Inside a North Korean Prison Camp

Posted by Clyde Middleton on Jun 10 2009 Filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

I was reading an article on who is talking to North Korea about our two young female citizens that have been sent to prison camps for 12 years hard labor. The article gave just tow insights – Bill Richardson, who had engineered a previous release, has been abruptly silenced. And Al Gore – why was his name mentioned at all? – turns out that the two women are employees of his Current TV. So I did some research on what these camps are all about.

A report was prepared by the U.N. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea in 2001, entitled “The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps.” The entire 122 page report here.

Rather than summarize, I find that the report’s account speaks adequately as presented. The rest of this article is verbatim from the report (except for the occasional italic text).

The Table of Contents is here with links to satellite pics of the facilities.

Part 1 of the report is describes conditions in the “North Korean Gulag.”

Former prisoners — mostly those from the “revolutionizing zone,” at Kwan-li-so No. 15 Yodok — and former prison guards report that upon arrival, they were struck by the shortness, skinniness, premature aging, hunchbacks, and physical deformities of so many of the prisoners. They also report that there were large numbers of amputees and persons disabled from work accidents, and persons with partial amputations owing to frostbite of the toes, feet, fingers, and hands.

Semi-starvation yields large numbers of informants among the prisoners, leading to a prison culture of distrust and hostility. Prisoners fight each other over scraps of food or over the clothing of deceased inmates. The camps feature the gamut of abnormal and aberrant human behavior that results from treating people like animals.

TESTIMONY: Kyo-hwa-so No. 1, Kaechon, South Pyong-an Province
Surrounded by a 4-meter (13-foot) wall topped with barbed wire, Kyo-hwa-so No. 1 held roughly 1,000 women prisoners who made clothing and leather goods during Ji’s imprisonment. (Shortly before her arrival, hundreds of women had been transferred to another prison, she was told by other inmates.) The prisoners were divided into nine work divisions and smaller work units. Two work divisions made shoes and leather bags. Men from another prison were brought in to prepare the leather. As the leatherwork was the worst work, it was the repeat offenders and prison rule-breakers — some seventy to eighty women — who were assigned to the leather divisions. Ji’s offense was essentially political, but many other prisoners had been convicted of theft, fraud, murder, adultery, and prostitution. While most women worked in sewing lines, other work units were organized for cooking, construction, cleaning, maintenance, farming outside the prison compound, and a mobile “day-labor unit.” Each work unit was given a production quota that required hard, fast work. Talking was not allowed on the sewing lines, and “on a daily basis,” the women guards or wardens would kick or beat women prisoners who worked too slowly, in front of the other prisoners. Minor rule-breakers were given less desirable jobs or reduced rations. Worse offenders were placed in tiny punishment cells where they were unable to lie down or stand up.

Working hours were from eight in the morning until six in the evening, followed by hour-and-a-half unit-wide self-criticism sessions, both saeng-hwal-chong-hwa (daily-life criticism) and saen-gho-bi-pan (mutual criticism). There were incentives and rewards for the prisoners to spy and tattle on each other, and so the prisoners did. According to Ji, the theory of the prison was that with their strength and spirit broken by hard labor, the prisoners would repent through self-criticism and change their mentality.

The most salient characteristic of this prison was the inadequate food rations. Each day, prisoners were given a palm-sized ball of cornmeal and some cabbage-leaf soup. According to Ji, seventy percent of the prisoners suffered from malnutrition, and during her two years of imprisonment, a fifth of the prisoners — namely those without nearby families to bring them extra food — died of starvation and malnutrition-related disease.

TESTIMONY: Kwan-li-so No. 15 “Yodok,” South Hamgyong Province
Yodok is the most well-documented kwan-li-so in North Korea, because, in addition to having a lifetime-imprisonment “total-control zone,” it also has a “revolutionizing zone,” which operates more like the kyo-hwa-so prisons, described later in this report, in that prisoners can be released back into the larger society. The four former prisoners profiled above were all in the “revolutionizing zone.” Their accounts of Yodok cover almost all of the years from 1977 to 1999.

