The testimony of controversial defector Shin Dong-hyuk contributed only a "minor element" to last year's United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) report on human rights abuses in North Korea, Judge Michael Kirby, chair of the COI, said at a Washington, D.C. event on Tuesday.

Statements by Shin, a well-known defector-activist who admitted changing his story about time spent in a North Korean gulag, were "not a significant part" of the UN's work and were "referred to twice I think in the report of the Commission of Inquiry," Kirby explained.