Title: A resolution calling upon the leadership of the Government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to dismantle its kwan-li-so political prison 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]
[S. Res. 303 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

<DOC>






116th CONGRESS
  1st Session
S. RES. 303

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


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                             August 1, 2019

Mr. Hawley (for himself, Ms. Cortez Masto, Mr. Gardner, Mr. Van Hollen, 
 Mr. Rubio, Mr. Markey, Mr. Cornyn, and Mrs. Blackburn) submitted the 
 following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign 
                               Relations

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
    Calling upon the leadership of the Government of the Democratic 
People's Republic of Korea to dismantle its kwan-li-so political prison 
               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 through continuous eye-witness and 
        survivor accounts, and now publicly available satellite technology;
Whereas, according to the Hidden Gulag IV report, the Government of North Korea 
        runs 2 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, 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, prepared by the War Crimes Committee of the 
        International Bar Association, states that ``hundreds of thousands of 
        inmates are estimated to have died'' in the kwan-li-so camps;
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, and the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human 
        Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea wrote in 2014 that 
        ``the unspeakable atrocities'' committed in the kwan-li-so camps 
        ``resemble the horrors of camps that totalitarian states established 
        during the twentieth century'';
Whereas the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the 
        Democratic People's Republic of Korea found that ``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 3 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 of the specific crimes 
        identified by the Inquiry are as follows:

    (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 3 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 Daeqdong-gang 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 4 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 3 to 4 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 15 to 16 hours of hard labor per day.

    (24) One witness was forced to perform hard labor (carrying logs) when 
he was 9 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 10 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.

    (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 Senate--
            (1) calls upon the international community to--
                    (A) demand that the Government of the Democratic 
                People's Republic of 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) consider 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 to 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;
                    (F) comply with international standards of food 
                distribution and monitoring and allow full access to 
                international humanitarian agencies; and
                    (G) end the exportation of North Korean forced 
                labor consistent with obligations under United Nations 
                Security Council Resolution 2397 (2017);
            (3) strongly condemns the use of forced labor by the 
        Government of North Korea; and
            (4) calls on the United States Government to--
                    (A) consider additional sanctions to the extent 
                possible against those individuals responsible for the 
                North Korean kwan-li-so labor camp system, including 
                individuals administering such labor camps; and
                    (B) continue to raise awareness in the 
                international community of the kwan-li-so labor camps 
                and the continuing atrocious crimes being committed in 
                the labor camps.
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