Some 200 scientists and key researchers are among the total staff, lawmaker Lee Mi-Kyung quoted a unification ministry report as saying.

Eleven of the facilities are at the Yongbyon nuclear complex and there are also nine uranium-related mines and facilities at Pyongsan in North Hwanghae province and Sunchon in South Pyongan province, she said.

The ministry confirmed the figures in the report.

"The government needs to set up a concrete plan on how to manage North Korea's nuclear facilities, its scientists and overall resources" in case of a regime collapse, Yonhap news agency quoted Lee as saying.

This could be modelled on the US plan following the collapse of the Soviet Union, she said.

The North shut down Yongbyon in 2007 under a six-nation nuclear disarmament deal. In April it quit the forum and announced it was resuming the reprocessing of plutonium from spent fuel rods at the reactor there.

It carried out its second atomic weapons test in May.

The North also says it is in the final phase of an experimental highly enriched uranium programme, another way to make an atomic bomb.

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