UN panel on North Korean abuses says report still stands despite prison camp survivor's 'inaccuracies'

The head of the UN commission that produced a damning report on North Korean rights abuses has dismissed Pyongyang's claim that doubts about the credibility of a prominent witness made the panel's findings "invalid."

"The partial retraction of Shin Dong-hyuk of the testimony he gave to the Commission of Inquiry on North Korea is not significant for the report, conclusions or recommendations of the commission," said retired Australian judge Michael Kirby yesterday.

Shin, a well-known defector and Pyongyang critic, admitted this week that elements of his best-selling gulag survivor book Escape from Camp 14 were inaccurate, although he stressed the crucial details of his suffering and torture still stood.

For his part, Kirby noted Shin was only one of 300 witnesses interviewed by his commission, whose overall findings were based on a mass of "overwhelming" corroborative evidence. "In the big picture of gross abuses of human rights of the entire population of North Korea over more than 65 years, his experience - although very important to him and his family - is not critical to the inquiry," he added.

But a spokesman for North Korea's Association for Human Rights Studies said Shin's admissions "self-exposed" the flimsy foundations of efforts to censure Pyongyang for its rights record.

In a statement carried by the North's official KCNA news agency, the spokesman noted Shin was one of the best-known defectors who testified to Kirby's panel.