Report: North Korean nuclear tests pose radiation risk to region – By Thomas Maresca (UPI) / Feb 21, 2023
SEOUL, Feb. 21 (UPI) — Nuclear detonations at North Korea’s Punggye-ri test site may have exposed hundreds of thousands of local citizens to high levels of radiation and endangered people in neighboring countries with contaminated agricultural products, a new report said Tuesday.
The Transitional Justice Working Group, a Seoul-based human rights organization, mapped the possible range of leakage and dissemination of radioactive materials through groundwater and said it “points to a large area and population at risk.”
North Korea has conducted six underground nuclear tests at the Punggye-ri facility since 2006.
The TJWG report said radioactive materials could have spread in a radius of 25 miles around the site, where more than 1 million people live and rely on groundwater for many of their daily activities.
