Persons who are found to have committed smaller crimes may be sent to short-term prison camps, where they are usually imprisoned for periods ranging from one month to one year. For example, persons repatriated from China, who convince the SSD that they spent a relatively short time there and avoided contact with churches or ROK citizens, are typically sent to such prison facilities. People of good songbun who are caught using a Chinese mobile phone or watching foreign movies might get away with a stint in such facilities.
Men and women are kept separate in line with international standards. Among the inmates of some facilities are also children. However, they are generally assigned lighter forms of labour.
The vast majority of short-term forced labour camps are administered by the MPS and local authorities. A very small number of the known short-term forced labour detention camps are run by the SSD and the KPA Military Security Command.
The most common among the short-term prisons are called “labour training camps” (rodongdanryundae). They started being set up from the 1990s, in accordance with an order from Kim Jong-il that correctional facilities for misdemeanours should be established by local authorities at the county level.1231 Today, article 31 of the Criminal Code, which foresees the punishment of labour training, provides the legal basis for such camps.
In a comprehensive 2012 study, the Database Center for Human Rights in North Korea identified 49 labour training camps administered by the MPS and two by the KPA Military Security Command.1232 The true number might be a lot higher considering that such facilities were to be established at the level of every county.
In addition, the MPS operates facilities referred to as labour reform centres (kyoyangso) in provinces and major cities.1233 Perpetrators of crimes of medium severity, including less grave forms of “anti-socialist behaviour”, are often assigned to forced labour in these prisons. The MPS and SSD holding centres (jipkyulso) are also effectively used as places of punishment in the DPRK, although there appears to be no legal basis for that. 1234
Inmates of all three categories of short-term prisons have in common that their punishment resulting in loss of liberty is not based on criminal conviction by a court of law, as would be required by international law. Instead, their guilt and punishment was determined by the MPS or the SSD, which form part of the executive branch of government. Only in a minority of cases, inmates of labour reform centres and labour training camps have gone through a trial, and if they did it so it was the type of grossly unfair judicial trial described above.1235 Therefore, hardly any of the inmates can considered to be duly convicted by a court of law; they are victims of arbitrary detention and illegal forced labour as defined under international law.
After her interrogation under torture was concluded, the witness was “sentenced” by an SSD agent to six months at a labour training camp for having illegally crossed into China. The agent took into account as a mitigating circumstance that she had only spent a very short time in China and had gone there with the intent to support her family. She had to sign (by finger print) a document pledging never to go to China again and not to disclose what happened to her during her interrogation by the SSD.1236
Another woman recounted how SSD agents committed her, without any form of trial, to a labour training camp in South Hamgyong Province, because she had been illegally in China. She was never told how long her punishment would be and ended up being kept for four months. The witness ascribes her survival only to the fortunate coincidence that the camp’s manager was an old friend of her father’s.1237
In 2009, the witness, a young woman from Hyesan (Ryanggang Province), was denounced by her friend, because she had secretly watched movies produced in the ROK. Four MPS officers interrogated her until 3 a.m. in the morning and slapped her face until she admitted to her “crime”. Thereafter, she was detained incommunicado and forced to write a confession statement. After nine days of detention, she was brought before a gathering of police officers. Her “trial” before these police officers consisted of an announcement what crime she committed and that she had to serve six months of imprisonment.1238
Short-term forced labour detention camps positively distinguish themselves from the ordinary prison camps because prisoners can receive family visits on a more frequent basis. Security measures also tend to be less strict. There are only few reported cases of escape attempts from such prisons that resulted in summary executions.1239
In other respects, however, the inmates of short-term prisons suffer violations similar to those in ordinary prison camps (kyohwaso). Kept in inhumane hygienic conditions, they have to engage in forced labour while receiving so little food that they face starvation. Prisoners who do not perform their work well or who disobey the guards are beaten, often severely. Few, if any medical services are provided in the short-term camps. Prisoners who become very sick are taken to local hospitals. Many prisoners die from starvation, disease or injuries sustained during beatings and work accidents. In a considerable number of cases, prisoners who are expected to die soon are handed over to their families, so that the detention camp is not saddled with the responsibility and the burden to handle the dead body. Witnessed also relayed a number of cases of forced abortion carried out in labour training camps.
