Ban calls on North Korea to improve human rights

Jul 4, 2008, 14:09 GMT

Seoul - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, on the second day of a visit to his South Korean homeland, called on North Korea Friday to improve the human rights situation there.

There few areas of North Korean life where human rights were inadequately protected and areas where these were abused, he said after talks with South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung Soo.

'This is an unacceptable situation,' said Ban, who had been South Korean foreign minister from 2004 until 2006.

The Pyongyang regime has long been accused of massive interference in the basic freedoms of its people, with international human right organisations and North Korean refugees reporting cases of torture, public executions, prisoner camps and forced labour all enforced for political reasons.

Ban stressed his readiness to visit North Korea in order to support efforts to end Pyongyang's controversial nuclear programme.

Last week Pyongyang delivered its delayed nuclear declaration and blew up a cooling tower at its main reactor site.

Ban arrived in Seoul Thursday on his first visit to his homeland since taking the top post at the UN last year.

He is on a five-day visit and will also meet with Foreign Minister Yu Myung Hwan and President Lee Myung Bak for talks on the situation on the divided Korean peninsula, north-east Asian regional issues as well as co-operation between South Korea and the United Nations.

He arrived in Seoul from China as part of an Asian tour that also took him to Japan. He will return to Japan to attend the July 7-9 summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations.