The largest North Korean uranium smelter has reduced operations significantly because of fuel shortages, a defector who worked at one of the communist state's nuclear installations said Monday.
Kim Dae-ho, who defected to South Korea last week through China, said the plant can handle 200,000 tons of uranium ore a year but had processed only 100 tons per year in recent years."Many factories in the North are idle because there is not enough fuel to run the machines," he said. "Our plant was no exception.
"Our plant cannot even change the worn-out tires of trucks that carry the uranium ore from the mines."
He said his plant, the Namchun Chemical Enterprise Co. south of the North's capital of Pyongyang, was the bigger of two uranium smelters in North Korea.
Looking tired and gaunt at a news conference, Kim said work-related disease and shortages of food and material drove morale at the plant to "rock bottom."
Many of the 8,000 workers complained about losing hair and suffering from liver ailments and other symptoms of exposure to radioactivity, he said.
Kim said he fled to China in early February after he lost the equivalent of $1,000 in company money, for which he faced punishment. He said he left his parents, a wife and two daughters in the North.