Prisons in North Korea

Prisons in North Korea (often referred to by Western media and critics as "North Korean gulags") have conditions that are unsanitary, life-threatening and are comparable to historical concentration camps. A significant number of inmates have died each year, since they are subject to torture and inhumane treatment. Public and secret executions of inmates, including children, especially in cases of attempted escape, are commonplace. Infanticides (and infant killings upon birth) also often occur. The mortality rate is exceptionally high, because many prisoners die of starvation, illnesses, work accidents, or torture while working in the fields of agricultural farming as peasants. Prisoners who stood up by foraging for extra food to feed their starving families could either face execution or severe beatings, as fishing or hunting for extra food is a capital offense.
During the height of the North Korean famine, the government's response was to set up many low-level labor camps for those who were caught crossing the North Korean-Chinese border or were repatriated from China. These labor training facilities were also used in response to the black market activity that resulted in people searching for food throughout the countryside.
In 2004, these “labor training” facilities were made a regular form of punishment under the new reforms of the criminal code which included a list of economic and social crimes. This list was increased in 2007 with the corresponding punishments growing.
The DPRK government denies all allegations of human rights violations in prison camps, claiming that this is prohibited by criminal procedure law, but former prisoners testify that there are completely different rules in the prison camps. The DPRK government has released no information on inmates or prison camps and has not allowed access to any human rights organizations. According to a North Korean defector, North Korea considered inviting a delegation of the UN Commission on Human Rights to visit the Yodok prison camp in 1996.
Lee Soon-ok gave detailed testimony on her treatment in the North Korean prison system to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 2002. In her statement she said, "I testify that most of the 6,000 prisoners who were there when I arrived in 1987 had quietly perished under the harsh prison conditions by the time I was released in 1992." Many other former inmates, including Kang Chol-hwan and Shin Dong-hyuk, gave detailed and consistent testimonies on the human rights crimes in North Korean prison camps. Both in prisons and reeducation camps have series of cruel methods such as mass executions, abuse, torture, malnutrition and disease were rampant in isolated North Korean society by its principle of Maoist teachings.
According to the testimony of former camp guard Ahn Myong-chol of Camp 22, the guards are trained to treat the detainees as subhumans. He gave an account of children in one camp who were fighting over corn retrieved from cow dung.
North Korean prison camps are of two types: large internment camps for political prisoners (Kwan-li-so in Korean) and reeducation prison camps (Kyo-hwa-so in Korean), as North Korean prisons and reeducation camp systems are very strict, food was control and hunger a weapon for reeducation, many peasants were ordered to work on agricultural collective farms, the North Korean people are forced to become a peasant were resettled in newly created villages, which lacked food, agricultural implements, and medical care. Life in 'North Korea' was very strict and brutal, with violence and intimidation became widespread in the camps, which branded "North Koreans with American, South Korean and Japanese minds". In many areas of prisons in the country people were rounded up and executed for scavenging for food, sex outside marriage, giving birth to newborn babies including having children and helding their beliefs that could lead them to oppose prison guards, that was used by forced labor regime, starvation, forced resettlement, land collectivization, and state terror to keep every prisoners in line with self-sufficiency and one of the strictest regulations prohibiting anything by having close friends or even falling in love.
The internment camps for people accused of political offenses are run by the State Security Department (North Korea's Thought Police).
Reports by refugees also indicate that all religious activities are considered illegal; offenders are frequently arrested and sent to political prison camps. Refugees reported that the people of North Korea were subjected to arrests and disappearances for owning Bibles.
The North Korean city dwellers or the city people were historically subjected to the family responsibility principle, in which the immediate family members of convicted political criminals were also regarded as political criminals and interned. However, in 1994, the family responsibility principle was limited to cases of especially hideous crimes such as writing antigovernment graffiti, which represented a substantial improvement by North Korean standards with the same system as Edo Japan by Tokugawa Iemitsu.
It has been estimated that a quarter of its population, one-third of them are children, and they are routinely forced to perform slave labor, tortured, and raped. According to satellite imagery and the testimonies of defectors, including testimonies by former prison guards, these human rights violations continue unabated. Children are separated from their parents while their husbands are removed from their wives because family life in every prisons and reeducation camps are outlawed, even close friends had broken up as they are no longer believe in the family structure or friendship union that caused their bond, connection and souls to break down which led everyone's isolation grew and unable to react their loved ones.
According to former guards who have defected from North Korea, in the event of the Kim Family Regime's collapse or in the event of another crisis in North Korea, they were ordered to kill all political prisoners. The immediate murder of approximately 120,000 North Korean political prisoners would constitute a genocide as many people are not trusted by Kim Jong Il.
The internment camps are located in central and northeastern North Korea. They consist of many carceral labor colonies in secluded mountain valleys, completely isolated from the outside world and cut off from the society. The total number of prisoners who are incarcerated in the camps is estimated to range from 80,000 to 200,000. Yodok camp and Pukchang camp are separated into two sections: One section for political prisoners who are in lifelong detention, another section which is similar to reeducation camps, where every North Korean are sentenced to long-term imprisonment which ranges from 5 to 20 years.
