By Kim Sue-young
Staff Reporter
Public executions have slightly decreased in North Korea as the international community consistently raises the issue of human rights there, according to a report Monday.
It appeared, however, that the secretive state sent many prisoners to coal mines lacking labor, said the White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea 2009, published by the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU).
The annual report was made based on accounts from some 50 North Koreans who defected to the South between 2007 and 2008.
``According to some North Korean defectors, North Korean authorities tend to heed international calls for improving human rights. Thus, public executions by firing squads slightly decreased,'' Kim Soo-am, a KINU research fellow who co-authored the paper, told reporters.
The report also said most prisoners of war (POWs) seemed to have been sent to coalmines in the northeast Hamgyeong region.
``The coalmines required many laborers but North Korean citizens tended to evade the mining job. Furthermore, it's believed to be convenient to monitor the POWs there,'' it said.
The white paper said there are 19,409 POWs in the North but added an accurate estimate would be made after data from North Korea and China was collected.
As of last December, 76 POWs returned home with 161 family members, the book said.
The institute has published the white paper since 1996 in a bid to determine the human rights situation in the communist state.
The paper will be soon published in English as well, said Park Young-ho, director of KINU Center for North Korean Human Rights Studies.
Expressing dire concerns about human rights violations in the isolated state, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights adopted a resolution late last month to ask for improvements.
ksy@koreatimes.co.kr
