GETTY North Korea news: Radiation from the Punggye-ri nuclear test site is reportedly making locals ill

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Defectors fleeing the oppressive regime have reported residents from towns and villages near the Punggye-ri facility are facing horrendous symptoms including headaches, vomiting and deformities among newborn babies. The Kim dynasty has detonated at least six nuclear weapons in tests at the underground site since 2006, with the last two taking place since Kim Jong-un came to power in 2016. And the authoritarian government claims its latest test in September was a much more powerful hydrogen bomb. But former residents are now reporting the landscape around the site has turned into a wasteland, with newly planted trees dying and underground wells drying up due to the nuclear activity.

GETTY Kim Jong-un's nuclear test site at Punggye-ri is a warren of underground tunnels

So many people died we began calling it 'ghost disease’ Defector Lee Jeong Hwa

Speaking in Seoul, defector Lee Jeong Hwa told NBC News: ”So many people died we began calling it 'ghost disease’. “We thought we were dying because we were poor and we ate badly. Now we know it was the radiation." And Rhee Yeong Sil, who lived just a few miles from the test site until she defected in 2013, said her neighbour had given birth to a deformed baby. She said: ”We couldn’t determine the gender of the baby, because it didn’t have any genitals.

"In North Korea, deformed babies are usually killed. So the parents killed the baby." The defector, who is now in her 60s, has managed to keep in contact with her loved ones in the North via a smuggled mobile phone and says her whole family is suffering from headaches and vomiting. Both North Koreans said they had no idea the tremors they felt when the weapons were detonated near their homes in Kilju county were nuclear bombs. The Punggye-ri facility is a maze of subterranean tunnels, and allows Kim to test his deadly weapons away from the eyes of surveillance planes and spy satellites.

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In October, several tunnels at the test site collapsed killing around 100 workers who were inside the facility at the time. A further 100 were reportedly killed in a second collapse while trying to rescue their trapped colleagues. A study published by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University on October 17 concluded the latest test had caused “substantial damage” to the tunnel network. The report warned further tests at Punggye-ri could “cause the mountain to collapse and release radioactivity into the environment”.

GETTY/38 NORTH Satellites are able to photograph activity ahead of nuclear tests at Punggye-ri

But experts have had a hard time corroborating the reports of defectors. Specialists at Seoul National University says they believe their accounts, but tests to check for radiation poisoning have come back negative. Suh Kune-yull, a professor of nuclear engineering at the university, said: "I don’t think they’re lying. "We have to take their word, but I don’t have much reliable information."

GETTY The site at Punggye-ri has expanded - this satellite image captured new tunnels being dug in 2013