Political prison camp inmates are considered to have lost their rights as DPRK citizens. They are subject to the total control of the camp authorities. As elaborated by former camp guard Ahn Myong-chol:
“In the kwanliso, the inmates are no longer registered citizens, so you do not need a law to decide the sentences. The bowibu [SSD] agent is the person who decides whether you are saved or you are executed. There are no other criteria other than his words. [The inmates] are already eliminated from society.”1118
The Commission finds that the majority of prisoners who remain in the camps have no prospect of ever being released. They are held in total control zones and are incarcerated until they die. Only prisoners held for relatively minor wrongs who are kept in the revolutionizing zone of Political Prison Camp No. 15 could hope to be reinstated as citizens and achieve their release after a number of years in the prison camp. It is uncertain whether this remains the case. Since 2007, there are no known cases of people being released from Political Prison Camp No. 15. Some observers therefore fear that the entire Political Prison Camp No. 15 has been turned into a total control zone to preclude the possibility of further witnesses emerging from the prison camp.1119
The physical set-up of the camps makes escape virtually impossible. The camps are surrounded by high perimeter fences that are electrified at a deadly voltage and further secured by barbed wire. Pit traps and minefields are also placed around the perimeter fence. Each camp is surrounded by numerous guard posts and checkpoints, manned by guards armed with automatic rifles. Inmates are subject to strict movement restrictions within the camp. They are under strict orders to stay clear of the perimeter fence unless authorized to approach it by the guards.
Mr Shin Dong-hyuk, the only person known to have successfully escaped a total control zone, owes his escape to a tragic coincidence. As nightfall approached on the day of his escape, a friend and he were assigned to collect firewood in the vicinity of the perimeter fence. They decided to seize the opportunity to escape. His friend reached the fence first and was electrocuted as he attempted to climb through a hole in the fence. Dangling on the wire, the friend’s body created a sufficiently insulated breach for Mr Shin to climb through and run away. Mr Shin explained the motivation underlying his risky decision:
“I heard from this new inmate, that the people outside could eat the same food as the guards, freely. I could have been electrocuted, I could have been shot but I just wanted to have one day for which I could eat all the food that the people outside [the camp] ate.”1120
Camp guards are under firm orders to shoot to kill anyone trying to escape and they are rewarded if they do. Guards and prisoners are also instructed that any attempt to escape will be punished by immediate summary execution. This rule is systematically implemented. Summary executions for attempted escape can be based on vague indicators like the inmate separating from his assigned group or approaching the perimeter fence without authorization.
Mr Ahn Myong-chol testified that a fellow guard killed five prisoners and then, in an attempt to be rewarded, he falsely reported that they had tried to escape. When an investigation discovered the man’s action, he was transferred to another camp, but not severely punished “in order to maintain high spirits [among the guards] within the camp.”1121
Mr Jeong Kwang-il described two executions linked to a suspected escape attempt. In August 2001, a male inmate had left his group to look for food because he was so hungry. He then went into hiding, because leaving one's group is considered an escape attempt, which is punishable by death. When the guards found him after three days, they publicly executed him.
In March 2003, another man left his work unit to take some potatoes from the storage, because he was extremely hungry. Fearing that the guards would try to consider this an attempted escape, he tried to hide. The guards chased tracker dogs after him. The dogs found and mauled the man until he was half dead. Then the guards shot the victim dead on the spot.1122
The Commission finds that summary executions and other cruel extrajudicial punishments are meted out for violations of the camps’ strict rules, disobedience of orders or any other conduct considered worth punishing. The punishment process is entirely in the hands of a special investigation unit of SSD agents. Even a decision to impose the death penalty is not subject to appeal or judicial review of any kind. Before a “sentence” is pronounced, the victim is often subject to lengthy interrogation under torture conducted by the SSD investigation unit in the camp.
Executions are generally carried out in front of all inmates to provide a warning for the rest of the inmates. Even family members of the victims and children of all ages are usually forced to attend. An SSD agent usually pronounces the reasons for the executions, before a firing squad, normally composed of regular camp guards, carries out the execution.
