That, according to the Korean Bar Association, is the abuse faced by female prisoners in North Korea

Pyongyang, North Korea (LifeNews.com) — Another report about the prison situation in North Korea confirms previous ones which have maintained that pregnant women in prisons there are routinely subjected to forced abortions. The Asian nation has been repeatedly condemned for its human rights abuses and the new report features firsthand accounts from North Korean refugees.

The Korean Bar Association, based in South Korea, released the new report which is based in interviews with about 100 North Korean defectors who came to the South after 2000.

The report shows that North Korean officials frequently jail citizens of the Asian nation on bogus charges and do not abide by the law when doing so. Some of the abuses include torture and sexual harassment of female inmates.

In the case of women in prison, 58 percent of the defectors interviewed said they had seen women be forced to have an abortion or had heard about such abortions take place.

This is the first time the Bar Association has released a report on North Korea’s human rights record since 1989 when it started monitoring the human rights record of South Korea.

Lee Kook-jae, a member of the bar association, told the Korea Times, “We researched North Korea’s human rights condition from the legal point of view for the first time. The world should make efforts to improve human rights there.”

The new Prime Minister of Japan is pushing the abduction issue to the next level

TOKYO Japan has set up a Cabinet headquarters led by new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to push North Korea to provide further information on the fate of Japanese citizens it abducted in the 1970s and ’80s, the government said Friday.

The headquarters will push for further information on the abductees and seek the quick return of any remaining survivors, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki said.

North Korea has acknowledged abducting about a dozen Japanese who were used to train North Korean spies in Japanese language and culture. It allowed five to return under Abe’s predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, and says all the others are dead.

But Japan says the North has not provided enough information, and believes that more Japanese were taken than the North has acknowledged.

Later Friday, Abe and members of the headquarters met with a group of families of the abduction victims, vowing to step up their effort to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.

Do not expect Japan to patch up relations with the North anytime soon until it spills the beans.

Spreading freedom through the airwaves

The US State Department has allocated US$1 million to fund North Korean radio broadcasting businesses led by three organisations for North Korean human rights in South Korea.

The three groups are Open Radio for North Korea, Freedom North Korea Broadcast and another North Korean human rights advocacy group. The third group requested its real name not be released, Radio Netherlands Media Network reports.

The money is separate from funding to increase the airtime for radio broadcasting toward North Korea passed by the US Congress in 2004.

The US government is expected to finance the radio business for fiscal year 2008 after reviewing the previous year’s business outcome.

The three groups funded by the US are set apart from other broadcasting outlets for North Korea, in that they are run by small group of people and seek to differentiate content.

These groups were assigned a radio frequency from a third country as the South Korean government denied them licence to air to North Korea.

Unfortunately, it seems the relic known as Sunshine still applies.