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SEOUL, Jan 8 (AFP): Stalinist North Korea is demanding billions of dollars in compensation for alleged atrocities against its prisoners of war and spies formerly held in South Korea, a demand which sparked outrage Sunday among politicians in Seoul.
There was no official response from the government to the unprecedented demand. But the main opposition party highlighted the North's own rights record, which often comes in for strong international criticism.
The formal damages complaint was filed to the South's human rights commission through a border office Friday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency said.
The complaint insisted Seoul compensate former North Korean long-term prisoners for their time in "nightmarish prisons" run by former authoritarian governments in the South.
Meanwhile, United States and South Korea on Sunday withdrew their last personnel from the site of two partly-built North Korean light-water reactors after a US-North Korean nuclear deal was officially scrapped.
A 57-strong final contingent, including a US citizen and 56 South Korean engineers and workers, returned by ship to South Korea's east coast from North Korea Sunday afternoon, the unification ministry said.
The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO) officially terminated the project two months ago amid a fresh nuclear standoff.
The two light-water reactors were promised, along with replacement fuel supplies, under a 1994 US-brokered deal to end a crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons efforts.
The Stalinist state had been using a heavy-water reactor capable of producing plutonium for nuclear bombs.
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