N Korea rights 'getting worse'

Mr Rammell said the situation had deteriorated since last year

The UK government has said human rights in the secretive nation of North Korea appear to be getting worse.

Junior Foreign Minister Bill Rammell made the comments at a briefing to highlight the suffering of two former North Korean political prisoners.

Kim Young-soon lost three members of her family to the prison camp where she was sent.

Kim Tae-jin told of being beaten and burned in the same camp, and said he was still suffering as a result.

Mr Rammell said that during his visit to North Korea last year, he was able to engage in debate with the leadership regarding the country's human rights record.

"They were at least admitting the existence of punishment through labour camps," he said.

But he said that "since then, there's been no further progress".

"If anything the situation has got worse."

"North Korea probably has the worst human rights record of anywhere in the world," he said.

But Mr Rammell denied that this undermined the UK government's policy of engagement with North Korea.

"Just because you're talking to someone doesn't mean you're losing your critical faculties," he said.

Mr Rammell said the European Commission was expected to table a third resolution condemning North Korea's human rights record later this year.

He added that it was difficult to assess the extent of opposition to the North Korean administration inside the country, but that he did not think Kim Jong-il's leadership was in imminent danger.

Kim Tae-jin says he still cannot sleep properly at night for the pain

"I don't think... the regime is on the point of collapse. There is opposition but it is very, very difficult to operate in North Korea given the control and the reach of the state," he said.

Kim Young-soon, 67, said North Korea was "a place that should disappear from the earth".

She estimated that six or seven out of every 100 people died in Yodok Political Prison Camp Number 15 in one year.

She herself spent eight years at the camp.

Kim Tae-jin, 49, suffered various tortures in the same prison, including being beaten with burning wood and being forced to sit on burning quicklime.

"I realised pain can be more dreadful than death," he said.

Mr Kim said lack of food at the camp was a continual ordeal.

"One meal consists of a handful of corn kernels and they mix it with some edible tree leaves and they add some salt." He said he caught and ate rats, snakes and frogs to supplement his rations.

Mr Kim left the camp in 1992, but Stuart Windsor, a director at Christian Solidarity Worldwide which has documented the suffering of North Korean political prisoners, said inmates were believed to be living under similar conditions today.

"As far as we can ascertain... the conditions have not changed at all. All the interviews we've done [with people] who've recently come out of the prisons suggest the conditions... are the same."