Wrapping up its year-long investigation, a special United Nations panel on North Korea's human rights abuses plans to publish a final report on the issue next week, a media report said Wednesday.

In March last year, the U.N. launched the Commission of Inquiry, a three-man investigation body led by retired Australian Judge Michael Kirby, and has conducted a probe into the rights situation in the communist country.

It was the U.N.'s first attempt to launch such an official investigative mission on the North's widely condemned human rights abuses.

After their one-year probe, which included hearings and face-to-face interviews with dozens of victims and experts, the COI plans to hold a press conference in Geneva next Monday to give a briefing on their findings, according to the Washington-based Radio Free Asia 

The report with extensive pieces of evidence on abusive cases by Pyongyang will be "a milestone" in the history of the North's human rights situation, U.N. spokesman Rolando Gomez was quoted by the RFA as saying.

The final report plans to be presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council next month, he added.

North Korea has been accused of grave rights abuses ranging from holding hundreds of thousands of political prisoners in concentration camps to committing torture and public executions.

Pyongyang, however, has denied the accusations, calling them U.S.-led propaganda to topple its regime. (Yonhap)