Radiation leaked from North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear test site, which was partially dismantled in 2018, may have endangered hundreds of thousands of people, a report released Tuesday said. FIle Photo by News 1/EPA-EFE
SEOUL, Feb. 21 (UPI) -- Nuclear detonations at North Korea's Punggye-ri test site may have exposed hundreds of thousands of local citizens to high levels of radiation and endangered people in neighboring countries with contaminated agricultural products, a new report said Tuesday.
The Transitional Justice Working Group, a Seoul-based human rights organization, mapped the possible range of leakage and dissemination of radioactive materials through groundwater and said it "points to a large area and population at risk."
North Korea has conducted six underground nuclear tests at the Punggye-ri facility since 2006.
The TJWG report said radioactive materials could have spread in a radius of 25 miles around the site, where more than 1 million people live and rely on groundwater for many of their daily activities.
"The populations in neighboring countries such as South Korea, China and Japan are also exposed to the radioactive risk from the contaminated agricultural and marine products imported from North Korea," the report said.
Local delicacies such as pine mushrooms have long been smuggled and distributed overseas as an illicit source of funds for the North Korean regime.
The report's authors said their findings show North Korea's nuclear program is not only a security risk but also poses serious health concerns.
"This report is significant for confirming that North Korea's nuclear tests threaten the right to life and the right to health of not only the North Korean people, but also of those in South Korea and other neighboring countries," Hubert Younghwan Lee, TJWG executive director, said in a statement.
Pyongyang has maintained that there was no leakage of harmful materials from its previous tests but it has not allowed international inspectors or journalists to verify the claims.
In 2015, South Korean authorities detected nine times the standard level of radioactive cesium isotopes in dried hedgehog mushrooms imported from North Korea disguised as Chinese products.
The South's Ministry of Unification also conducted radiation exposure tests on 40 North Korean defectors from the areas near the Punggye-ri site in 2017 and 2018 and found that nine of them had chromosomal abnormalities.
The ministry concluded that it could not establish a clear link to the site, however, and canceled the testing in 2019 amid a thaw in diplomatic relations with the North.
The TJWG called for South Korea to offer radiation exposure tests to the almost 900 defectors who escaped from cities and counties near the Punggye-ri site since 2006.
"North Korean escapees who display symptoms of radiation exposure must be given accurate information and appropriate medical treatment," TJWG legal analyst Ethan Hee-Seok Shin said.
The rights group also urged China, Japan and South Korea to step up inspections of agricultural and marine products from North Korea.
Officials in Seoul and Washington have assessed that North Korea has completed preparations for another nuclear test at Punggye-ri, which would be its seventh overall and first since 2017.