Other types of punishment can take a wide variety of forms ranging from ration cuts and additional forced labour to solitary confinement, beatings and mutilation. Physical punishments are usually carried out in special punishment blocks, which are also used for the interrogation of prisoners under torture. At times, individual guards will also impose torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments on the spot without any formal investigatory process. Children are not spared from even the cruelest punishments.
When he was 14 years old, Mr Shin Dong-hyuk was interrogated under torture for six months in the punishment block of Political Prison Camp No. 14 to establish whether he knew about escape plans discussed between his mother and brother. Among other methods, he was strung over a lit fire until his back was burned. He survived only because of the help of an older cellmate who nursed his injuries.1123
On another occasion, Mr Shin accidentally dropped a sewing machine at the factory he was forced to work at. The middle finger of his right hand was cut off as punishment:
“The guard told the floor manager to cut off my finger, so got on my knees and I begged not to do so but that didn’t work obviously. And, I thought my whole hand was going to cut off, but it was just a finger. So, at that time I was grateful, really grateful to the guard because I was only losing a finger instead of a hand.”1124
Mr Ahn Myong-chol recalled an incident in Political Prison Camp No. 22, when his superior officer used a blowtorch to bludgeon a sick prisoner to death, because the man had not worked fast enough. After an investigation of the incident, the officer was not punished but rewarded with the right to attend university.1125
Mr Kang Chol-hwan indicated that the “sweatbox” was used to punish prisoners in Political Prison Camp No. 15 at Yodok. Located near the guards barracks at the main entrance, the “sweatbox” was a wooden box so small that a person could not fully stand up or lie down within it. The prisoner is forced to kneel in a crouched position. The prisoner’s rear end pressed into the heels constantly until the buttocks were solid black with bruising. This cuts off the circulation so that, if left in the sweatbox long enough, a prisoner will die. Moreover, prisoners in the sweatbox were given almost no food. They often survived only by eating insects that crawl into the box. 1126
According to one witness, who was detained in the revolutionizing zone of Political Prison Camp No. 15, anyone who was reported to have criticized the camp authorities was taken away into the punishment block. Many never returned and may have been sent to the total control zone for life imprisonment. Those who made it back were in a terrible physical and psychological condition. The witness remembers one inmate who returned from the punishment block in such a pitiful state of health that he could not fulfil his work quota. The guards beat him so savagely that he died two days later.1127
Guards are taught that inmates are enemies of the people and must be approached with hostility. They also realize that individual cruelties towards inmates will generally not result in any punishment.
Describing his training, Mr Ahn Myong-chol indicated that “we had very intensive ideology training for six months, and that training is to… I guess invoke hostility against the inmates and to imprint in our minds that the inmates are enemies.”1128 He also described how he and other guards sometimes felt sympathy for the prisoners, but could never show it, because such signs of sympathy would have resulted in punishment of the guard concerned.
The intensive ideology training that guard recruits like Mr Ahn received aimed at invoking hostility against the inmates and imprinting in their minds that the inmates are enemies. In order to reemphasize this point, he and other guards were made to use prisoners as ‘human punching bags’ during their martial arts training:
“Sometimes the instructors would summon inmates who were working in the field. They were summoned so that we could practise our [martial arts] skills on them. The reason for actually practising our skills on these inmates was to … make these inmates stay on alert and to instruct us that those are our enemies. … We did not have people to practise on, so they summoned the inmates so that we could practise our kicks and hits on them… We really don’t care if we are going to kill them or let them live.”1129
Mr Ahn also spoke about how ferocious dogs were kept in one the camps to catch inmates who attempted to escape. On one occasion, the dogs mauled and killed three children at a school for child inmates. The commanding officer initially berated the dog trainer for letting the dogs loose. Later, however, he praised the trainer in front of the other guards for having trained dogs that could effectively kill political prisoners.
