The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said Tuesday it will seek to strengthen its on-site examinations of the lives of North Koreans who fled their impoverished country.

An NHRC official said the panel has been monitoring the situation of North Korean escapees in China and Mongolia since 2004.

As improving the North Korean human rights situation is one of the commission's key tasks for the year, the panel said it will conduct continual on-site surveys, if necessary.

The commission plans to interview hundreds of North Korean defectors in the South this year for a report on the North's human rights violations.