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(Image: GETTY)

And his first victims are his own people, who’ve reportedly suffered a surge in incurable diseases, foetal deformities and deaths.

World leaders lined up to condemn North Korea after its two nuclear tests this year, including one where it detonated its biggest bomb yet.

Yet the hermit kingdom continues to menace its enemies with the weapons and has repeatedly threatened attacks on neighbouring South Korea and the US.

(Image: RODONG SINMUN)

Now North Koreans near the detonation site are paying the price for Kim Jong-un’s nuclear ambitions, one defector told Daily Star Online.

Drinking water close to the Mount Mantap test facility had become contaminated, he revealed, dealing a deadly dose of radiation.

And after ten years of tests, residents of surrounding Kilju county were starting to suffer the side effects, he said.

He told us: “Mantap mountain is becoming a radioactively contaminated site due to the government’s nuclear craze.

"The people who drink the water are suffering various incurable diseases, foetal deformities and an unusually high death rate."

Kathryn Higley, head of Nuclear Science and Engineering at Oregon State University, described how radiation could spread.

She said it was “definitely a possibility” that the North’s underground tests had irradiated the groundwater.

But she said the process of building nuclear weaponry was likelier to cause the sickness described.

The Soviet Union found that out when it dumped radioactive waste in the Techa River near Russia’s southern Ural Mountains.

Dr Higley said: "It got into the river and they didn't tell the people living downstream that they were exposed."

Locals suffered up to 20 times as much radiation as the Chernobyl victims, according to one documentary.

It caused chronic radiation sickness, said Dr Higley, raising the risk of cancer and congenital abnormalities.

(Image: NC/GETTY)

However, North Korea’s WMD factory is supposed to be the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Centre, 200 miles from Kilju.

On the other hand, the sickness could come from simple mining – North Korea digs the uranium enriched at Yongbyon right out the earth.

Propaganda describes the North’s uranium supply as "infinite" and it is known that prisoners in North Korean concentration camps are forced to mine.

One such facility, Hwasong Concentration Camp, sits less than 10 miles from the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site on Mount Mantap.

(Image: GOOGLE/GETTY)

Gulag survivor Kang Chol-hwan said Hwasong – where prisoners are never released – was "notorious even in North Korea".

And while it's unclear exactly what’s mined there, Dr Higley said it didn’t need to be radioactive to be toxic.

She said: "If you are doing a lot of mining it can release toxic elements into streams and groundwaters.

"You can then have similar adverse consequences because you are putting things in the water that can cause real problems.

(Image: GETTY)

"It could be mining radioactive material or simply heavy metals. If you are going after coal, you are going to pull out a rock and smash it.

"Then you grind it up and use some element to get the material out. In the past they have used mercury or cyanide solutions."

"If that gets into the water, the water could look great but could be very toxic," she told Daily Star Online.

Dr Higley said higher doses of radiation could also cause microcephaly, the shrunken head condition famously linked to the Zika virus.