Ms Kim Hye-sook endured her most humiliating moments in Political Prison Camp No. 18 when some of the guards randomly stopped her and ordered her to kneel down and open her mouth. The guards spat in her mouth and tell her to swallow it. If she had shown any sign of disgust she knew that she would have been severely beaten.1130
The Commission finds that, in addition to its guards, the political prison camps employ selected prisoners to control and monitor other prisoners. Prisoners are organized into work units. The prisoners appointed to head these units are responsible for enforcing discipline and, to do so, they may use violence at their own discretion. In addition, the camp administration runs a system of informants who cooperate in the hope of receiving larger food rations or more lenient treatment from the guards. Individual prisoners are instructed that failure to report any perceived wrongdoing of other inmates could result in severe punishment. From their first moments in the camp, this principle is also instilled in child inmates, who are even expected to denounce their own parents.
Mr Shin Dong-hyuk was 13 years old when he reported a conversation he overheard between his mother and brother in which they talked about escaping from the camp. As a result, his mother and brother were both executed. Mr Shin had to watch the public execution of his mother and his brother, along with all other inmates. Mr Shin described the thought process leading to him denouncing his own mother as follows:
“I first reported about their plan [to escape], because I was obliged to report every detail to the guards... That was the rule of the prison’s camp, so that’s why obviously I thought it was my job to report about their plan to the guard at that time. At my age, I was really proud of that. … I asked the supervisor to reward me, to give full portion of cooked, dried rice so fill my stomach. And, I was promised that reward and that’s why I reported about their plan.”1131
(d) Sexual violence and denial of family and reproductive rights
Although policies appear to vary between camps, families sent to the camps on the basis of guilt by association are often allowed to stay together. The Commission finds, however, that inmates of the existing prison camps are generally not allowed to form new families or have children.1132 This policy is consistent with the stated objective of eliminating the seed of class enemies. Only on rare occasions do the camp authorities arrange “marriages” between model prisoners who distinguished themselves through hard work and absolute obedience. The prisoners selected have no say in the choice of partner. “Married” couples are not allowed to live together, but are brought together for several nights per year for the purpose of intimate contact. In some cases, this results in the birth of children. Children born from such relations themselves become prisoners.
Women who are not in authorized relationships and become pregnant are subjected to forced abortion and additional punishment, including execution or torture.
Mr Shin Dong-hyuk’s parents were designated by the guards to “marry” each other since they had been model prisoners of Camp No. 14. Mr Shin lived alone with his mother until age 11 but then had to move into separate barracks. His father lived separately within the camp, seeing him rarely. Mr Shin felt there was no concept of family in the camp:
“We were all inmates and there was nothing that I could do to them … And, they had nothing they can do as parents, so I guess I did not feel any attachment or feeling for my parents.”1133
Mr Ahn Myong-chol indicated that Kim Il-sung had instructed that three generations of inmates should be annihilated. This is why pregnancies were strictly forbidden: He elaborated that “the camp is there in order to make sure that there are no future generations of the political prisoners.” The camp authorities sometimes allowed marriages to motivate the workers. However, if an unmarried woman gave birth to the child of another inmate, harsh punishment inevitably followed:
“[I]f the father is an inmate, the guy would be shot to death and the woman will be sent to the harshest coal mines to work.”1134
A former political prisoner, who was detained from 2007 to 2010 in the revolutionizing zone of Political Prison Camp No. 15 at Yodok, witnessed two cases, in which women who became pregnant without authorization were forced to have an abortion. The victim’s term of imprisonment at Yodok was also extended. One of the cases was a late term abortion, carried out through an injection that induced premature labour. The witness herself was forced to help the victim deliver the dead foetus.1135
The witness was sent to Political Prison Camp No. 18 whilst pregnant. Towards the end of her pregnancy, she was kicked by a guard triggering premature labour. When the child was born, guards beat her until they could pull away the crying baby from her. She lost consciousness because of her ordeal. When she woke up she found her baby dead. The body was gathered with other corpses in a storeroom until enough corpses had accumulated to merit throwing them into a single grave site. Still in pain and bleeding, the witness was forced to work the next day and beaten because she could not keep up with her work quota.1136
The Commission finds that the conditions of subjugation of inmates, coupled with the general climate of impunity, creates an environment, in which rape perpetrated by guards and prisoners in privileged positions is common. In some cases, female inmates are raped using physical force. In other cases, women are pressed into sexual relations to avoid harsh labour assignments, or to receive additional food.1137 Such cases generally amount to rape as well, because they are not consensual as the perpetrators take advantage of the coercive advantages of the camp environment.1138
Unlike other types of torture, rape as such is not condoned by camp rules. Instead, SSD agents and guards are under strict orders not to fraternize with the inmates and in particular not to have any sexual engagement with them. However, if cases of rape come to light, the perpetrator often escapes with a mere dismissal or no punishment at all. The victim, however, is frequently reassigned to harsh labour or secretly executed, especially if she becomes pregnant.1139 Without exception, pregnant victims are subject to abortion or their child is killed at birth.
