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HRNK 소식
MEDIA RELEASE
REPORT EMBARGOED UNTIL 9 A.M. EST FRIDAY SEPT. 18, 2015
NORTH KOREA EXPANDING DETENTION OF WOMEN: REPORT
As More Women Flee Hardship, More Land in Pyongyang’s Gulag
WASHINGTON, Sept. 18, 2015—North Korea’s hardline regime is jailing increasing numbers of women, many forcibly returned from China after fleeing economic hardship at home, according to a report released today by the nonprofit Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK).
Hidden Gulag IV: Gender Repression and Prisoner Disappearances “shows Pyongyang’s human rights situation remains abysmal,” HRNK Executive Director Greg Scarlatoiu said. “Women—desperate to ensure their families’ survival after catastrophic famine in the 1990s—have been excessively victimized.”
To cope with economic hardship, numerous women have sought to leave tightly closed North Korea in search of opportunities to work or trade, mainly by crossing into China. “This report finds that, after their repatriation from China, thousands of North Korean women have been arbitrarily arrested—and detention facilities for women have notably expanded,” Scarlatoiu said.
In particular, authorities have since 2008 added a new women’s section at the facility known as Kyo-hwa-so No. 12 in Jongo-ri, North Hamgyong Province, an impoverished region in the northernmost part of the country along the Chinese border, the report says. The new women’s section holds more than 1,000 prisoners.
"There is a kyohwaso in Hamheung where the North Korean authorities imprisoned women forcibly repatriated from China. As more women were forcibly repatriated from China, the authorities decided to open a facility closer to the border to shorten the time needed to transport the prisoners. This is the reason behind the expansion of the kyo-hwa-so at Jongo-ri," said Jung Gwang-il, former Camp 15 (Yodok) political prisoner.
David Hawk, a veteran human rights investigator, interviewed North Korean defectors over two months and worked with Colorado-based AllSource Analysis (ASA), a leading global provider of high-resolution satellite imagery, to produce the report, HRNK’s fourth on the topic since 2003.
“The North Korean gulag is no longer hidden. Its web of political prisons and labor camps—many visible on Google Earth—is there for all to see,” Hawk said. “But the men and women trapped inside this are hidden still, subject to enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, and forced labor under extremely harsh conditions.”
Nicholas Eberstadt, HRNK Board member also pointed out that "North Korea's "hidden gulag" is no longer as hidden as it once was—thanks in part to David Hawk's path-breaking work in documenting its existence and detailing its operation."
“These political prisoners, especially women, are the most vulnerable persons in North Korea, and monitoring the camps through satellite imagery and analysis gives us the best possibility of bringing camp restructuring and the plight of political prisoners to light,” said Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. of AllSource Analysis and HRNK report author.
HRNK co-chair Roberta Cohen called on the international community to demand an accounting of all those detained, missing, or dead in North Korean detention. “North Korean leader Kim Jong-un must be reminded of the mounting evidence that could soon be used to try him and his regime for crimes against humanity,” she said.
“Women in particular are fleeing North Korea in ever greater numbers. When they are apprehended, they are subjected to deliberate starvation, persecution, and punishment. Their situation cries out for international attention,” Cohen said, noting that countless more North Korean women who cross into China are sold or forced into marriage or prostitution, as evidenced in another HRNK report, Lives for Sale, published a few years ago and available on HRNK.ORG.
The Hidden Gulag IV: Gender Repression and Prison Disappearances documents the particular vulnerabilities of North Korean women jailed in a network of “political gulags” (kwan-li-so) and “labor gulags” (kyo-hwa-so). Increasingly, these facilities house women who have attempted to flee the country, and here, rates of mortality, malnutrition, forced labor, and exploitation are high.
HRNK’s research further addresses “double disappearances,” or North Koreans who vanished first into political prisons and again as such detention facilities were dismantled or relocated. "I believe the North Korean authorities dismantled [some of these facilities] because of the investigation of the UN Commission of Inquiry and increasing international attention," said Jung Gwang-il.
