U.N. investigators began public hearings Wednesday in the U.S. capital aimed at gathering information on North Korea's human rights abuses.

The two-day hearings are part of overseas activities by the Commission of Inquiry (COI) looking into whether there are crimes against humanity in the secretive communist nation.

The three-member body, led by retired Australian Judge Michael Kirby, conducted similar events in Seoul and Tokyo in August, followed by a session in London this week.

The COI's probe has been hampered by North Korea's refusal to cooperate.

The commission, launched in March under a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution, has focused on collecting information from North Korean defectors and experts.

Speaking at a press conference in New York Tuesday, Kirby said he was moved to tears by testimony on the suffering of North Koreans during previous hearings.

"I am a judge of 35 years experience and I have seen in that time a lot of melancholy court cases which somewhat harden one's heart," he said. "But even in my own case, there have been a number of the testimonies which have moved me to tears and I am not ashamed to say that. You would have be a stoney-hearted person not to be moved by the stories that the Commission of Inquiry has received."

On the first day of the session in Washington, meanwhile, several North Korean defectors provided their own first-hand accounts of the human rights conditions in their homeland.

On Thursday, the panel is scheduled to have the views of North Korea experts in the U.S., including Roberta Cohen, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Jared Genser, a former fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, and David Hawk, a long-time human rights advocate. (Yonhap News)