he loved his i-Phones and sports

[ana_pirogova]

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has been warned that he could face prosecution for crimes against humanity after a United Nations inquiry accused him of some of the worst human rights abuses since the Second World War.

In some of the harshest criticism ever unleashed by the international community against the Pyongyang regime, a UN panel branded it “a shock to the conscience of humanity”.

Michael Kirby, a retired Australian judge who has spent nearly a year taking testimony from victims of the regime, said much of it reminded him of atrocities perpetrated by Nazi Germany and Pol Pot’s Cambodia.

Yesterday his team published a 374-page report detailing allegations of murder, torture, rape, abductions, enslavement, and starvation, describing North Korea as a dictatorship “that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world”.

It came after a decade of near fruitless efforts by UN human rights workers to establish a dialogue with Pyongyang, which denounced the inquiry panel members as “human scum” and refused to allow them entry to the country.

Instead, the panel took testimony from more than 80 former North Koreans now living abroad, including ex-prison guards, who give evidence in public hearings in London, Tokyo, Washington and Seoul.