Kang Chol Hwan, who entered Yodok in 1977, remembers a sign at the front gate of the colony reading “Border Patrol Unit 2915.” The colony is bound to the north by Mt. Paek (1,742 meters, or 5,715 feet, high), to the northeast by Mt. Modo (1,833 meters, or 6,014 feet, high), to the west by Mt. Tok (1,250 meters, or 4,101 feet, high) and to the south by Mt. Byoungpung (1,152 meters, or 3,780 feet, high). The valley is entered from the east by the 1,250-meter (4,101-foot) Chaebong Pass. The streams from the valleys of these mountains form the Ipsok River, which flows downstream into the Yonghung River, which flows into the sea near Wonsan City.

According to An Hyuk, Yodok, which is shorthand for Yodok-kun, an area of land measurement within a province that would be comparable to a district or county, is located in South Hamgyong Province. Yodok-kun30 contains twenty ri31 (also sometimes transliterated as “li” or “ni”), five of which comprise Yodok. The revolutionizing zones include Ipsok-ri (or Yipsok-ri), Knup-ri (or Gnup-ri) for Korean families from Japan, and Daesuk-ri (or Taesuk-ri), where An, Lee, and Kim were held in “singles” villages. Other sections include Pyongchang-ri, a punishment or detention area within the prison camp called Yongpyong-ri, a secluded killing area called Kouek, and other areas for prisoners serving lifetime sentences.

The whole encampment is surrounded by a barbed-wire fence measuring 3 to 4 meters (10 to 13 feet) in height. In some areas there are walls 2 to 3 meters (7 to 10 feet) tall topped with electrical wire. Along the fence there are watchtowers measuring 7 to 8 meters (23 to 26 feet) in height, set at 1-kilometer (0.62-mile) intervals, and patrolled by 1,000 guards armed with automatic rifles and hand grenades. Additionally, there are teams with guard dogs. Inside the camp, each village has two guards on duty at all times.32

During An Hyuk’s year-and-a-half imprisonment, there were some 30,000 prisoners in the lifetime area, and 1,300 singles and 9,300 family members in the revolutionizing zone along with some 5,900 Koreans, including Kang’s family, who had voluntarily repatriated from Japan but were later judged not to fit into the “Kim Il Sung nation.”33 By the time of Kim Tae Jin’s release from Yodok in 1992, the number of persons in the revolutionizing zone had decreased to somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 because of releases of prisoners to society and because of larger numbers of transfers of prisoners to the lifetime-imprisonment zones.

According to Kang Chol Hwan, labor operations at the Knup-ri section of Yodok included a gypsum quarry and a re-opened gold mine (which was originally opened during the Japanese occupation of Korea), where some 800 men worked in groups of five. Assignments in these mines were considered the worst form of labor because of the frequency of work accidents there. The section for ethnic Koreans who had voluntarily repatriated from Japan also had textile plants; a distillery for corn, acorn, and snake brandy; and a coppersmith workshop. The prisoners raised rabbits for the lining of soldiers’ winter coats, worked on agricultural teams, and were periodically organized to look for hardwoods and gather wild ginseng in the forest hillsides.

During Kang’s ten-year imprisonment there were somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 persons in his village, and about one hundred deaths per year from malnutrition and disease, particularly from severe diarrhea leading to dehydration.

While Kang’s was a family village, sexual contact between men and women was not allowed, as it was thought this could result in another generation of counter-revolution- aries. Such contact did occur, of course, but, with two exceptions in ten years, all pregnancies were forcibly aborted. The involved men would be physically punished and the women would be humiliated by being compelled to recount their sexual encounters to the entire village.

Kang’s village was a “revolutionizing” village, so it included “re-education,” which basically consisted of readings from Rodong Shinmun, the Workers’ Party newspaper.

The singles area in Daesuk-ri was described by Lee Young Kuk as a valley 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) long by 0.5 kilometers (0.3 miles) wide next to a small 600–700-meter high(1,969–2,297-foot) mountain. During Lee’s imprisonment, the area held roughly 1,000 prisoners, of which only 50 were women. The women’s cells were heated, but the men’s were not, so men prisoners suffered from frostbitten ears and swollen legs during the winter months. Roughly 200 prisoners died each year during the four years when Lee was imprisoned, mostly from starvation and related disease. But there were always new arrivals each month.

