The National Human Rights Commission of Korea announced on Wednesday the results of its survey on human rights violations in concentration camps for political prisoners in North Korea.

The commission said there are six such detainment facilities in the North, down from 13 in the 1970s, and the number of detainees is estimated to be about 200-thousand.

It said beatings and torture are widespread in the concentration camps and that punishment was strengthened in 2006 for those who had been repatriated from China after attempting to flee the Stalinist country.

The commission says it obtained the information from the Seoul-based Database Center for North Korean Human Rights which conducted a survey on some 370 North Korean defectors from April to December 2009.

This is the first time a state agency has conducted a comprehensive investigation and analysis on the human rights of political prisoners and concentration camps in North Korea.