North Korea’s Yongbyon facility has a decades-long history marred by fatal accidents, radiation poisoning and human experimentation, one defector with working experience of it says.

In 2002 a group called ‘Rescue the North Korean People Urgent Action Network’ interviewed defector Lee Mi (a pseudonym) about her work as a researcher at the secretive Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center in the 1990’s.

The interview, conducted originally in Japanese and translate this year for the first time into English, reveals intricate details behind the facilities’ construction, the consequences for those working at it, and how the North Korean government grew the nuclear program