•HRES 109 IH 
Whereas the Government of North Korea holds an estimated 
150,000 to 200,000 political prisoners in camps that its 
State Security Agency manages through the use of forced 
labor, beatings, torture, and executions, and in which 
many prisoners also die from disease, starvation, and ex-
posure; 
Whereas according to eyewitness testimony provided to the 
Committee on International Relations of the House of 
Representatives by camp survivors, camp inmates have 
been used as sources of slave labor for the production of 
export goods, as targets for martial arts practice, and as 
experimental victims in the testing of chemical and bio-
logical poisons; 
Whereas according to eyewitness testimony provided to the 
Committee on International Relations by a camp sur-
vivor, female camp prisoners are not permitted to have 
children and their newborn babies are routinely and bru-
tally killed by camp authorities; 
Whereas according to the State Department ‘‘[g]enuine reli-
gious freedom does not exist’’ in North Korea and, in the 
words of the United States Commission on International 
Religious Freedom, ‘‘[t]he North Korean state severely 
represses public and private religious activities’’; 
Whereas the United States Commission on International Reli-
gious Freedom has highlighted ‘‘reports that [North Ko-
rean] officials have arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and 
sometimes executed North Korean citizens who were 
found to have ties with overseas Christian evangelical 
groups operating across the border in China, as well as 
those who engaged in such unauthorized religious activi-
ties as public religious expression and persuasion’’;
•HRES 109 IH 
Whereas according to eyewitness testimony provided to the 
Committee on International Relations in May 2002, a 
North Korean prison camp survivor witnessed a group of 
Christian prisoners being tortured to death in 1990 for 
refusing to repudiate their faith; 
Whereas more than 1,000,000 North Koreans are estimated 
to have died of starvation since 1995 because of the fail-
ure of the centralized agricultural system operated by the 
Government of North Korea; 
Whereas the risk of starvation and the threat of persecution 
in North Korea have caused many thousands of North 
Koreans to flee their homeland, primarily into the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China; 
Whereas the Governments of the People’s Republic of China 
and North Korea have been conducting aggressive cam-
paigns to locate North Koreans who are in the People’s 
Republic of China without permission and to forcibly re-
turn them to North Korea; 
Whereas North Koreans who seek asylum while in the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China are routinely imprisoned and tor-
tured, and in some cases killed, after they are returned 
to North Korea; and 
Whereas the 59th session of the United Nations Commission 
on Human Rights is scheduled to be held in Geneva, 
Switzerland from March 17 to April 25, 2003: Now, 
therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives—
(1) urges the Secretary of State to draft, intro-
duce, and work toward the passage of a resolution 
addressing human rights abuses in North Korea at
•HRES 109 IH 
the 59th session of the United Nations Commission 
on Human Rights; and 
(2) calls on the Government of the Democratic 
People’s Republic of Korea to respect and protect 
the human rights of its citizens, such as those recog-
nized in the Universal Declaration of Human 
Rights.
Æ