Title: Calling upon the leadership of the Government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to dismantle its labor camp system, and for other purposes.
Policy area: International Affairs

Summary:
This resolution calls for the international community to demand that North Korea dismantle its labor camp system and for North Korea to cease human rights abuses and release political prisoners.

[Congressional Bills 116th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 141 Introduced in House (IH)]

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116th CONGRESS
  1st Session
H. RES. 141

    Calling upon the leadership of the Government of the Democratic 
People's Republic of Korea to dismantle its labor camp system, and for 
                            other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           February 22, 2019

  Mr. Conaway (for himself and Mr. Connolly) submitted the following 
   resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
    Calling upon the leadership of the Government of the Democratic 
People's Republic of Korea to dismantle its labor camp system, and for 
                            other purposes.

Whereas the public has long been aware of the labor camp system in the 
        Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) through continuous 
        eye-witness and survivor accounts, and now-publicly available satellite 
        technology;
Whereas, according to The Hidden Gulag IV report, North Korea runs two kinds of 
        prison camps, the kwan-li-so and the kyo-hwa-so, as well as ``various 
        types of short-term forced labour detention facilities'';
Whereas the most heinous camps, the kwan-li-so, are known as Prison Camp 14, 15, 
        16, 18, and 25 which contain roughly 80,000 to 120,000 political 
        prisoners;
Whereas the Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea Political Prisons 
        Report of 2017 states that ``hundreds of thousands of inmates are 
        estimated to have died'';
Whereas from 1981 to 2013, an estimated 400,000 people out of 500,000 imprisoned 
        were killed in these labor camps;
Whereas persons who are sent to these labor camps are forcibly disappeared and 
        intended to die;
Whereas the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the 
        Democratic People's Republic of Korea found, ``the inmate population has 
        been gradually eliminated through deliberate starvation, forced labour, 
        executions, torture, rape and the denial of reproductive rights enforced 
        through punishment, forced abortion and infanticide'';
Whereas up to three generations of a ``violator's'' family will be sent to the 
        labor camps even if no ``wrongdoing'' is found;
Whereas, according to the Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea 
        Political Prisons Report of 2017, the Government of North Korea 
        regularly and routinely commits crimes against humanity, including 
        murder, extermination, enslavement, forcible transfer, imprisonment, 
        torture, sexual violence, persecution, enforced disappearances, and 
        other inhumane acts;
Whereas, according to the best available evidence, some specific crimes 
        identified by the Inquiry are--

    (1) ``Christians are heavily persecuted and receive especially harsh 
treatment in prison camps, with one former prison guard testifying that 
`Christians were reactionaries and there were lots of instructions . . . to 
wipe out the seed of reactionaries''';

    (2) multiple witnesses watched prisoners tortured and killed on account 
of their religious affiliation;

    (3) a prisoner was raped by a security officer, after which the officer 
stuck a wooden stick inside her vagina and beat her lower body, resulting 
in her death within a week of the rape;

    (4) an abortion was induced by three men standing on a wooden plank 
placed on a pregnant prisoner's stomach;

    (5) another witness lost consciousness after enduring a beating 
designed to trigger premature labor, with prison officials killing her baby 
before she could regain consciousness;

    (6) rape victims who feared being killed after becoming pregnant 
engaged in self-induced abortions by eating dirt and poisoning themselves 
with flower roots;

    (7) other rape victims self-induced abortions by inserting a rubber 
tube in their vaginas;

    (8) rape of teenage girls and their subsequent attempts to commit 
suicide by jumping in the Daedonggang River were so common that prison 
guards were deployed to the river to thwart them;

    (9) four pregnant women were executed for protesting the fact guards 
forced them to run down a mountain in a failed effort to induce 
miscarriages;

    (10) twelve prisoners were shot and killed in the commotion that ensued 
after the execution of the four pregnant women referenced in paragraph (9) 
and a former prison guard witnessed a prisoner's newborn baby, most likely 
fathered by a high-ranking official, fed to guard dogs and killed;

    (11) female prisoners suspected of being impregnated by non-Korean men 
(namely Chinese men) are subjected to especially harsh treatment, with one 
witness describing a prisoner being injected with a labor-inducing drug and 
having to watch as a guard suffocated her newborn to death with a wet 
towel;

    (12) a former North Korean army nurse testified that she saw multiple 
abortions performed by injecting Ravenol (a motor oil) into the wombs of 
pregnant women and that babies born three to four months premature were 
``wrapped in newspapers and put in a bucket until buried'' behind the 
detention center;

