The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps
Prisoners’ Testimonies and Satellite Photographs
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report describes a number of penal institutions in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) administered by two different North Korean police agencies: the In-min-bo-an-seong (People’s Safety Agency), and the more political Kuk-ga-bo-wi-bu (National Security Agency). The report outlines two distinct systems of repression: first, a North Korean gulag of forced-labor colonies, camps, and prisons where scores of thousands of prisoners — some political, some convicted felons — are worked, many to their deaths, in mining, logging, farming, and industrial enterprises, often in remote valleys located in the mountainous areas of North Korea; and second, a system of smaller, shorter-term detention facilities along the North Korea–China border used to brutally punish North Koreans who flee to China — usually in search of food during the North Korean famine crisis of the middle to late 1990s — but are arrested by Chinese police and forcibly repatriated to the DPRK.
Both police agencies above are involved with both repressive systems detailed and categorized in the following pages. And both systems involve extreme phenomena of repression that, to the researcher’s knowledge, are unique to North Korea: guilt-by-association, lifetime sentences of hard labor for three generations of individuals related to the purged political prisoners who are sent to the gulag with no judicial process whatsoever; and forced abortions for detained North Korean pregnant women forcibly repatriated from China or the murder of their newborn infants.
Introduction.
The introduction of this report outlines the methodology, sources, and information-base used in creating the report and contains a glossary of terms related to North Korean repression.
Part One.
Part One of this report begins by describing the phenomena of repression associated with the North Korean kwan-li-so, most descriptively translated as “political penal-labor colonies.” In the kwan-li-so, tens of thousands of political prisoners — along with up to three generations of their families — are banished and imprisoned without any judicial process for usually lifetime sentences. Their sentences entail slave labor in mining, logging, and farming enterprises in the valleys of mountainous areas in north and north-central North Korea. The kwan-li-so are described as colonies because they are sprawling encampments, twenty or more miles long and ten to twenty miles wide, containing multiple, enclosed, self-contained sections, or “villages,” for different categories of prisoners. Some of the sections are for the political prisoners; others are for the families of the presumed political offenders, so that purged political prisoners have no contact with their imprisoned parents, grandparents, or children.
The existence of the political forced-labor camps is denied by the DPRK. Part One of this report also describes how the outside world has come to know about these political penal-labor colonies, and what is known about who the prisoners are.
One of the kwan-li-so, No. 15, at Yodok in South Hamgyong Province, is unique in that it has a re-education section, from which small numbers of prisoners can be released. At least four such prisoners have been released from Yodok, fled North Korea, and were interviewed for this report. They are profiled, along with a description of Kwan-li-so No. 15 drawn from their accounts. Only one former prisoner is known to have escaped from the kwan-li-so. He is profiled along with his account of No. 14 and No. 18, where he was imprisoned. A former guard at several kwan-li-so defected to South Korea. His story is told along with his description of Kwan-li-so No. 22. With the exception of Kwan-li-so No. 18, the political penal-labor colonies are administered by the Kuk-ga-bo-wi-bu (National Security Agency).
Formerly there had been a dozen kwan-li-so, but these have been consolidated into six or seven colonies. This consolidation and what is known about the closed camps is briefly described. Within the last several months, commercial satellite photographs of several kwan-li-so have become available. Several such photographs are contained in this report, with specific buildings identified by the former prisoners.
Part One of this report goes on to describe the second component of the North Korean gulag: a series of smaller penal-labor camps and penitentiary-like institutions called kyo-hwa-so. In the kyo-hwa-so, as in the kwan-li-so, prisoners are compelled to perform hard labor — virtually slave labor — under dreadfully harsh conditions, in mining, logging, textile manufacturing, or other industrial projects, such as brick- or cement-making. However, these prisoners are subjected to a judicial process and given fixed-term sentences according to the DPRK criminal code, after which they can be released. The kyo-hwa-so are administered by the In-min-bo-an-seong (People’s Safety Agency).
The majority of kyo-hwa-so prisoners are imprisoned because they have been convicted of what would be in any society felony crimes. But some prisoners are “political” in that they are convicted for actions that would not be normally criminalized: one woman interviewed for this report, for example, described being convicted of disturbing the “socialist order” for singing, in a private home, a South Korean pop song.
A major phenomenon of repression associated with the kyo-hwa-so is the shockingly large number of deaths in detention from slave labor under dangerous circumstances and from starvation-level food rations. Former prisoners interviewed for this report explain that many of their fellow captives did not expect to survive long enough to complete their sentences — and that thousands of them did not survive. States, of course, have the right to deprive duly convicted criminals of liberty and remove them from society. States do not have the right to deprive prisoners of their right to food, or to work them, literally, to death. Eight former kyo-hwa-so prisoners were interviewed for this report. Their stories, and their accounts of seven different prison-labor camps, are described in Part One.
Part Two.
