YONGSAN GARRISON, South Korea — A Camp Humphreys-based military intelligence unit has won one of the Pentagon’s highest awards for field-level maintenance of weapons systems, officials said Friday.

According to a Defense Department press release, the 3rd Military Intelligence Battalion (Aerial Exploitation) won the medium-sized unit category of the Secretary of Defense Maintenance Awards.

The annual awards recognize maintenance of systems used by units in the field, officials said.

The award was presented Thursday night in Houston at the 2004 DOD Maintenance Symposium and Exhibition.

Report: N. Korea holding 600 in prison camps

SEOUL — North Korea is holding more than 600 political prisoners in “concentration camps” in the country, a South Korean civic group said Friday.

According to the Democracy Network Against North Korean Gulags, the prisoners include former government officials who had been purged from the communist party. The three camps are located in the northwestern region of North Korea, the group said.

Some of those held in the camp have family members who defected to the South, the group’s report claimed. The reports were based on testimony from North Korean defectors, the group said.