SEOUL 

Almost 1,300 square kilometers -- that is the total area of North Korea’s camps for political prisoners, according to a South Korean lawmaker Wednesday.

The ruling Saenuri Party’s Yoon Sang-hyun made the claim of 1,247.9 square kilometers during the country’s ongoing annual parliamentary audit, "based on material from research institutes at home and abroad and the analysis of satellite imagery."

Given Seoul’s size of just over 605 square kilometers, the claim resonated with politicians in the South Korean capital at a time when Pyongyang has seemingly been opening up to greater cooperation with the outside world.

But despite high-level inter-Korean talks being planned for the coming weeks following Saturday’s visit to the South by North Korea’s second-in-command, Yoon called for global efforts "aimed at dismantling" the prisons.

"Concentration camps for political prisoners are the pinnacle of the reign of terror, which carries out the worst violations of human rights," said Yoon.

Up to 120,000 such prisoners were being held at five camps across North Korea as of June, according to Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification.

Wednesday’s claim came as Choe Myong-nam, a North Korean official in charge of United Nations affairs and human rights issues, told a media briefing that the North has no prison camps -- but rather described them as "detention centers where people are improved through their mentality and look on their wrongdoings."

Choe would not respond to a question concerning the status of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un -- whose regular public appearances came to an end at the start of last month.

Amid widespread but unsubstantiated speculation of health concerns or even a coup in Pyongyang, Kim was once more absent Tuesday from a national meeting to mark the 17th anniversary of his late father Kim Jong-il’s election as general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

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