Mystery ills near N. Korea nuke site
PEOPLE LIVING near a North Korean nuclear weapons testing ground suffer from mysterious ailments, according to a report.
Defectors in South Korea who once lived near the Punggye-ri test site come up negative for diseases in tests, but complain of nonstop pain.
“So many people died, we began calling it ‘ghost disease,’ ” Lee Jeong Hwa, who lived in the surrounding Kilju County, told NBC News. “We thought we were dying because we were poor and we ate badly. Now we know it was the radiation.”
She escaped North Korea in 2010 after having spent several years living near the testing site.
North Korea’s regime has tested at least six nuclear weapons since 2003 at Punggye-ri, which is located in the country’s northeast region, the network reported.
A hydrogen bomb test in September reportedly forced a tunnel to collapse, killing scores of people.
Lee is one of 30 defectors from Kilju who’s been tested by the South Korean Ministry of Unification. She told NBC News the department’s scans found no radiation contamination — adding to the mystery.
Those who escaped North Korea’s harsh regime said residents around Punngye-ri suffered from various cancers, including leukemia.
A lack of data or hard numbers has left South Korean officials with nothing but anecdotes from defectors who escaped the areas around Punggye-ri, NBC News reported. One includes a baby with birth defects. “We couldn’t determine the gender of the baby, because it didn’t have any genitals,” Rhee Yeong Sil, who defected in 2013, told NBC News. “In North Korea, deformed babies are usually killed. So the parents killed the baby.”
North Korea began testing weapons there in 2006. The isolated dictatorship has tested multiple rockets in the last year, heightening tensions with the U.S.
The defectors told NBC News of health effects stretching back further than the last decade, suggesting other military activity at the site.
“I don’t think they’re lying,” Suh Kuneyull, a nuclear engineering professor with Seoul National University, told NBC News. “We have to take their word, but I don’t have much reliable information.”