Jacqueline Pak, HRNK Board member said: “HRNK’s Hidden Gulag report series by David Hawk critically demonstrates why and how the human rights issues remain more vital and urgent than ever, as the fundamental rights of North Koreans continue to be breathlessly ignored by the Kim Jung Un regime.”
In 2014, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry accused the regime of grave, systematic, and widespread human rights abuses. The tightly closed, nuclear-armed Communist regime rejects such accusations, which it regards as part of a US-led effort to topple it.
HRNK was founded in 2001 as nonprofit research organization dedicated to documenting human rights conditions in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), as North Korea is formally known. An estimated 400,000 people are believed to have died in the country’s system of political prison camps, while another 120,000 are jailed there now. Visit www.hrnk.org to find more about HRNK and download the entire report along with previous publications. The report is also attached to this email, as a PDF file.
REPORT EMBARGOED UNTIL 9 A.M. EST FRIDAY SEPT. 18, 2015
Contact: Greg Scarlatoiu, [email protected]; 202-499-7973
Board of Directors
Roberta Cohen (Co-Chair)
Non-Resident Senior Fellow,
Brookings Institution
Specializing in Humanitarian and Human Rights Issues
Andrew Natsios (Co-Chair)
Former Administrator,
U.S. Agency for International Development
Director,
Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs
Executive Professor, The Bush School of Government & Public Service,
Texas A&M University
Author of The Great North Korean Famine
Suzanne Scholte (Vice-Co-Chair)
President,
Defense Forum Foundation
Seoul Peace Prize Laureate
Gordon Flake (Vice-Co-Chair)
Chief Executive Officer, Perth USAsia Centre,
The University of Western Australia
Co-author, Paved with Good Intentions:
The NGO Experience in North Korea
Helen-Louise Hunter (Secretary)
Attorney
Author of Kim Il-Song’s North Korea
John Despres (Treasurer)
Consultant on International Financial & Strategic Affairs
Morton Abramowitz
Senior Fellow,
The Century Foundation
Jerome Cohen
Co-Director, US-Asia Law Institute,
NYU Law School
Adjunct Senior Fellow,
Council on Foreign Relations
Lisa Colacurcio
Advisor, Impact Investments
Rabbi Abraham Cooper
Associate Dean,
Simon Wiesenthal Center, Los Angeles
Jack David
Senior Fellow,
Hudson Institute
Paula Dobriansky
Chair, World Affairs Council of America
Adjunct Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs,
Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University
Distinguished National Security Chair,
U.S. Naval Academy
Nicholas Eberstadt
Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy,
American Enterprise Institute
Author of books on North Korea including North Korea in Transition: Politics, Economy, and Society
Carl Gershman
President,
National Endowment for Democracy
Stephen Kahng
President,
Kahng Foundation
David Kim
Coordinator,
The Asia Foundation
Debra Liang-Fenton
U.S. Institute of Peace
Former Executive Director, HRNK
Winston Lord
Former Assistant Secretary for East Asia,
Department of State
Ambassador to China
Director of Policy Planning Staff,
Department of State
President,
Council on Foreign Relations
Chairman,
National Endowment for Democracy
Kevin C. McCann
Formerly of Counsel, Paul Hastings LLP
Marcus Noland
Executive Vice President and Director of Studies,
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Author of books on North Korea including Avoiding the Apocalypse: the Future of the Two Koreas
Jacqueline Pak
Professor,
George Washington University
Katrina Lantos Swett
President and CEO,
Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice
Executive Director
Greg Scarlatoiu
In this submission, HRNK focuses its attention on the following issues in the DPRK:
- The status of the system of detention facilities, where a multitude of human rights violations are ongoing.
- The post-COVID human security and human rights status of North Korean women, with particular attention to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).
- The issue of Japanese abductees and South Korean prisoners of war (POWs), abductees, and unjust detainees.
This report provides an abbreviated update to our previous reports on a long-term political prison commonly identified by former prisoners and researchers as Kwan-li-so No. 25 by providing details of activity observed during 2021–2023.
This report was originally published on Tearline at https://www.tearline.mil/public_page/prison-camp-25.
This report explains how the Kim regime organizes and implements its policy of human rights denial using the Propaganda and Agitation Department (PAD) to preserve and strengthen its monolithic system of control. The report also provides detailed background on the history of the PAD, as well as a human terrain map that details present and past PAD leadership.