Detained in a labour training camp in Hamhung (South Hamgyong Province) after his repatriation from China, Mr Timothy only received five spoons of unspiced rice and bean porridge per meal. The malnourished inmates, who looked like “skeletons barely covered with skin”, had to be up from 5 a.m. until 10 p.m. every day. In addition to having to perform hard labour, they also received ideology instruction. Those who failed to memorize the teachings of Kim Il-sung correctly had their prison term extended. After a month or two of imprisonment, a lot of inmates died:
“You see so many bodies, dead bodies, coming out of the detention centres. People who try to escape [the DPRK] are the first ones to go out dead.”1240
Ms P was forced to carry logs of wood and cut grass during her imprisonment in a labour training camp in North Hamgyong Province. The prisoners were starving:
“We were given … corn-based food, just enough to keep us alive. For young male inmates, [the food provided] was very insufficient, so male inmates would find worms or snakes in the field when they were working there. They would eat them alive to feel that feeling in the stomach.” 1241
Another woman, who had also been forced to work in logging during her detention in a labour training camp, described how a lot of inmates were crushed by tree trunks as they tried to carry the large logs down the mountain slopes on their backs.1242
In 2004, the witness was imprisoned in a labour training facility following her interrogation by the SSD in Sinuiju. She was forced to do farming and logging work starting at 5a.m. She received a lump of maize and five pieces of pickled radish per day. She injured herself and was limping so that she could not work as fast as the others. A guard punched her face, causing her to lose a tooth and pass out. After regaining consciousness, she immediately had to return to the field despite the fact that she could hardly stand on her own. As she was not able to do any work the guards started beating her again. She was eventually examined by a doctor, but not provided any medicine.
The witness also recalled an incident, where a woman was caught eating raw rice grains she took from the field. She was taken to the cell block and beaten up. When the witness tried to help her, she was beaten up as well.
Cases of diarrhea were quite common and one inmate in her cell died because she received no treatment. The victim’s body was so emaciated that the guards could simply fold it over to carry it away with great ease.1243
In 2000, the witness spent six months of imprisonment in an all-female labour training camp in North Hamgyong. There were 30 to 40 inmates crammed into a 28square metres cell. They had to sleep on the straw covered floor. The prison only supplied raw corn and salted soup. However, family members were allowed to visit and bring food. She had to carry sandbags and rocks. At night, inmates were also forced to march and run. Those who did not do well were beaten.1244
A former labour training camp inmate witnessed a 7 month pregnant woman in her 20s being kicked many times in the stomach at a short term labour camp in Hyesan. During the night, the victim miscarried and the women in her room helped to deliver the baby. The baby was born alive, but after about 1 minute died. The witness wrapped the baby’s body in a cloth and left it in the corridor. The body stayed there for a week until the guards took it away.1245
A woman detained in another labour camp described a similar case. A heavily pregnant woman, who had been repatriated from China, was being kicked in the stomach until she started bleeding. The guards took her to the hospital. When she returned, her belly was no longer swollen and her eyes were swollen from crying. This led the witness to conclude that the woman lost the child.1246
5. Executions
The DPRK continues to impose the death penalty. Capital punishment is provided for by article 27 of the DPRK Criminal Code. While the DPRK does not provide any comprehensive statistics, first-hand testimony collected by the Commission and other observers leads the Commission to find that a large number of persons are executed every year in the DPRK. In the vast majority of cases, the strict conditions and safeguards that article 6 of the ICCPR requires in relation to the death penalty are not observed.
