SEOUL, September 3, 2008 (AFP) - A US activist has won the Seoul Peace Prize for her campaigns to improve the human rights of North Koreans and of Sahrawi refugees from Western Sahara, the award's committee announced Wednesday.

Suzanne Scholte, president of the Defense Forum Foundation, was selected as the ninth winner of the biennial prize worth 200,000 dollars.

'At a time when countries are purposely neglecting human rights conditions in North Korea for their political interests, Ms Scholte has taken the lead in raising awareness of the miserable plight of North Korean refugees,' the committee said in a statement.

'It is a great honour to receive this great prize, even when I just did what I should do,' it quoted her as saying.

The committee said her efforts led in 1999 to the first US Senate hearing on the North's camps for political prisoners. She had also helped arrange numerous other Congressional hearings and briefings.

Scholte hosted the first appearance in the US of survivors of the camps. She testified on rights conditions in the communist state and the sufferings of North Korean refugees hiding in China before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.

In 2003 she hosted the appearance of Hwang Jang-Yop, North Korea's highest ranking defector, on Capitol Hill.

She had also petitioned the United Nations General Assembly to address the plight of Sahrawi refugees and called for a referendum on self-determination in Western Sahara.

The former Spanish colony was annexed in 1975 by Morocco, leading to an exodus of refugees. The Polisario Front, backed by Algeria, wants independence for the territory but the two sides have agreed to a UN-monitored truce.

The Seoul Peace Prize was established in 1990 to commemorate the 1988 Olympics in the city.

Previous winners include Bangladeshi microcredit expert Muhammad Yunus, then-UN secretary general Kofi Annan, former Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel, and international relief organisations such as Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and Oxfam.