The U.S. State Department has criticized North Korea as 'one of the world's most repressive and brutal regimes' in its annual human rights report.

According to the 2004 report on 196 countries worldwide, an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 North Koreans are believed to be political prisoners in detention camps in remote areas, and defectors report that many prisoners have died from torture, starvation, disease, exposure, or a combination of causes.

The report claimed that in the case of women prisoners, many were forced to have abortions, and babies who were born in prison cells were killed at birth. The report cited that North Korean citizens are denied any form of freedom of the press, freedom of speech or of association.

The report also said that after the Korean War ended in 1953, the North abducted more than 480 South Korean fishermen in a scare tactics campaign against Koreans residing in China and Russia.

The 2000 kidnapping by North Korean agents of a South Korean pastor who helped North Korean asylum-seekers in China was also mentioned in the report.