Three video tapes showing living conditions in North Korea, including two that shows scenes of starvation taken by a North Korean refugee who snuck back into his country, were given their first public showing in Japan on Friday.

"This is the first time that a North Korean refugee, named An Chol, sneaked into areas where foreigners are strictly forbidden to enter," said Lee Young Hwa, who heads "Rescue The North Korean People! Urgent Action Network (RENK)" the Osaka-based nongovernmental organization that sponsored the viewing at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan in Tokyo. Mnay members of the organization are residents of Japan of Korean ancestry.

An had taken refuge in China, but in November crossed the Tunan River back into North Korea with a video camera given to him by RENK, said Lee, who is also an associate professor of economics at Kansai University.

In the footage taken by An, children in a town in the central part of the country roam the black markets and search for leftovers. They are all in rags and few are wearing shoes.

According to Lee, the children were abandoned by their parents or were orphaned because of the country's famine.

Some of the childrens' parents disappeared after going to look for food, while others lost their siblings to starvation, Lee said.

He said that there have been other films taken by Japanese depicting conditions in North Korea, but they were filmed at locations where foreigners are allowed to visit.

A third video showing North Korean children who fled their country for China in early October was taken in that country by RENK, a South Korean Buddhist group and a Japanese freelance journalist.

In that footage, all the children complain of not having enough to eat.

In An's videos, a boy can be seen tearing at leftover boiled crab's leg left on the ground.

A starving girl does not react to An's questions and appears to have no energy. Another girl tries to dig up sewage for drinking water.

"Children are always afraid of being questioned by adults for fear of being captured and sent to concentration camps, which North Korean authorities call 'rescue facilities,'" Lee said.

Lee also said An was the first person to ever film one of these concentration camps.

In the footage, one camp is revealed to be a former four-story hotel.

Many orphans and homeless children being kept there appear to be on the verge of starvation and receive two meals a day--including a breakfast that includes a tablespoonful of dissolved corn flour.

Lee said that most of the children have tried to flee from the camp by jumping out of third and fourth floor windows and that some of them died from the falls.

"On the border areas in China, children who have fled from North Korea are begging for money from foreign tourists--most (of the tourists) are South Koreans," Lee said.

An conceals his face in his videos, but said: "My brothers and sisters all died of starvation under the dictatorial regime. I want to convey what is really happening in the country."

Lee said that he met An Chol in March and that he gave him the compact video camera to take the videos.

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Added December 19,  1998