Both areas within Yodok where Kang, Lee, An, and Kim were imprisoned, Knup-ri and Daesuk-ri, had public executions by hanging and shootings — and sometimes worse — for prisoners who had tried to escape or who had been caught “stealing” food. Lee witnessed one public killing of an attempted escapee, HAHN Seung Chul, who was tied and dragged behind a car in front of the assembled prisoners until dead, after which time the other prisoners were required to pass by and place their hands on his bloodied corpse. Another prisoner, AHN Sung Eun, shouted out against this atrocity, and he was immediately shot to death. Kim witnessed a public execution by firing squad after which the assembled prisoners were required to pass by and throw a stone at the corpse still slumped and hanging from the post to which the victim had been tied. Several women prisoners fainted as they were pressed to further mutilate the corpse. Kang witnessed some fifteen executions during his ten years at Knup-ri.

Nonetheless, according to Kang, prisoners who were brought to Yodok from other kwan-li-so said it was much better there than at their previous prison-labor camps. He reports that several prisoners committed suicide before they were to be transferred to other camps, where they feared they would just die a slow death.

WITNESS: YOU Chun Sik, Kyo-hwa-so No. 22
YOU Chun Sik was born in November 1963 in Onsong, North Hamgyong Province. Following completion of his military service, in which he held the rank of platoon commander, he worked for a construction company in Onsong. His long string of encounters with the North Korean prison and detention system began in 1996.

After food distribution ceased at his place of employment, You went to Kangwan Province to buy fish to sell to Koreans in China. He made “good money” and also began buying personal effects and selling them in China. Caught by the North Korean police, he was sentenced in January 1996 to six months’ hard laborKyo-hwa-so No. 22 Oro at the Onsong In-min-bo-an-seong (People’s Safety Agency) ro-dong-dan-ryeon-dae (labor-training camp) for not working at his designated workplace, for unauthorized buying and selling, and for an old assault they dredged up from his military record. (You thinks he actually would have been given a longer sentence if not for his military-service record.)

In May 1995, with one month left to go in his six-month sentence, You was given a temporary holiday release. But he became inebriated during holiday festivities and was late returning to the labor-training camp. For this infraction, he was hung upside-down for three hours, and all of the other one-hundred-odd prisoners at the labor-training camp had to march past and hit him while he was hanging. Following his collective beating, You was taken to an In-min-bo-an-seong (People’s Safety Agency) ku-ryu-jang (detention center) and then sent in a group of nine prisoners to Kyo-hwa-so No. 22 (called “two-two” by the prisoners) in Oro-kun, South Hamgyong Province, for a oneyear prison term. All eight of the other prisoners in his entering group died of malnutrition and beatings from guards and other prisoners during You’s year-long sentence.

Released from Kyo-hwa-so No. 22 in September 1997, You fled to China that October. He worked in Shenyang for a South Korean company until February 2000, when he was caught by Chinese police and held in Shenyang for six weeks and then in a detention center in the town of Dandong, near the North Korean border, for another month. The Dandong police turned him over to the Sinuiju bo-wi-bu (National Security Agency) police, who held him in a ka-mok (jail) for six weeks of interrogation. You was accused of working for a South Korean company; fearing execution, he initially denied the accusation.

While in the Sinuiju ka-mok, You was kicked, beaten, and, along with five or six other prisoners in his cell, made to sit motionless under a surveillance camera for the whole day, except during meals. If the prisoners moved, they were beaten on the fingers. If observed talking, they were forced to slap each other. Only a few of the guards allowed the prisoners to stretch. You described the sitting-motionless torture as being more painful than the beatings.

You reports that the majority of the Sinuiju bo-wi-bu ka-mok detainees were women, most of whom were later sent to detention facilities in their hometowns. While You was detained in Sinuiju in mid-2000, seven newly repatriated women were brought in, four of whom were pregnant and shortly after taken away. He later met one woman from this group in China; she told him that the four who had been taken away were given forced abortions.

You finally admitted to his jailers that he had worked in China for a South Koreanowned company. He also convinced them all that the other employees were Chinese or Korean-Chinese, which seemed to matter to his jailers. He was taken to Pyongyang bo-wi-bu (National Security Agency) center for additional interrogations, where, he reports, other imprisoned persons were high-ranking officials and where there was no torture. After enduring two weeks of interrogation in Pyongyang, he was sent to a National Security Agency detention facility in his hometown of Onsong for the month of August. He was then transferred to the Onsong In-min-bo-an-seong (People’s Safety Agency) police jail for twenty days before being sent in October to the ro-dong-dan-ryeon-dae (labor-training camp) No. 55 in Youngkwang-kun, South Hamgyong Province, for a one-year sentence of hard labor.

