sale of rice at markets forced farmers to provide food to North Korean soldiers and banned younger women from marketplace activities.
The UN investigator accuses Pyeongyang of promoting widespread torture in prisons which he says are "a death trap for inmates."
The Thai law professor describes North Korean prisons as lacking food poor hygiene and of conducting forced labor as well as corporal punishment.
A North Korean official for the UN mission there rejected Muntarbhorn's report as a lie and added that it was the result of the United States' hostile policy toward the North and the politicizing of human rights agendas by the European Union.
Nam Ki-yung, Arirang News.
MAR 17, 2009
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Arirang Town
Wednesday, FEB 10, 2010, (KST) 