Mr Ahn Myong-chol gave testimony that, unlike ordinary guards, higher-ranking SSD agents could get away with sexually abusing female inmates, as long as the women did not become pregnant. In cases of pregnancy, the official was dismissed and the women sent to harsh mining work or secretly executed. On one occasion, the commander of his unit raped a woman, who became pregnant and gave birth to a baby. The mother and her child were taken to the detention and punishment block, where the baby was thrown in the feeding bowl for the dogs.
Mr Ahn Myong-Chol also recalled the case of a young girl, who was sent to the torture and punishment block in Camp No. 22 after she was raped by a guard. She was tortured by pressing a burning hot stove hook on her breast. Subsequently, she was reassigned to harsh labour in the coal mine, where she lost both legs in an accident.
Mr Ahn further testified that some of the guards played sadistic and sexually abusive games with the hungry prisoners. On one occasion, an SSD agent at Political Prison Camp No. 22 sat on a chair and used a fishing rod, baited with pork fat to entice a nude female prisoner to crawl like a dog and jump after the meat. The SSD officer took obvious pleasure in this game, pulling up the fishing rod just high enough to keep the prisoner from catching the meat and lowering it again to give her another chance.1140
Ms Kim Hye-sook described how the women who worked in the mines of Political Prison Camp No. 18 feared assignment to the nightshift, because guards and prisoners preyed on them on their way to and from work and rape them. None of the victims talked about their experience openly for fear of being punished. However, a number of female prisoners recounted their traumatic experiences to her in confidence.1141 Another witness reported that the guards of Camp No. 18 were especially targeting teenage girls. 1142
A former guard in Camp No. 11 described how the camp authorities made female inmates available for sexual abuse to a very senior official who regularly visited the camp. After the official raped the women, the victims were killed.1143
(e) Starvation, forced labour and diseases
Except for the minority of prisoners kept in the revolutionizing zone of Political Prison Camp No. 15, camp prisoners are considered ideologically irredeemable. They have no prospect of securing release. Instead, they are subject to gradual extermination through starvation and slave labour in harsh conditions, with the apparent intent to extract a maximum of economic benefit at a minimum of cost. Former political prison camp guard Mr Ahn Myong-chol explained:
“Inmates in the [political prison camps] are not treated like human beings. They are never meant to be released...] their record is permanently erased. They are supposed to die in the camp from hard labour. And we were trained to think that those inmates are enemies. So we didn’t perceive them as human beings.”1144
Former inmate Mr Shin Dong-hyuk came to the same conclusion. In his testimony before the Commission, he said:
“[T]he dictators in North Korea thought that we should die, we were not worth living, they were just extending our lives, and they just let us live so that we would produce for them and we could die in the process working.”1145
Inmates of political prison camps experience unspeakable atrocities and hardships. However, the feature that former inmates emphasized as most painful most was their severe hunger and their daily struggle against starving to death.1146 Inmates are provided with rations that are so insufficient in quantity, quality and diversity that any prisoner who solely relies on the ration would quickly starves to death. The starvation diet gives the emaciated political prisoners a distinctly skeletal physical appearance. Every year, large numbers of prisoners die from starvation or nutritional deficiency diseases like pellagra, which is characterized by skin eruptions, breakdown of the mental and digestive system and mental deterioration. Prisoners are only be able to survive over longer periods of time by hunting and gathering insects, rodents and wild plants or finding ways to divert food meant for the guards and farm animals.
