The chairman of a UN Commission of Inquiry on North Korea on Monday condemned "systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights" in the Stalinist country.

Michael Kirby told a session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that the North Korean regime's crimes against humanity are "as chilling as those of the Nazis… or Cambodia's Khmer Rouge," which killed 1.7 million of its own people.

"These crimes arose from policies established at the highest level" of the regime and responsible should face the International Criminal Court, Kirby added.

At the same session Shigeo Iizuka, a representative of the Japanese Association of the Families of Victims Kidnapped by North Korea, testified for one minute how his sister Yaeko Taguchi was kidnapped to the North.

Shin Dong-hyuk, a North Korean born in a political prison camp, said, "If the North Korean dictator has freedom, so should North Korean residents enjoy freedom."

Pyongyang's envoy to Geneva So Se-pyong walked out in protest against the Japanese delegation's remarks.

