Nuclear detonations at North Korea’s Punggye-ri test site has caused radiation that may have exposed hundreds of thousands of local citizens and endangered people in neighboring countries with contaminated agricultural products, a new report showed on Tuesday.

The Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), a Seoul-based human rights organization, mapped the possible range of leakage and dissemination of radioactive materials through groundwater and said it “points to a large area and population at risk.”

North Korea has conducted six underground nuclear tests at the Punggye-ri facility since 2006.

The TJWG said radioactive materials could have spread in a radius of 25 miles around the site, where more than 1 million people live and rely on groundwater for many of their daily activities.

“The populations in neighboring countries such as South Korea, China and Japan are also exposed to the radioactive risk from the contaminated agricultural and marine products imported from North Korea,” the report said.

Local delicacies such as pine mushrooms have long been smuggled and distributed overseas as an illicit source of funds for the North Korean regime.

The report’s authors said their findings show North Korea’s nuclear program is not only a security risk but also poses serious health concerns.

“This report is significant for confirming that North Korea’s nuclear tests threaten the right to life and the right to health of not only the North Korean people, but also of those in South Korea and other neighboring countries,” Hubert Younghwan Lee, TJWG executive director, said in a statement.

Pyongyang has maintained that there was no leakage of harmful materials from its previous tests but it has not allowed international inspectors or journalists to verify the claims.

In 2015, South Korean authorities detected nine times the standard level of radioactive cesium isotopes in dried hedgehog mushrooms imported from North Korea disguised as Chinese products.

CURRENTPH NEWS SERVICE