You became so ill that in January 2001 he was released on temporary home sick-leave. Upon recovery, he was supposed to return to the labor-training camp to complete his term, but he crossed the Tumen River and fled to China instead. You recovered in Shenyang for two months and then made his way to Mongolia. He was caught by the Mongolian border police and held for three days without food, but was then released.

He went to Ulan Bator, and with the help of South Koreans at the consulate there, was able to board a plane to Seoul on May 20, 2001.

Part 3 of the report summarizes torture and infanticide.

I. Torture Summary

According to almost all of the former-prisoner testimony gathered for this report — from Ali Lamada’s 1967 Sariwon prison testimony to the post-2000 testimonies of North Koreans forcibly repatriated from China — the practice of torture permeates the North Korean prison and detention system.

• Former Detainee #1 was beaten unconscious for hunger-related rule infractions in 1997 at the Nongpo jip-kyul-so (detention center) in Chongjin City. He also reported that detainees there were beaten with shovels if they did not work fast enough.

• Former Detainee #3 reported the use of an undersized punishment box at the Danchun prison camp in which camp rule-breakers were held for fifteen days, unable to stand-up or lie down. He also reported that beatings of the prisoners by guards were common.

• LEE Young Kuk reported that he was subjected to motionless-kneeling and water torture and facial and shin beatings with rifle butts at the Kuk-ga-bo-wi-bu inter-rogation/detention facility in Pyongyang in 1994, leaving permanent damage in one ear, double vision in one eye, and his shins still bruised and discolored as of late 2002.

• KANG Chol Hwan reported the existence of separate punishment cells within Kwan-li-so No. 15 Yodok, from which few prisoners returned alive.

• Former Prisoner #6 reported that prisoners were beaten to death by prison workunit leaders at Danchun Kyo-hwa-so No. 77 in North Hamgyong Province in the late 1980s.

• AHN Myong Chol, a former guard, reported that all three of the kwan-li-so at which he worked had isolated detention facilities in which many prisoners died from mistreatment, and that at Kwan-li-so No. 22 there were so many deaths by beatings from guards that the guards were told to be less violent.

• Former Detainee #8 reported that male prisoners were beaten by guards at the Chongjin jip-kyul-so in mid-2000.

• Former Detainee #9 reported that detainees at the Onsong ro-dong-dan-ryeon-dae (labor-training camp) were compelled to beat each other.

• KIM Sung Min reported that in 1997 at the Onsong bo-wi-bu (National Security Agency) detention center, his fingers were broken and he was kicked and beaten on the head and face until his ears, eyes, nose, and mouth bled.

• RHYU Young Il saw, in 1997, that out of six persons in an adjacent cell in the bo-wi-bu interrogation facility where he was detained in Pyongyang, two were carried out on stretchers, two could walk only with the assistance of guards, and two could walk out by themselves. Detainees who moved while they were supposed to be sitting motionless and silent for long periods were handcuffed from the upper bars of their cells with their feet off the floor. Detainees who talked when they were supposed to be sitting motionless and silent were compelled to slap and hit each other.

• Former Prisoner #12 reported that at Hoeryong kyo-hwa-so in the early to middle 1990s, minor rule-breakers were beaten by their cellmates on the orders of the guards, and major rule-breakers were placed in a 1.5-meter-square (16.5-feet-square) punishment cell for a week or more.

• LEE Min Bok reported being beaten “many times” on his fingernails and the back of his hands with a metal rod during interrogation at the Hyesan detention center in 1990. He also reported that at the Hyesan In-min-bo-an-seong (People’s Safety Agency) detention facility, where he was subsequently held, prisoners were compelled to beat each other. Lee witnessed one prisoner, KIM Jae Chul, beaten to death.

• Former Detainee #15 reported that he was beaten with chairs and sticks at both the Hoeryong and Onsong In-min-bo-an-seong jails in early 2002.

• LEE Soon Ok reported that she experienced beatings, strappings, and water torture leading to loss of consciousness, and was held outside in freezing January weather at the Chongjin In-min-bo-an-seong pre-trial detention center in 1986. Her account of beatings and brutalities in the early to middle 1990s at Kaechon women’s prison, Kyo-hwa-so No. 1, (in her prison memoirs) are too numerous to detail here.

