January 7, 2006

North Korea wants South to pay $1 billion to prisoners

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has filed a claim with the South seeking $1 billion in compensation for mistreatment of prisoners who were repatriated to the North after serving jail terms in the South, its official news agency said on Saturday.

South Korea sent 63 long-term prisoners to the North in 2000 after the leaders of South and North Korea held an unprecedented summit and pledged to seek reconciliation 50 years after the Korean War.

North Korea's KCNA news agency cited the complaint as saying successive South Korean governments had "severely punished the unconverted prisoners for the mere reason that they pursued a different ideology and ideal and tortured them to death for refusing to make ideological conversion".

It said specialists in North Korea had assessed the physical harm alone, not including mental harm, at $1 billion.

KCNA said the complaint was sent to the South's National Human Rights Commission and filed on Friday through a liaison office located on the border.

There was no immediate comment from South Korea.

Many of the prisoners were spies who infiltrated the South after the Korean War or prisoners of war from that conflict.

They served as long as 40 years in prison before being released and more than 30 remain in the South, South Korean media said.

KCNA, quoting from the complaint, said the North Korean prisoners had suffered an array of tortures, including cold water torture, hairpin torture, rapid dive-bombing torture and electric shock torture.

The complaint said South Korean authorities who took part in the imprisonment of the prisoners should stand trial and be punished.

North Korea said last year that 10 South Korean prisoners of war and 11 civilian abductees were alive in the North.

While the North's disclosure was unprecedented, the figures were below the more than 540 prisoners of war many in the South -- including the Red Cross -- believe are alive in the North.

Nearly 500 civilian abductees are also believed to be alive there, many of them fishermen captured at sea.

North Korea has been condemned by the United Nations for human rights abuses and operating political prisons. North Korea denies such practices exist.

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