North Korea’s crippling nuclear test site is turning the area into a “wasteland” where “deformed babies” are being born and 80 percent of vegetation dies off due to nuclear radiation, nearly two dozen defectors told a South Korean newspaper Monday.
The Research Association of Vision of North Korea interviewed 21 North Korean defectors who lived in Kilju, a nearby town north of the Punngye-ri nuclear test site where six tests have been conducted, and said babies were reportedly being born with birth defects and residents feared radiation contamination because of the high mortality rate for any form of life, South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported.
“I personally saw corpses floating down the river with their limbs severed."
- North Korean defector
"I heard from a relative in Kilju that deformed babies were born in hospitals there,” one defector said, according to the newspaper.
Another added: "I spoke on the phone with family members I left behind there and they told me that all of the underground wells dried up after the sixth nuclear test."
GRAPHIC PICTURE WARNING:
The Research Association of Vision of North Korea interviewed 21 North Korean defectors who lived in Kilju, a nearby town north of the Punngye-ri nuclear test site where six tests have been conducted, and said babies were reportedly being born with birth defects and residents feared radiation contamination because of the high mortality rate for any form of life, South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported.
“I personally saw corpses floating down the river with their limbs severed."
- North Korean defector
"I heard from a relative in Kilju that deformed babies were born in hospitals there,” one defector said, according to the newspaper.
Another added: "I spoke on the phone with family members I left behind there and they told me that all of the underground wells dried up after the sixth nuclear test."
GRAPHIC PICTURE WARNING:
A Ukrainian neurologist prepares to operate on a baby with a cancerous brain tumor at Kiev's Children's Neurological Clinic, one of four such operations conducted each day in the aftermath of the Chernobyl incident.. (Reuters)
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