U.N. says no improvement in North Korea human rights

TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea continues to carry out public executions and torture of its citizens in a systematic violation of human rights, a United Nations envoy said on Friday.

"There are many grave negative situations," Vitit Muntarbhorn, a U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the communist state, told reporters in Tokyo.

While North Korea has recently granted U.N. food agencies better access in the country, Pyongyang had yet to take any action to improve its human rights record, he said.

Muntarbhorn, a law professor in Thailand, is in Tokyo on a five-day visit to meet Japanese government officials and families of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea decades ago.

He plans to visit South Korea on Saturday to interview North Korean refugees resettled in the South.

The UN envoy said he had received reports of public executions recently in North Korea, while torture of dissidents was an everyday practice in the reclusive communist state.

"The national law doesn't permit torture, and yet we know that happens all the time," he said, adding prisoners lived in terrible conditions.

Human rights groups say North Korea maintains a vast network of political prison camps to stamp out dissent and uses public executions to intimidate the masses.

"Overall, there is still a very serious systematic set of violations of human rights," Muntarbhorn said.

Washington and rights groups have repeatedly accused North Korea of imprisoning, torturing and executing those who try to flee abroad and are then sent back.

Muntarbhorn is to submit a report on human rights in North Korea to the United Nations in March.