Residents living near a North Korean nuclear weapons testing ground suffer from mysterious diseases they don’t know is from radiation, 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 non-stop 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.”
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, according to NBC News. So powerful have these been that past reports indicate the mountainous region has been exhausted and in danger of crumbling. A hydrogen bomb test in September reportedly forced a tunnel to collapse, killing scores of people and then even more during rescue efforts.
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 maligned by 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, NBC News noted. And the revelations come amid continued tough talk from the isolated dictatorship, which has tested multiple rockets in the last year.
Source: News agencies
