Updated 12.50

A UN inquiry has described the treatment of people at prison camps in North Korea as 'strikingly similar' to that metered out by the Nazis.

It's calling for the secretive communist country to be referred to the International Criminal Court.

North Korea itself has described the allegations as fabrications.

But the UN Commission of Inquiry's Chairman, Michael Kirby, told Newstalk's Pat Kenny Show the evidence is damning:

Mr. Kirby spoke of 80-120,000 people thought to be held in prison camps in isolated parts of the North Korean countryside. Witnesses who spoke to the UN told of inhumane conditions at the camps, including severe malnutrition, stories of whole generations of families forceably held, and Mothers ordered to kill their own children.

Michael Kirby says hundreds of thousands of babies are being born into deprivation while huge amounts of money are spent on the military and worship of the Kim family.

Harlan Ullman, senior advisor to the Atlantic Council in Washington, told Newstalk's Breakfast we're doomed to see more of these human rights abuses:

Mr. Ullman says there's very little the outside world can do unless they're willing to respond with military force.