Seoul, Geneva - South Korea said yesterday North Korea had more than 200,000 political prisoners in camps where many freeze or starve to death, and famine may have worsened conditions.
The South's National Unification Ministry, in a report based mostly on testimony from defectors up to 1989, told the National Assembly that public executions and death through torture occurred in about 10 of the camps.
A researcher at the ministry's think-tank said conditions in the camps could be much worse than the report says because of famine that has ravaged North Korea.