The 2004 reform of the DPRK Criminal Code reduced the number of crimes that are subject to the death penalty in the DPRK. However, the Criminal Code’s remaining death penalty provisions still cover a wide range of conduct that extends far beyond the ‘most serious crimes’ to which article 6 ICCPR limits the application of the death penalty. Moreover, some death penalty provisions are so broad and vaguely defined that they can easily be abused to suppress the exercise of human rights. Article 59 of the DPRK Criminal Code, for instance, allows the death penalty to be imposed inter alia for grave cases of participating in a demonstration with anti-state purposes. In grave cases, the death penalty may also be imposed on a “Korean national, who, under the control of imperialists, suppresses the people’s struggle for national liberation or the struggle for the reunification of the country or betrays the nation by selling national interests to imperialists.”1247
Since 2007, the scope of crimes subject to the death penalty has been once again expanded. In September 2007, the Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly adopted an ordinance that contains an annex to the Criminal Code with new offences. Sixteen of the new offences are subject to the death penalty. In accordance with the decree, economic crimes such as “extremely grave” cases of smuggling precious metals or intentionally destroying state property are now subject to the death penalty. Most disturbingly, the 2007 decree contains a “catch all” clause, allowing for the sentence of death where a perpetrator commits multiple particularly grave crimes and the court considers that the perpetrator cannot be rehabilitated.
In 2009, the Ministry of People’s Security issued a proclamation on behalf of the Government of the DPRK that prohibits various types of illegal trading in foreign currency. The proclamation envisages harsh criminal sanctions, including the death penalty. The same year, the death penalty was also extended to the crime of “disloyal destruction for anti-state purposes” under article 64 of the Criminal Code.
(a) Public executions in central places
Almost every citizen of the DPRK has become a witness to an execution, because they are often performed publicly in central places. In many cases, the entire population living in the area where the execution takes place must attend, including children. In other cases, executions are conducted in stadiums or large halls in front of a more selected audience.
The DPRK generally does not provide statistics on the number of executions carried out. In response to a question of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the DPRK stated in October 2001 that only 13 executions were carried out between 1998 and 2001 and that the last public execution dated back to October 1992.1248
The Korea Institute for National Unification documented 510 public executions that it found to have taken place between 2005 and 2012 by gathering testimony from persons who fled the DPRK.1249 The real number is probably even higher considering that relatively few people manage to depart from the provinces located farther from the Chinese border.
Executions are usually carried out in the DPRK by firing squads shooting multiple times at the condemned person. In more exceptional cases, the victim is hanged. Over the last couple of years, the authorities have increasingly resorted to killing the victims with automatic machine guns; presumably to maximize the terrorizing effect of the executions. Especially for young children and relatives of the victim, the experience of watching such killings is often so horrifying, that the witnesses must themselves also be considered victims of inhuman and cruel treatment in contravention of article 7 of the ICCPR.
Mr Choi Young-hwa and Mr Kim Joo-il saw their first executions when they were 10 years old. In both cases, their teacher interrupted class to take the children to watch the executions.
Mr Choi Young-hwa saw another execution at the age of 16. The manager of a factory was executed on grounds of espionage after his factory showed a dismal economic performance. He remembered being afraid and thinking that anyone could become a victim of such executions.1250
At the age of nine, Mr Kim Hyuk witnessed his first public execution which was carried out in the vicinity of Political Prison Camp No. 25 near Chongjin. He recalled how he and the other children played with stray bullets they later found.1251
Mr Lee Jae-geun witnessed at least 10 public executions during his 30 years in the DPRK. His whole work unit was required to travel to the execution site, where about 1,000 people in total were gathered. He recalled the case of one man, who was executed for criticizing Workers’ Party of Korea leaders. Mr Lee described the purpose of forcing people to watch executions as follows:
“They would take us to these public executions like a field trip, so that nobody dares think about disobeying the Party and disobeying the ideology of Kim Il-sung.”1252
Public executions were particularly common in the DPRK during the 1990s in line with orders from Kim Jong-il aimed at halting the breakdown of social order and state control. Many victims were executed for economic crimes such as embezzling goods from state factories or stealing food in order to survive. In many cases, the accused were summarily executed without trial. It was common that the victim’s body was left at the execution site for a time, as a warning. The famine was a time of much arbitrary punishment in the DPRK.