• JI Hae Nam confirmed the existence of miniature punishment cells at Kyo-hwa-so No. 1 and reported that beatings and kicking of women prisoners were a daily occurrence in the mid-1990s. She also reported beatings, during interrogation or for prison regulation infractions, in late 1999 at the Sinuiju bo-wi-bu jail, where she was required to kneel motionless, hit with broomsticks, and required to do stand-up/sit-down repetitions to the point of collapse, in her case in thirty to forty minutes.

• KIM Yong reported that he was beaten at the bo-wi-bu police jail at Maram and was subjected to water torture and hung by his wrists in the bo-wi-bu police jail at Moonsu in 1993.

• KIM Tae Jin reported that he was beaten, deprived of sleep, and made to kneel motionless for many hours at the bo-wi-bu police detention/interrogation facility in Chongjin in late 1998/early 1999.

• YOU Chun Sik reported that he was kicked, beaten, and subjected to daylong motionless-sitting torture at the bo-wi-bu police jail in Sinuiju in 2000. He described the motionless-sitting as being more painful than the beatings.

• Former Detainee #21 reported that she was beaten unconscious in mid-1999 at the In-min-bo-an-seong (People’s Safety Agency) ku-ryu-jang (detention/interroga-tion facility) at Onsong, where detainees were beaten so badly that they confessed to doing things they had not done. Women were hit on their fingertips. She witnessed one very ill woman who was compelled to do stand-up/sit-down repetitions until she died.

• Former Detainee #22 reported that he was beaten with chairs at Onsong bo-wi-bu (State Security Agency) police jail in late 2001, and beaten even worse at the Chongjin In-min-bo-an-seong detention center in early 2002.

• Former Detainee #24 reported that there were beatings at the bo-wi-bu police jail in Sinuiju in January 2000.

• Former Detainee #25 reported that one woman, a former schoolteacher who had been caught in Mongolia and repatriated to China and North Korea, was beaten nearly to death at the Onsong In-min-bo-an-seong detention center in November 1999, and then taken away either to die or, if she recovered, for transfer to Kyo-hwa-so No. 22.

• Former Detainee #26 was made to kneel motionless at the Onsong bo-wi-bu police jail in June 2000 and was made to sit motionless for six days at the Hoeryong bo-wi-bu police jail in July 2001.

• Former Detainee #28 reported that prisoners were beaten to death at the Kyo-hwa-so No. 12 at Jeonger-ri in North Hamgyong Province in 1999.

II. Ethnic Infanticide Summary

There are sporadic reports of forced abortions and baby killings at the kwan-li-so, where, except for a very few privileged couples, the prisoners were not allowed to have sex or children. There are also sporadic reports of forced abortion and baby killings at the kwan-li-so, where sex between prisoners is prohibited. And there are sporadic reports of killings of pregnant women who were raped or coerced into sex by prison guards. However, this report focuses on the forced abortions and baby killings directed against and inflicted on women forcibly repatriated from China, because of the ethnic and policy components of those atrocities.

• CHOI Yong Hwa assisted in the delivery of babies, three of whom were promptly killed, at the Sinuiju do-jip-kyul-so (provincial detention center) in mid-2000.

• Former Detainee #8 witnessed six forced abortions at Chongjin do-jip-kyul-so in mid-2000.

• Former Detainee #9 witnessed ten forced abortions at Onsong ro-dong-dan-ryeon-dae (labor-training camp) in mid-2000.

• YOU Chun Sik reported that four pregnant women at the bo-wi-bu (National Security Agency) police station in Sinuiju were subjected to forced abortions in mid-2000.

• Former Detainee #21 reported two baby killings at the Onsong In-min-bo-an-seong (People’s Safety Agency) police station in late 1999.

• Former Detainee #24 helped deliver seven babies who were killed at the Backtori, South Sinuiju In-min-bo-an-seong police detention center in January 2000.

• Former Detainee #25 witnessed four babies killed at Nongpo In-min-bo-an-seong police detention center in Chongjin in late 1999, and another six pregnant women subjected to forced abortion.

• Former Detainee #26 witnessed three forced abortions and seven babies killed at the Nongpo jip-kyul-so (detention center), Chongjin City, in May 2000.

It is appropriate to give President Obama deference in resolving this matter. Let’s just hope he’s successful and quickly.

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