Mick Hartley

As if the situation for North Koreans wasn't bad enough already. From Richard Lloyd Parry in the Times:

Food from the area close to North Korea’s nuclear test site is endangering the health of people across the region who consume illegally smuggled mushrooms, according to a new report.

A South Korean human rights organisation has warned that hundreds of thousands of people living close to the Punggye-ri nuclear test site are at risk from radiation from the underground tunnels leaking into groundwater, which is then drunk and used in agriculture.

The Transitional Justice Working Group is calling for the testing of North Korean refugees who have previously lived in the area and improved inspection of its farm and sea products.

Hubert Younghwan Lee, the director of the group, said: “While there has been a tendency to discuss North Korea’s nuclear programme solely as a security issue … North Korea’s nuclear tests [also] threaten the right to life and the right to health of not only the North Korean people [but] also of those in South Korea and other neighbouring countries.”

Between 2006 and 2017, North Korea conducted six nuclear tests at Punggye-ri, each one more powerful than the last. Scientists have warned about radiation leaks from the 2,205m Mount Mantap, beneath which the test tunnels have been dug, and there have been rumours that vegetation in the area has been dying and children born with defects.

In 2015, the South Korean authorities detected more than nine times the standard level of radioactive cesium isotopes in dried hedgehog mushrooms imported from North Korea and disguised as Chinese products. The prized mushrooms are also exported to China and have been found in Japan, where their origin is disguised.

Among defectors who escaped to the South after having lived in Kilju County, close to Punggye-ri, nine were found to have chromosome abnormalities and high levels of radiation. They showed symptoms such as headaches, blurred vision, diminished white blood cell counts and painful joints. The South Korean government said however that there was no direct evidence connecting their health problems to the nuclear tests.

Chinese geologists and the head of the South Korean meteorological agency warned in 2017 that underground nuclear tests could cause the collapse of Mount Mantap, leading to the leak of radiation into the atmosphere….

North Korea’s last nuclear test in September 2017 was its biggest so far, with a yield estimated to be as high as 160 kilotons, compared with about 20 kilotons for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

The explosion caused a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, and was followed eight minutes later by another tremor of magnitude 4.6, apparently caused by rock collapses within the mountain. Two more similar tremors occurred in the following month.

For the moment it's all about showing off big rockets in Pyongyang parades, but another nuclear test could come at any time.