A mother forced to drown her own baby and a prison camp inmate compelled to eat rodents and lizards just to survive -- these are some of the horrific experiences documented by a United Nations inquiry into human rights violations in North Korea . According to the man who headed up the study , examples of `` unspeakable atrocities '' collected to date suggest widespread abuses on a scale requiring an international response . `` What we have seen and heard so far -- the specificity , detail and shocking character of the personal testimony -- appears without doubt to demand follow-up action by the world community , and accountability on behalf of the Democratic People 's Republic of Korea , '' Michael Kirby , chair of the three-member commission of inquiry , told the U.N. 's Human Rights Council Tuesday . The remarks were contained in a draft report updating the council on the work of the commission , ahead of a final report to the U.N. General Assembly slated for March . Pyongyang has refused to cooperate with the investigation and rejects its validity . Kirby said the interim findings were based on testimony given at public hearings in Seoul and Tokyo last month , from sources including North Korean defectors , former regime officials , survivors of political prison camps , and the families of Japanese and South Koreans abducted by North Korean agents . `` The individual testimonies emerging from the public hearings , of which these are just instances , do not represent isolated cases , '' he said . `` They are representative of large-scale patterns that may constitute systematic and gross human rights violations . '' READ MORE : Defectors describe horror , heartbreak in North Korea 's labor camps . Kirby said the inquiry had heard `` from ordinary people who faced torture and imprisonment for doing nothing more than watching foreign soap operas or holding a religious belief . '' One woman had given an account of witnessing a female inmate forced to drown her own baby in a bucket , while a man had spoken of being forced to burn the corpses of many prisoners who had died of starvation , before scattering their remains on crops . `` The commission listened to political prison camp survivors who suffered through childhoods of starvation and unspeakable atrocities , as a product of the 'guilt by association ' practice , punishing other generations for a family member 's perceived views or affiliation , '' he said , referring to the account of Shin Dong-hyuk , the high-profile North Korean defector whose horrific experiences were documented in the biography `` Escape from Camp 14 . Imprisoned from birth , he said , Shin had eaten `` rodents , lizards and grass to survive , and witness ( ed ) the public execution of his mother and brother . '' Kirby also referred to the testimony given by the parents of Megumi Yokota , a 13-year-old Japanese girl who was abducted by North Korean agents on her way home from school in 1977 . Yokota was one of 13 Japanese kidnapped by North Korea and held in a North Korean facility as a way of training spies ; the regime has said that she and seven others are dead . International attention on North Korea has previously focused on halting its nuclear weapons program , but , in response to increasingly detailed reports of human rights abuses emerging from the isolated state , the U.N. 's Human Rights Council elected in March to establish the commission . Human rights groups estimate that as many as 200,000 people are being held in a network of prison camps in North Korea , as part of a system to crush political dissent . READ MORE : Torture , starvation rife in North Korea 's political prisons . Kirby noted that there had been `` rays of hope of change '' emerging from North Korea in the past -- including the regime signing an international convention recognizing the rights of the disabled , and moving to reopen the Kaesong industrial complex , operated in cooperation with South Korea -- but these had proven ephemeral . North Korea had stonewalled invitations to participate in the inquiry , he said , with its official news agency rejecting the testimony as `` slander '' put forward by `` human scum , '' he said . He said the commission would seek to identify which North Korean institutions and officials were responsible for gross human rights violations , but did not clarify the mechanisms through which any prosecutions might occur . North Korea is not a member of the International Criminal Court , but the court is empowered to investigate potential abuse by non-signatories at the request of the U.N. Security Council .
United Nations inquiry looking into human rights violations in North Korea . The rights probe documented `` unspeakable atrocities '' after witness interviews . " Comment: It's a bit of an oversimplification, but the UN isn't just about investigating crimes against humanity ; it also has to do with international law and treaties that are binding on all North Korea has rejected this testimony as `` slander '' put forward by `` human scum ''