The Commission finds that the starvation of prisoners is based on deliberate policy, rather than being a mere reflection of the overall situation of food insecurity prevailing in the DPRK. It has been a constant feature of the camps that existed even when the overall food situation in the DPRK was more stable. Former guards and other security officials interviewed by the Commission indicated that starvation was a deliberate measure to keep prisoners weak and easy to control and to augment their suffering.
Ms Kim Young-soon described how her family was only provided with corn and salt, when they were incarcerated at Political Prison Camp No. 15 at Yodok in the 1970s. Her father starved to death. Kim Young-soon said she always ran to her work because if she was late her food rations were cut. Even if she had broken bones she still needed to run to her work to avoid having her rations cut. Their rations were so little of it that the families hunted snakes and rodents to secure the survival of their young children. Ms Kim recalled:
“[The] babies [had] bloated stomachs. [We] cooked snakes and mice to feed these babies and if there was a day that we were able to have a mouse, this was a special diet for us. We had to eat everything alive, every type of meat that we could find; anything that flew, that crawled on the ground. Any grass that grew in the field, we had to eat. That’s the reality of the prison camp.”1147
Mr Kang Chol-hwan testified that, during his ten years at Political Prison Camp No. 15, he buried the bodies of more than 300 people who had died of starvation or malnutrition. Food rations were provided once a month and usually consisted of corn kernels that lasted no longer than half the month, even though the food situation in the remainder of the DPRK was good at the time of his incarceration in the 1980s.
“At that time, the economic situation was pretty stable, so I think the food [situation in the country] was okay. But for political criminals, they gave us a fistful of corn kernels once a month... after 15 days, we would run out of food, so we had to cut grass to cook porridge, to stay alive. Even fit men, healthy people, after three months, would suffer from malnutrition. In order to overcome malnutrition, we ate things like mice, snakes, frogs, worms, anything that came into our sight, in order to get protein. …The first three months after you enter the prison camp, those three months are critical. … I developed malnutrition in those three months and I came very close to dying. But kids who were there before me, they caught mice in the field for me and they saved me. … The elites, the intellectuals, the people who used to be in higher positions, they are the first ones to die because they don’t dare to eat [mice and rats]. But those who had a difficult life outside the camp, and kids, who leaned to their instincts, they had higher survival rates.”1148
Mr Shin Dong-hyuk, born in 1982 in Camp No. 14, testified that he was always hungry during his detention, because there was never enough food. Although camp inmates raised animals and also farmed rice, they were not given permission to eat this food and only had access to the meagre rations allotted to them. Mr Shin recalls that he was given only 400 grams of corn porridge per day, so that to survive he had to find other sources of food such as grass and mice.1149
Even before the famine of the 1990s, Ms Kim Hye-sook’s family of seven only received 4.5 kilograms of dried corn per month, so that they had to augment their diet to survive Political Prison Camp No. 18.1150 During the famine, food rations were further cut down to a point where only adults engaged in full time forced labour would receive rations. Her grandmother died from starvation and her exhausted mother fell from a steep cliff as she tried to forage for edible wild plants.
Mr Jeong Kwang-il and Mr Kim Eun-chol, detained from 2003 in Camp No. 15, said that prisoners were only given 120 grams of corn porridge three times a day. On special days, they received a piece of pork in their soup. Rations were halved if workers did not perform well.1151
As a matter of camp policy, the food rations of disobedient prisoners are cut to a level where death by starvation results in a short period of time. Former prisoners interviewed by the Commission attested to the fact that rations in the prison camps were frequently halved as a punishment for not working well, for being too unwell or injured to work or as a punishment for not following the rules of the camp. Former officials indicated that such ration cuts were meticulously outlined in the written instructions that the guards received as part of their training.