During the famine, Ms Jeon Jin-hwa saw several public executions in her hometown Hamhung (South Hamgyong Province):
“People who stole property that was considered belonging to the state and those who were caught stealing other people’s property were publicly executed. Because of this, we didn’t feel like we had control of our own life. We did not even have the right to end our own life.”1253
Another witness from Hamhung remembered that people were executed for petty survival crimes such as stealing wires from factories or public installations.1254
A man described how the way in which public executions were carried out, became more brutal in the late 1990s. When he saw his first execution as a nine-year old boy in Bukchang, South Hamgyong in the 1980s, the victim was placed in wooden frame covered with cloth. That way only the silhouette of the slumping body could be seen. During the famine, this practice was abandoned. Victims were simply tied to a pole and shot, so that everyone could see the bloodied body of the victim.1255
A woman testified that she saw five public executions in her home village in North Hamgyong Province, including the execution of several farmers who had secretly slaughtered a cow to feed themselves. No trials preceded the killings. An official simply announced the crimes and then the victims were shot in the head.1256
According to the witness, up to 20 people were executed each week for “anti-socialist” behaviour in Hyesan, Ryanggang Province. On several occasions, the military used tanks to block the streets, forcing people to congregate around the execution sites. After killing the victim with the initial shots, the firing squad aimed to shoot through the ropes that tied the victims at the neck, waist and feet to a wooden pole. As a result, pieces of body tissue flew everywhere.1257
On one single occasion in July 1999, another witness recalled, KPA Military Security executed 12 persons in Hyesan for alleged anti-state activities, including the head of the city’s management department.The entire population of Hyesan was required to gather and witness the public execution.1258
From 2000, after the social situation had somewhat improved and the state could ease the level of repression, fewer public executions were reported. However, the practice of public executions was never abolished. During the course of its Universal Periodic Review in December 2009, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea admitted itself that public executions were still being carried out in very exceptional cases involving very brutal crimes.1259 Information received by the Commission indicates that more public executions have been carried out since then. In a number of cases, the victims were publicly executed for murder, drug trafficking, theft of state property and “human trafficking” (a charge which is at times also wrongly levelled against those who help others to voluntarily escape from the DPRK). Smugglers of foreign movies and other politically sensitive goods are also among the victims. Shortly before this report was finalized, the Commission received allegations about a string of executions that seem to have political purposes. These developments appear to be linked to the accession of Kim Jong-un to the office of the Supreme Leader and his consolidation of power. They raise questions as to his part in them.
In December 2013, the authorities executed Mr. Jang Song-thaek, the uncle by marriage to the Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. Until shortly before his death, Jang Song-thaek was the head of the Administration Department of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea. While the execution was not carried out in front of the general public, information about it was widely disseminated by DPRK state Media, both within and outside the DPRK. In addition, large parts of the population reportedly had to attend compulsory information events in order to be informed about the execution and the underlying reasons, as described by the government. According to the DPRK’s own account, a special military court of the State Security Department convicted Mr Jang on charges of “state subversion attempted by the accused Jang with an aim to overthrow the people's power of the DPRK by ideologically aligning himself with enemies”.1260 The judgment reportedly “vehemently condemned him as a wicked political careerist, trickster and traitor for all ages”.1261The death sentence was handed down only three days after Mr Jang’s arrest. Footage of his arrest at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Workers’ Party of Korea was broadcast on DPRK television. The fairness of the procedure observed in this case is called in question by a report of the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau, which is chaired by Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. This report was made public three days before the judgment. It already concluded that Mr Jang “committed criminal acts baffling imagination” and that he had done “tremendous harm to our party and revolution”.1262 In violation of the right to seek pardon or commutation of the sentence under article 6 (4) of the ICCPR and the right to have the conviction and sentence reviewed by a higher tribunal according to law under article 14 (5) of the ICCPR, the death sentence was executed immediately after the special military court handed down its judgment.1263 The Commission finds that the circumstances of the trial and execution of Jang Song-thaek, as per the DPRK’s own account of it, involved many elements that contravened international human rights law. If such violations could affect one of the highest officials in the land, it is not difficult to appreciate the standards of law and justice that are afforded to ordinary citizens.
