A Japanese human rights activist says a woman in North Korea was hospitalized in Pyongyang last month after being infected with the deadly avian influenza.

According to Lee young-hwa, who heads a Japanese group monitoring human rights in the communist state, bird flu struck chickens and other birds at three different places in the North Korean capital last month.

Lee said that a member of the human rights group in Pyongyang came across the information, adding that the strain of bird flu was not identified and that there was no other information on her condition or how she contracted the virus.

Lee said there is a possibility that the bird flu had broken out in Pyongyang sometime last fall, adding that an ethnic Korean scientist in Japan was known to have traveled to the North last September with ten packs of the anti-flu agent Tamiflu for hospital use.

The activist added that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il had issued an order to party and government organs at the beginning of this year to work out measures for controlling and preventing bird flu.