Where prisoners are caught circumventing the starvation rations, for example, by taking leftover food from the guards’ entitlements, animal feed or food produced in the camp, this can result in extremely harsh punishment, including summary execution.
Mr Shin Dong-hyuk described how a girl of around 7 years of age had slipped a few grains into her pocket. A guard caught her and beat her so badly with a wooden stick that she died from her injuries:
“[A]bout twice a week, [the guards] would choose one kid and do the inspection to see if this person is stealing something or hiding something, but she was so unlucky that she was chosen as the kid to be inspected. And, in her pocket there were some grains and then the guard asked where she got it. Then, she told the guard that she picked them up on the street. There was a wooden stick that the guards used. And, the guard says that’s not the way I taught you, so you went against my teaching. So, she was beaten so badly that she fainted, and we had to take her to her mom. When she didn’t come to school the next day, we learned that she had died.”1152
Mr Shin also described how inmates had to eat grass or food crumbs that had fallen on the floor clandestinely so that the guards would not see them:
“We had to make sure that the guards did not look at us when we did that. And sometimes we had to ask the guards if we were allowed to eat he crumbs that had fallen on the floor. There were lots of mice, lots and lots of them … the inmates would rush towards them, catch them, but if we saw any of the guards present, the best performing worker among us would ask the guard if we could catch and eat one of the mice. And, sometimes if the guard was in a good mood, he would give permission, but sometimes he would not give us permission to catch the mice. … Sometimes, when we caught mice without the knowledge of the guard we would hide it in our pants.”
Mr Kim Eun-chol recalled how a fellow inmate at Political Prison Camp No. 15 was executed in front of the other inmates, because he had stolen potatoes from one of the fields.
Mr Kim also testified that people caught stealing leftover food were subject to solitary confinement and extreme starvation rations in the punishment block of Political Prison Camp No. 15 at Yodok. Mr Kim elaborated on the experience of solitary confinement:
“Once you are in there, not a lot of people make it out. Once you are in the solitary cell, you are beaten up and they give you 30 grams per meal and you get cold, so that leads to an immediate weakness. Somebody who weighs 50 kilograms [when they go in], their weight is reduced to 20 kilograms [when they exit solitary confinement].”1153
The witness, who was detained at Political Prison Camp No. 18, picked through cow dung to find undigested grains. When a guard caught her, he kicked her in the head. She suffered a gashing wound and lost several teeth. The witness also described how a fellow prisoner was beaten to death when he tried to hide stolen corn in his mouth. When another inmate tried to pry open the corpse’s mouth to take the corn, he was also savagely beaten.1154
The Commission finds that, in addition to enduring deliberate starvation, inmates are also deprived of other basic needs of survival. Even though temperatures can reach minus 20 degrees Celsius in winter, they are housed in huts or basic barracks that often lack window panes and effective heating. Blankets, soap, sanitary pads for women and other hygiene items as well as cooking utensils are provided infrequently or not at all.
The camps offer only the most rudimentary health care facilities, which lack medical supplies and qualified personnel and offer the seriously ill little more than a place to die. The prevailing lack of hygiene and medical care facilities the outbreak of epidemic diseases that kill large numbers of the starving and exhausted prisoners.