The prisoners of all ages including the sick and the elderly are forced to perform hard and dangerous slave work with primitive means in mining and agriculture. The food rations are very small, causing the North Korean people to constantly be on the brink of starvation. Along with the hard work, the small food rations cause a huge number of the prisoners to die including men, women, children and babies. It is estimated that 40% of the prisoners die from malnutrition, because the prisoners are not allowed to own anything such as the contraband, cooking equipment or cooking pot, they are also forbidden to forage for food either in or outside work camps because of many restrictions in prisons and labor camps were placed on local foods, from eating to farming. North Korean prisoners thought that eating at home was considered treacherous as cooking their own food was illegal as the consequences of being caught by guards were serious, even fatal. The prisons and reeducation camp network systems in North Korea are very much similar to Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward and Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea led by Angkar.
Moreover, many North Koreans are crippled from work accidents, frostbite, torture, starvations, executions, exhaustions, disease and/or overwork. Additionally, a rigid punishment regimen exists in the camps. Prisoners who work too slowly and prisoners who do not obey orders are either executed or killed. Many prisoners are forbidden to grow their own food while being forced to work in the fields were taken by the guards such as eating nonpreferred foods, eating nonfoods and taking food secretly are extremely risky because those who were caught were killed by the North Korean guards. Conditions worsened over time. In cases when one prisoner is accused of stealing food or attempting to escape, the other prisoners are publicly executed which forced the population into slavery on communal farms that experienced widespread famine with many as two or eight million people died from starvation, disease, and exhaustion from overwork by agrarian reform policies, where they controlled every aspect of daily life in both prisons and reeducation camps. The North Korean people ate their meager food rations in communal canteens. The guards have severely restricted the food available to North Koreans as they are forced to eat a diet of rice gruel where many farmers had starved to death which inspired by the French Revolution's Reign of Terror by its key figure Robespierre with the French revolutionary calendar as Year One which still insists today as part of ongoing famine in rural labor camps.
Initially, there were around twelve political prison camps, but some of them were merged or closed (e.g. Onsong prison camp, Kwan-li-so No. 12, following a suppressed riot with around 5,000 dead people in 1987). Today there are six political prison camps in North Korea, with the size determined from satellite images. North Korean prisoners and their families including children are forced to eat thin, gruel-like porridge that wasn't enough to survive and millions of people faced starvation in the camps, even the village co-operatives which became a network of executions and unending purges. and the number of prisoners estimated by former prisoners and NGOs. Most of the camps are documented in testimonies of former prisoners and, for all of them, coordinates and satellite images are available.
During the height of the famine in the mid to late 1990s, thousands of North Koreans crossed the border into China in search of food or jobs to support their families back home. The Chinese government, fearful of the North Korean government's response, repatriated the North Korean refugees back to their country. The North Korean border police often tortured North Koreans who were forcibly repatriated, but at the time, the government stated that the repatriated citizens would be treated fairly. If it was determined that those who fled to China had any contact with South Koreans or Protestant Christian organizations, they were sent to labor colonies or gyohwaso (felony-level penitentiaries).
The South Korean journalist Kang Chol-hwan is a former prisoner of Yodok Political Prison Camp and has written a book, The Aquariums of Pyongyang, about his time in the camp. The South Korean human rights activist Shin Dong-hyuk is the only person known to have escaped from Kaechon Political Prison Camp. He gave an account of his time in the camp.
The reeducation camps for criminals are run by the Ministry of Social Security. There is a fluent passage between common crimes and political crimes, as people who get on the bad side of influential party members are often denounced on false accusations. They are then forced into false confessions with brutal torture in detention centers (Lee Soon-ok for example had to kneel down whilst being showered with water at icy temperatures with other prisoners, of whom six did not survive) and are then condemned in a brief show trial to a long-term prison sentence.
In North Korea, political crimes are greatly varied, from border crossing to any disturbance of the political order, and they are rigorously punished. Due to the dire prison conditions with hunger and torture, a large percentage of prisoners do not survive their sentence terms.
One account of a North Korean refugee recalls being kicked repeatedly in the stomach by her North Korean guard in an attempt to abort her 5-month-old unborn baby. After losing consciousness during the beatings, she awoke inside the camp's clinic where her baby was forcibly removed.
The reeducation camps are large prison building complexes surrounded by high walls. The situation of prisoners is quite similar to that in the political prison camps. They have to perform slave labor in prison factories and in case they do not meet the work quotas, they are tortured and (at least in Kaechon camp) confined for many days in special prison cells, which are too small for them to stand up or lie full-length in.
To be distinguished from the internment camps for political prisoners, the reeducation camp prisoners are forced to undergo ideological instruction after work and they are also forced to memorize the speeches of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and they even have to undergo self-criticism rites. Many prisoners are guilty of common crimes which are also penalized in other countries e. g. illegal border crossing, stealing food or illegal trading.
There are around 15 to 25 reeducation camps in North Korea.
Kyo-hwa-so Sunghori was closed in 1991 but was later reopened at a new location on an unknown date.
The South Korean human rights activist Lee Soon-ok has written a book (Eyes of the Tailless Animals: Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman) about her time in the camp and testified before the US Senate.
TIME magazine article, Running out of the Darkness, reports on the efforts of Kim Myong-suk to escape a North Korean prison with the help of a South Korean-based charity, Helping Hands Korea.
In December 2016, the South China Morning Post reported on the existence of a secret prison in Hyanghari, which is euphemistically known as a 'resort,' where members of the country's political elite are imprisoned.