Part Two of this report describes a series of detention facilities, administered by North Korean police forces, that are located in areas along the North Korea–China border and used to interrogate and punish North Koreans forcibly repatriated from China. These facilities are called ka-mok (police-station jails) or ku-ryu-jang (detention-interrogation facilities, typically inside a police station). The two types of penallabor facilities in this system are called ro-dong-dan-ryeon-dae (labor-training camps) and jip-kyul-so (detention/forced-labor centers). Provincial jip-kyul-so are referred to as do-jip-kyul-so.
The jip-kyul-so detention centers are facilities where both repatriated North Koreans and low- or misdemeanor-level criminals are held for up to six months of hard labor, for example brick-making or local construction projects. It should be noted that many technically illegal misdemeanor offenses are famine-motivated, for example taking food from state storehouses or state farm fields; not showing up at one’s assigned workplace (when the North Korean production-distribution system broke down and enterprises
were no longer in production or paying wages, many workers stopped going to their assigned jobs); unauthorized private enterprise; unauthorized trading or economic activity; leaving one’s assigned village without authorization; or leaving the country without authorization.
The ro-dong-dan-ryeon-dae labor-training camps are even shorter-term, more localized detention/forced-labor facilities. One former detainee stated that, unlike the jip-kyul-so detention centers and the kyo-hwa-so prison-labor facilities, the ro-dong-dan-ryeon-dae do not appear in the North Korean statute books. Rather, they are ad hoc measures initiated by local authorities to cope with the overflow of famine-related misdemeanor arrestees. Another former detainee mentioned that all inmates in one labor-training camp were former repatriates who were being isolated from the common-crime detainees in the provincial detention center, so that the repatriated detainees could not tell the common-crime detainees about the prosperity and personal freedoms available in China.
When first repatriated from China, North Koreans are questioned in the police jails and detention facilities about why they went to China, what they did there, and when. More ominous questions follow, revolving around whether the individual being questioned had any contact with South Koreans while in China, which is deemed a political offense. (Many North Koreans do have contact with South Koreans there, as this part of northeast China, formerly known as Manchuria, is frequented by South Korean businessmen, students, tourists, missionaries, and refugee and humanitarian aid workers.) Fearing transfer to a kwan-li-so or kyo-hwa-so, or even execution, repatriated North Koreans typically deny having had any contact with South Koreans or exposure to South Korean radio stations, television programs, movies, or music while in China. But such denials often are not deemed credible by the North Korean police, who literally attempt to beat the truth out of the repatriated detainees. When the police are satisfied, the repatriates are transferred to the jip-kyul-so police detention centers or ro-dong-dan-ryeon-dae labor-training camps. This report tells the stories of nine North Koreans forcibly repatriated from China, and the police interrogations, detentions, and mistreatments these Koreans were subjected to upon repatriation.
Two phenomena of extreme repression are associated with the treatments meted out to repatriated Koreans. First, the jip-kyul-so, despite the shortness of sentences served there, are characterized by very high levels of deaths in detention from inadequate food combined with excessively hard labor — most seriously affecting those detainees lacking nearby relatives to bring them extra food. (Many detainees, when they become too emaciated or sick to perform hard labor, are given sick-leave or release so that they can recover or die at home, reducing the number of deaths in detention.) Second, in at least three places of detention along the North Korea–China border cited by persons interviewed for this report, North Korean women who were pregnant when repatriated were subsequently subjected to forced abortions, or if the pregnancy was too advanced, were allowed to deliver their babies only to have them killed immediately after birth (based on the possibility that the Korean women had been impregnated by Han Chinese men).
Part Three.
Most of the prisoners and detainees interviewed for this report were tortured, many horribly and repeatedly. Part Three of this report summarizes the methods of torture endured or witnessed by the former prisoners and detainees interviewed. It also summarizes the testimony of eight former detainees who themselves witnessed or have firsthand knowledge of forced abortions and ethnic infanticide.
Part Four.
The concluding section of this report, Part Four, makes various recommendations to the DRPK, to China and South Korea, as North Korea’s closest neighbors, and to other U.N. Member States in the international community. In regards to the last, this report includes recommendations that all intergovernmental contact with North Korea should include discussion of improvements of human rights conditions. Further, it makes the case for incorporating human rights conditions in any comprehensive approach to the multiple crises that North Korea faces with nearby and other states — security-related, political-diplomatic, and humanitarian.
Specifically, any security and cooperation agreement for the Korean peninsula should require that all parties, including North Korea, demonstrate respect for human rights, including the rights of refugees who have fled North Korea, encourage human contact, promote the reunification of families, and provide for the free flow of information. Additionally, verified improvements in North Korea’s human rights situation should be included in any comprehensive approach to the Korean crises involving foreign aid to or investment in North Korea. Any multilateral or bilateral arrangements involving foreign investment in extraction or production enterprises in North Korea for export to world markets should preclude the utilization of forced, slave, or prison labor, or the evolution of a situation where privileged workers in exclusive export zones produce for world markets, while production for domestic consumption is based on prison, forced, and slave labor.
1 Before 1998, called the Sa-hoe-an-jeon-bu (Social Safety Agency).
2 A Russian-language acronym for Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei, the “general administration of [slave labor] camps.”
3 Three former repatriated persons interviewed for this report were so transferred.
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