The Commission also received reports of executions and disappearances of close associates of Jang Song-thaek in the Workers’ Party of Korea and the Ministry of Public Security.1264 Among the victims of public executions are the most senior officials of the Administration Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea, which used to be headed by Jang Song-thaek. In November 2013, Mr Ri Riong-ha, First Deputy Director of the Administration Department and Mr Jang Su-gil, Deputy Director of the Administration Department were reportedly executed on the basis of a judgment of the Special Military Court of the State Security Department. The reports are consistent with the pronouncement of the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea that the Party had “eliminated Jang and purged his group, unable to remain an onlooker to its acts any longer, dealing telling blows at sectarian acts manifested within the party”.1265 The judgment sentencing Jang Song-thaek to death specifically names Ri Riyong-ha as Jang’s “trusted stooge”.1266.In the same direction points the 2014 New Year’s statement of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, in which he indicated that the Party “took the resolute measure of removing the factionalists lurking in the Party”.
The Commission received reports about a series of public executions conducted in August, October and November 2013 in various locations across the country. Many of the victims were reportedly executed for having been involved in the distribution of foreign movies and pornographic material. Most of the reported executions occurred after unconfirmed rumours were widely published in international media, which sought to link Kim Jong-un’s wife Ri Sol-ju to a pornography-related scandal. In response to these rumours, the DPRK authorities reportedly issued stern warnings to its population not to trade in rumours and intensified a crackdown on ‘anti-socialist materials’, including pornographic material and foreign films.
In early 2010, a number of officials involved in the disastreous 2009 currency reform were executed.1267 At the time that the executions were carried out, Kim Jong-un had already started gradually assuming affairs of state from his ailing father Kim Jong-il. According to testimony received, including from the Korea Institute for National Unification, one of the victims was Mr Pak Nam-gi, who was the Director of the Finance and Planning Department of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, at the time that the currency reform was implemented.1268 Mr Pak has not been seen since his reported execution and has been publicly described by an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, which was chaired by Kim Jong-un, as a “traitor for all ages”.1269 This lends credence to the accuracy of the reports received.
In confidential interviews, eyewitnesses testified about the other recent cases of public executions to the Commission:1270
In March 2013, the inhabitants of Songpyeong area of Chongjin City (North Hamgyong Province) were ordered to watch the execution of a man and a woman. Both adults and children had to attend, without exception. After an official announced to the crowd that the victims had produced and sold large amounts of methamphetamine, the victims were beaten and tied to a pole. Then a firing squad of six officials executed them using machine guns. Other public executions were conducted in the same place in 2007 (for human trafficking), 2008 (for theft from a state factory) and 2009 (for murder).
In the spring of 2012, a woman was publicly executing for having killed her lover in Bukchang County, South Pyongan Province.
In November 2011, four persons were publicly executed for having produced and sold drugs in Kyonghung County, North Hamgyong Province.
In June 2011, people were forced to watch the public execution of a woman for murder in Kumya County, South Hamgyong Province.
In 2010, a woman who had sold movies and soap operas produced in the ROK was publicly executed in Hamhung, also South Hamgyong.
In October 2009, a man was publicly executed in Hoeryoung, North Hamgyong Province for having been in contact with ROK authorities.