Oct 17, 2023
HRNK's latest satellite imagery report analyzes a 5.2 km-long switchback road, visible in commercial satellite imagery, that runs from Testing Tunnel No. 1 at North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear test facility to the perimeter of Kwan-li-so (political prison camp) no. 16.
This report proposes a long-term, multilateral legal strategy, using existing United Nations resolutions and conventions, and U.S. statutes that are either codified or proposed in appended model legislation, to find, freeze, forfeit, and deposit the proceeds of the North Korean government's kleptocracy into international escrow. These funds would be available for limited, case-by-case disbursements to provide food and medical care for poor North Koreans, and--contingent upon Pyongyang's progress
For thirty years, U.S. North Korea policy have sacrificed human rights for the sake of addressing nuclear weapons. Both the North Korean nuclear and missile programs have thrived. Sidelining human rights to appease the North Korean regime is not the answer, but a fundamental flaw in U.S. policy.
(Published by the National Institute for Public Policy)
Sep 26, 2022
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George Hutchinson's The Suryong, the Soldier, and Information in the KPA is the second of three building blocks of a multi-year HRNK project to examine North Korea's information environment. Hutchinson's thoroughly researched and sourced report addresses the circulation of information within the Korean People's Army (KPA). Understanding how KPA soldiers receive their information is needed to prepare information campaigns while taking into account all possible contingenc
This report is part of a comprehensive long-term project undertaken by HRNK to use satellite imagery and former prisoner interviews to shed light on human suffering in North Korea by monitoring activity at political prison facilities throughout the nation. This is the second HRNK satellite imagery report detailing activity observed during 2015 to 2021 at a prison facility commonly identified by former prisoners and researchers as “Kwan-li-so No. 14 Kaech’ŏn” (39.646810, 126.117058) and
This report is part of a comprehensive long-term project undertaken by HRNK to use satellite imagery and former prisoner interviews to shed light on human suffering in North Korea by monitoring activity at civil and political prison facilities throughout the nation. This study details activity observed during 1968–1977 and 2002–2021 at a prison facility commonly identified by former prisoners and researchers as "Kyo-hwa-so No. 3, T'osŏng-ni" and endeavors to e
This report is part of a comprehensive long-term project undertaken by HRNK to use satellite imagery and former detainee interviews to shed light on human suffering in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, more commonly known as North Korea) by monitoring activity at political prison facilities throughout the nation. This report provides an abbreviated update to our previous reports on a long-term political prison commonly identified by former prisoners and researchers as Kwan-li-so<
Through satellite imagery analysis and witness testimony, HRNK has identified a previously unknown potential kyo-hwa-so long-term prison-labor facility at Sŏnhwa-dong (선화동) P’ihyŏn-gun, P’yŏngan-bukto, North Korea. While this facility appears to be operational and well maintained, further imagery analysis and witness testimony collection will be necessary in order to irrefutably confirm that Sŏnhwa-dong is a kyo-hwa-so.
Jul 22, 2021
"North Korea’s Long-term Prison-Labor Facility Kyo-hwa-so No. 8, Sŭngho-ri (승호리) - Update" is the latest report under a long-term project employing satellite imagery analysis and former political prisoner testimony to shed light on human suffering in North Korea's prison camps.
Jul 01, 2021
Human Rights in the Democratic Republic of Korea: The Role of the United Nations" is HRNK's 50th report in our 20-year history. This is even more meaningful as David Hawk's "Hidden Gulag" (2003) was the first report published by HRNK. In his latest report, Hawk details efforts by many UN member states and by the UN’s committees, projects and procedures to promote and protect human rights in the DPRK. The report highlights North Korea’s shifts in its approach
South Africa’s Apartheid and North Korea’s Songbun: Parallels in Crimes against Humanity by Robert Collins underlines similarities between two systematically, deliberately, and thoroughly discriminatory repressive systems. This project began with expert testimony Collins submitted as part of a joint investigation and documentation project scrutinizing human rights violations committed at North Korea’s short-term detention facilities, conducted by the Committee for Human Rights