By Riyaz ul Khaliq
ISTANBUL (AA) – South Korea announced on Thursday to conduct radiation exposure tests on people who had escaped North Korea.
The tests will begin in May and continue for next six months on 89 defectors who fled their residences around North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear testing site which is located in Kilju county in the country's northeastern province of Hamgyong.
According to Seoul-based Yonhap News, Pyongyang has “conducted all six of its nuclear tests at the site.”
It added that 796 North Koreans “who used to live in areas near Punggye-ri defected to the South in the wake of the North's first nuclear detonation in October 2006.”
“It is meaningful to preemptively check the possibility of exposure to radioactive leaks and overall health conditions for those who may have sustained damage from the North's nuclear tests,” an official of South Korea’s Unification Ministry said.
Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test in 2006.
Seoul held such radiation exposure tests on 40 North Korean defectors in 2017 and 2018.
Seoul's announcement to hold radiation exposure tests on defectors came the same day when North Korea fired an "intermediate- or longer-range ballistic missile toward" the East Sea, also known as Sea of Japan in Tokyo.
A South Korean official said Pyongyang "appears to have tested a new missile system."
Seoul and Washington "are looking into various possibilities, including the launch having involved a solid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)," Yonhap reported.
The launch of missile had prompted Japan to issue emergency alert, warning "it may land" near the northernmost Hokkaido island.
However, Tokyo later withdrew the warning.