Mr Ahn Myong-chol described how an epidemic broke out and killed 200 prisoners in one camp because hungry prisoners were catching and eating a type of rat that carried the disease. A lot of deaths also occurred in winter and early spring (when the cold was the harshest and food stocks were depleted).1155
Mr Shin Dong-hyuk endured freezing winters in a small house that had one window opening without glass: “There were a lot of winds gusting in, and I remember being really cold in the winter times.”1156
Mr K described that the prisoners of Camp 11 were living in straw thatched mud shacks that were dug into the ground and placed right next to the pigsties of the camp.1157
Ms Kim Hye-sook had two children in the camp without receiving any pre-natal or other medical care in relation to her pregnancies. She was alone in the mountains foraging for edible herbs, when she gave birth to her first child and had to drag herself back to her living area, covering the new-born baby with clothing rags and leaves.1158
According to a former inmate, Political Prison Camp No. 18 lacked medicine and doctors. Prisoners who were seriously ill were gathered in a special “work unit” and just left to die. When prisoners died, they were not buried right away. The dead bodies were stored in a warehouse until there were enough bodies for a mass burial. Rats often gnawed the flesh off these bodies.1159
The political prison camps run their own factories, farms, mines and logging operations, producing among other things, coal, clothing for the military and consumer goods. They also produce more food than is being used by the inmates. In particular, high quality foods such as meat are reserved for the guards or sale. Roads and train connection ensure that the goods produced reach the general economy. The production facilities are administered to generate a maximum of economic output at minimal cost, without proper regard for the well-being and survival of the inmates. All inmates are subjected to forced labour. They generally work 12 hours or more every day of the week, even if they are very sick. They are only exempted from forced labour (or have to perform only reduced shifts) on important public holidays and days reserved for maintenance activities.
The assignments most feared by inmates are in the mines and logging sites that are located on the premises of some of the camps. There, inmates have to toil with only basic tools in particularly dangerous conditions. Deadly work accidents frequently occur as a result of the combination of the prisoners’ dire physical condition and the lack of safety measures.
Prisoners are subject to beatings, extended hours and food ration cuts, if they do not fulfil their assigned daily work quota. Very often, an entire work unit of prisoners is collectively punished. This gives the work unit leaders among the prisoners a strong incentive to drive fellow prisoners to the point of complete exhaustion. They often beat those fellow prisoners who lag behind.
In the revolutionizing zone of Political Prison Camp No. 15, elderly prisoners no longer have to work, but receive only reduced food rations. However, in the total control zone prisoners apparently have to work until they die.
From the age of five, children are forced to engage in forced labour such as farming or cleaning. In addition, they receive a few hours of rudimentary education that is provided by SSD agents. From age 15 or 16, children work full-time the forced labour system and are not spared from even the most backbreaking assignments such as mining.
Born as a prisoner of Camp No. 14, Mr Shin Dong-hyuk described how children received only very little education while spending most of their time farming or doing other chores. He felt that the camp authorities “were thinking that we were same as [ploughing] animals that’s why they felt that they didn’t need to teach us anything”.1160 At age 15, he was assigned to help build a hydropower dam on the Taedong River. On one occasion, three adults and five children were crushed by a falling concrete wall. The work crew had to continue working and could only dispose of the bodies at the end of the shift. From age 16, Mr Shin had the fortune to be assigned to work in a pigsty, a much coveted position because of the possibility of access to clandestinely obtain animal feed.1161
Mr K found small sickles used in farming as he dismantled Political Prison Camp No. 11. He was shocked and saddened to hear from the SSD agents remaining on the site that these tools were used by children as young as 5 years who were forced to work in the fields, while only receiving a bare minimum of education.1162
Ms Kim Hye-sook had to work in a coal mine at Political Prison Camp No. 18 from age 15. Although there was nominally a system of three shifts, they ended up having to work 16-18 hours a day to maximize output. The men dug up the coal with picks and shovels. The women then had to manually transport the coal to the surface using sacks, buckets or coal trolleys. Both her husband and her brother died in mining accidents. Like many others forced to work in the mines, Ms Kim still suffers from black lung disease.1163
Another witness, who had to work in the same mine, said that every prisoner had to dig up or carry a quota of one ton of coal per day. Some people ended up working 20 hours until they filled their quota. The witness estimated that 200 people died every year in that mine alone. 1164
(f) Deaths in custody and lack of respect for the dignity of the dead
Political prisoners are considered to have been erased from the citizenry. If they die their bodies are never returned to the family outside the camp, but are disposed of with no respect for cultural tradition and the dignity of the dead. If they have family outside the camp, they will generally receive no notification about the death.
