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dpa
Seoul
North Korea has forced thousands of former South Korean prisoners of war and their descendants to work in mines for several decades, a human rights organization said on Thursday.
Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR) released a report describing a system by which North Korea’s leadership extracts and exports coal and other mineral resources with the help of slave labour.
The system allows Pyongyang to procure foreign currency that is also used to finance the country’s nuclear weapons programme, the group said.
“The entire mineral resource industry in North Korean mines ... is characterized by forced labour and mass abuse,” Kim Young Ja of the NKHR said. After the Korean War (1950-53) these former prisoners of war worked in coal, magnesite, zinc and lead mines in the provinces of North and South Hamgyung.
“You were never allowed to return to South Korea,” the group said. The group collected the testimony of former political prisoners and prisoners of war who managed to escape to South Korea.
Seoul
North Korea has forced thousands of former South Korean prisoners of war and their descendants to work in mines for several decades, a human rights organization said on Thursday.
Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR) released a report describing a system by which North Korea’s leadership extracts and exports coal and other mineral resources with the help of slave labour.
The system allows Pyongyang to procure foreign currency that is also used to finance the country’s nuclear weapons programme, the group said.
“The entire mineral resource industry in North Korean mines ... is characterized by forced labour and mass abuse,” Kim Young Ja of the NKHR said. After the Korean War (1950-53) these former prisoners of war worked in coal, magnesite, zinc and lead mines in the provinces of North and South Hamgyung.
“You were never allowed to return to South Korea,” the group said. The group collected the testimony of former political prisoners and prisoners of war who managed to escape to South Korea.
