North Korean Defectors Says They May Have Radiation Sickness
Defectors who were residing near North Korea's nuclear testing say they think they are suffering from exposure to radiation and anxiety.
Lee Jeong Hwa already has a slight limp. He is middle-aged with deep-set dark eyes and a gray complexion, Lee says she's in pain.
But back home, things are worse, she states.
"A lot of people died we started calling it 'ghost disorder,'" she said. "We believed we were dying because we were poor and we ate poorly. We understand it was the radiation."
As Lee is nursing her sore right leg, she recounted how she had been caught attempting to flee the nation in 2003.
She escaped from her house in Kilju County, home of North Korea's nuclear testing site, Punggye-ri.
In the North Lee lived throughout the previous seven years, the leader Kim Jong Il, at the moment, test-detonated two bombs near her property. Since Kim's death in 2011, Kim Jong Un, heir and his son, has analyzed. He said the one that was found in September was a hydrogen bomb.
Based on that the World Health Organization, radiation may impair the functioning of tissues and organs, based on the level of vulnerability. At lower doses, it states, there's a threat of cancer.
Lee and other defectors are determined these tests have had a damaging effect on their wellbeing. Expert opinion and the evidence, however, is not so conclusive.
The Ministry of Unification of South Korea has been analyzing 29 additional defectors and Lee from Kilju for radiation poisoning. Lee told reporters that her medical results had come back -- and they are clean.
And besides the testimony of others and Lee, it's hard to confirm radiation as the cause of the sicknesses, such as cancer, that they say have been ravaging Kilju.
Suh Kune-yull, a professor of nuclear engineering at Seoul National University (SNU), says the reality is that researchers are afflicted by a "total lack of information."
"I don't think they're lying," Kune-yull. "We have to accept their word, but I do not have a lot of reliable information."
A spokesman for that the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety told NBC News it's "supposed" that exposure to radiation from the underground test site is strong, but it's difficult to confirm.
Another defector in the SAND office, both Lee and Rhee Yeong Sil, say for decades they were not aware that North Korea was testing nuclear devices. After fleeing their homeland, the tremors were ignored by them and only found the fact.
Rhee, who defected in 2013 and is in her 60s, states that she lived just a few miles from the test website, which her neighbor gave birth to a deformed baby.
"We couldn't determine the sex of the infant, as it didn't have any genitals," Rhee says. "In North Korea, deformed babies are often killed. So the parents murdered the infant."
A number of Lee and Rhee's claims of radiation exposure date to the 1990s and even the 1980s, raising concerns about whether something other than a nuclear test might have polluted the environment and made people sick.
While the nation's first nuclear test was not until 2006, the defectors tell stories of hens dying in the mountain streams and the region's prized mushrooms disappearing before then.
The president of SAND, Choi Kyung Hui, who's also a defector but maybe not from Kilju, proposed action at leading up to the evaluations could clarify contamination in the region.
However, Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey researcher based in California, is doubtful that radiation has gone to the environment and residents' health.
He explained that if any radioactive substance had leaked, even from a reported tube meltdown this month after the sixth test, strong sensors in the area that "sniff" the atmosphere could have detected it. The same is true for tests, '' he said.
Days after the sixth test, the South Korean government announced it had detected trace quantities of radioactive xenon, though it never stated conclusively where it came out.
Ferenc says it is "very, very unlikely" that it came in the Punggye-ri site. He is also doubtful of groundwater contamination. Testing near stone could build steam up which vents contamination into the air. That is in the interest of no one.
Both Lee and Rhee still communicated with each other, with cellphones smuggled into North Korea from China.
Rhee says that her family is sick, together with headaches and vomiting, but no medicine helps. She is surprised that in her new house the rights of animals are protected. But again she states, her people's health is ignored.