Mr Ahn Myong-chol explained that there is no designated burial spot for inmates or a Korean-style tomb. Instead, they were simply placed in shallow holes in collective burial sites:
“They sometimes buried bodies over other bodies. As we are digging the ground and we sometimes found the bones, and so if there is a [prison] mine, then surrounding hills, and mountains would be something like a cemetery. There is no actual cemetery for political prisoners...”1165
Mr Kang Chol-hwan remembered that he buried over 300 bodies during his 10 years in Political Prison Camp No. 15 at Yodok.1166 Inmates assigned to bury the bodies stripped them of their clothes so as reuse or barter them.1167 Eventually, the camp authorities simply bulldozed the hill used for burials to turn it into a corn field:
“As the machines tore up the soil, scraps of human flesh reemerged from the final resting place; arms and legs and feet, some still some still stockinged, rolled in waves before the bulldozer. I was terrified. One of friends vomited. …. The guards then hollowed out a ditch and ordered a few detainees to toss in all the corpses and body parts that were visible on the surface.”1168
Former prisoners and guards interviewed by the Commission all concurred that death was an ever present feature of camp life. In light of the overall secrecy surrounding the camp, it is very difficult to estimate how many camp inmates have been executed, were worked to death or died from starvation and epidemics. However, based on the little the outside world knows about the horrors of the prison camps, even a conservative estimate leads the Commission to find that hundreds of thousands of people have perished in the prison camps since their establishment more than 55 years ago. 1169
4. Gross violations in the ordinary prison system
In addition to the political prison camps operated by the SSD, the DPRK maintains an extensive system of ordinary prisons. The existence of these prisons is acknowledged and they have a legal basis in the Criminal Code.1170
Ordinary prisons are for the most part operated by the Prisons Bureau of the Ministry of People’s Security. They are subject to the oversight of the Office of the Prosecutor. Perpetrators of more serious crimes are sentenced to imprisonment in ordinary prison camps (called kyohwaso, which literally translates to “Reform and Edification Centre”). Less serious crimes are supposed to be punished through imprisonment of a few months to two years in “labour training camps” (rodongdanryundae). In addition, there are various types of detention and closed facilities for juvenile offenders and street children.1171
According to information provided by the DPRK to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 2001, there were three prison facilities, which housed 1,153 inmates at the end of 1998, 3,049 at the end of 1999 and 1,426 at the end of 2000.1172 In 2005, the DPRK reported to the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) that in March 2005, only 40 women were imprisoned in reform institutions following conviction.1173
On the basis of testimony and other information received, the Commission finds that these numbers are grossly understated and do not constitute a complete description of the prison system. Information gathered about the number of different prisons in existence and reported inmate figures for some of the facilities, suggest that the number of inmates in the ordinary prison system could be 70,000 or more.1174
The DPRK contends that its prisons are reform institutions that provide reform of prisoners through labour.1175 It also stated that in strict application of relevant regulations, its prisons are equipped with bedrooms, bathrooms, dining-rooms, workshops, education rooms, libraries, infirmaries and other facilities, as well as with natural and electric lighting, ventilation and heating. The inmates were provided with meals, drinking water, clothing, bedding and health care. Doctors checked their physical condition and provided appropriate medical treatment free of charge. Reform institution officials received special training and were prohibited from torturing or insulting inmates. There was an eight-hour working day and inmates were paid according to the quantity and quality of their work. They had access to books, magazines and newspapers, could watch films and television, listen to the radio, play games, engage in sport and could receive visits from and correspond with their family.1176 The DPRK also insists that female inmates are assigned appropriate light labour according to their physiological state.1177
To a certain degree, the model prisons occasionally shown to outside visitors may live up to these standards. However, testimony the Commission gathered from dozens of former inmates and former officials who have seen other prisons first-hand leads the Commission to find that the vast majority of prisoners experience a very different reality. Patterns of deliberate starvation, forced labour, inhumane living conditions, torture and summary executions exist that are in many respects similar to the patterns existing in political prison camps, although the level of violations is less intense.