    (13) deliberate starvation, malnutrition and overwork are extremely 
common, resulting in the deaths of countless prisoners;

    (14) at one prison camp, 1,500 to 2,000 prisoners, mostly children, are 
believed to have died each year from malnutrition, while many other 
prisoners were beaten to death for failing to meet production quotas;

    (15) starving prisoners are regularly executed when caught scavenging 
for food;

    (16) at one prison camp, starving prisoners who were found digging up 
edible plants on a mountainside were shot to death;

    (17) at another camp, a witness saw a fellow inmate executed for 
stealing potatoes, while in a separate camp a witness described the 
execution of numerous prisoners caught scavenging for leftover food in 
prison guards' quarters;

    (18) a prisoner was beaten to death for hiding stolen corn in his 
mouth;

    (19) public executions by firing squads or other means are common, 
especially for prisoners caught attempting to escape;

    (20) the existence of mass graves is well documented, including 
detailed descriptions of mass burial sites at or near prison camps, as well 
as testimony about bodies being ``dumped'' on mountainsides near prison 
camps;

    (21) an undisclosed location near a prison camp was regularly used for 
nighttime executions, with gunshots clearly audible;

    (22) at a 1990 prison riot, approximately 1,500 prisoners were shot and 
killed, their bodies discarded in a closed mine;

    (23) in order to satisfy production quotas, inmates--including 
teenagers--were forced to perform fifteen to sixteen hours of hard labor 
per day;

    (24) one witness was forced to perform hard labor (carrying logs) when 
he was nine years old;

    (25) at one mine in particular, prisoners were forced to work 20 hours 
per day, with a witness testifying that approximately 200 prisoners died 
each year at that mine alone;

    (26) a soldier supervising a forced labor site at a political prison 
rolled a log down a steep mountainside, killing ten prisoners as they were 
carrying logs up the mountain;

    (27) the bodies of some prisoners who died as a result of forced labor 
or torture were thrown into the cells of prisoners in solitary confinement 
and later strung on barbed-wire fences where they were eaten by crows;

    (28) one witness described a torture chamber with blood and flesh on 
the walls and decaying corpses of past victims placed in the chamber in 
order to instill fear in the next prisoner;

    (29) psychological abuse in political prisons is pervasive, with 
gruesome acts, including executions, carried out in plain view of fellow 
prisoners in order to terrorize them; and

    (30) torture is a routine feature of life in political prisons, with a 
2014 report by Amnesty International concluding that ``North Korea's prison 
camps are very possibly home to some of the most appalling torture in the 
world'';

Whereas officials of the Government of North Korea continually deny the 
        existence of the labor camps;
Whereas the Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea Political Prisons 
        Report of 2017 found that North Korea's labor camp system ``has no 
        parallel in the world today''; and
Whereas the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the 
        Democratic People's Republic of Korea found that the government 
        continually commits crimes against humanity and will not cease, 
        ``because the policies, institutions, and patterns of impunity that lie 
        at their root remain in place'': Now, therefore, be it
    Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
            (1) calls upon the international community to--
                    (A) demand the Democratic People's Republic of 
                Korea (North Korea) dismantle its labor camp system;
                    (B) create a special tribunal with jurisdiction to 
                investigate and remedy crimes against humanity 
                committed by the Government of North Korea;
                    (C) issue targeted sanctions against those 
                individuals who have committed such crimes against 
                humanity; and
                    (D) ban import of goods made by prisoners in the 
                North Korean labor camp system;
            (2) calls on the leadership of the Government of North 
        Korea to--
                    (A) immediately cease human rights abuses;
                    (B) release the roughly 80,000-120,000 political 
                prisoners;
                    (C) halt the ongoing arrests of North Koreans on 
                political and religious grounds;
                    (D) allow the International Committee of the Red 
                Cross entry into the camps to assist with the release 
                and rehabilitation of prisoners;
                    (E) allow entry to the United Nations High 
                Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations 
                Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea to 
                monitor the situation and assist with the 
                rehabilitation; and
                    (F) comply with international standards of food 
                distribution and monitoring and allow full access to 
                international humanitarian agencies; and
            (3) calls on the United States Government to--
                    (A) continue to pursue any additional sanctions to 
                the extent possible against those individuals 
                responsible for the North Korean labor camp system, 
                including individuals administering such labor camps; 
                and
                    (B) continue to raise awareness in the 
                international community of the labor camps and the 
                continuing atrocious crimes being committed in the 
                labor camps.
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