Horror stories from camps of excesses

North Korea's gulags have become centres of human rights abuse where prisoners are tortured for crimes they did not commit.

Images and accounts of the North Korean gulag become sharper, more harrowing and more accessible with each passing year. A distillation of testimonies from survivors and former guards, newly published by the Korean Bar Association, details the daily lives of 200,000 political prisoners estimated to be in the camps: Eating a diet of mostly corn and salt, they lose their teeth, their gums turn black, their bones weaken and, as they age, they hunch over at the waist. Most work 12- to 15-hour days until they die of malnutrition-related illnesses, usually about the age of 50. Allowed just one set of clothes, they live and die in rags, without soap, socks, underclothes or sanitary napkins.

The camps have never been visited by outsiders, so these accounts cannot be independently verified. But high-resolution satellite photographs, now accessible to anyone with an internet connection, reveal vast labour camps in the mountains of North Korea. The photographs corroborate survivors' stories, showing entrances to mines where former prisoners said they worked as slaves, in-camp detention centres where former guards said uncooperative prisoners were tortured to death and parade grounds where former prisoners said they were forced to watch executions.

"We have this system of slavery right under our nose," said An Myeong Chul, a camp guard who defected to South Korea. "Human rights groups can't stop it. South Korea can't stop it. The United States will have to take up this issue at the negotiating table."

But the camps have not been discussed in meetings between US diplomats and North Korean officials. By exploding nuclear bombs, launching missiles and cultivating a reputation for hair-trigger belligerence, the government of Kim Jong Il has created a permanent security flashpoint on the Korean peninsula - and effectively shoved the issue of human rights off the negotiating table. The camps have existed for 50 years, 12 times as long as the Nazi concentration camps and twice as long as the Soviet gulag.

Before guards shoot prisoners who have tried to escape, they turn each execution into a teachable moment, according to interviews with five North Koreans who said they have witnessed such killings. The condemned are hooded and their mouths are stuffed with pebbles. Three guards fire three times each, as onlookers see blood spray and bodies crumple, those interviewed said.

"We almost experience the executions ourselves," said Jung Gwang Il, 47, adding that he witnessed two executions as an inmate at Camp 15. After three years there, Jung said, he was allowed to leave in 2003. He now lives in Seoul.

Like several former prisoners, Jung said the most arduous part of his imprisonment was his pre-camp interrogation at the hands of the Bowibu, the national security agency. After eight years in a government office that handled trade with China, a fellow worker accused him of being a South Korean agent. They wanted me to admit to being a spy," Jung said. "They knocked out my front teeth with a baseball bat. They fractured my skull a couple of times. I was not a spy but I admitted to being a spy after nine months of torture."

When he was arrested, Jung said, he weighed about 75 kilograms. When his interrogation was finished, he said, he weighed about 36 kilograms. "Most people die of malnutrition, accidents at work and during interrogation," said Jung, who has become a human rights advocate in Seoul. "It is people with perseverance who survive. The ones who think about food all the time go crazy." Human rights groups, lawyers committees and South Korean-funded think-tanks have detailed what goes on in the camps based on in-depth interviews with survivors and former guards who trickle out of North Korea into China and find their way to South Korea.

The number of camps has been consolidated from 14 to about 5 large sites, according to former officials who worked in the camps. Camp 22, near the Chinese border, is 50 kilometres long and 40 kilometres wide. As many as 50,000 prisoners are held there, a former guard said.

There is a broad consensus among researchers about how the camps are run: Most North Koreans are sent there without any judicial process. Many inmates die in the camps unaware of the charges against them. Guilt by association is legal under North Korean law and up to three generations of a wrongdoer's family are sometimes imprisoned, following a rule from North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung: "Enemies of class, whoever they are, their seed must be eliminated through three generations." Most of the political camps are "complete control districts", which means that inmates work there until death.

There is, however, a "revolutionising district" at Camp 15, where prisoners can receive remedial indoctrination in socialism. After several years, if they memorise the writings of Kim Jong Il, they are released.

Since it offers a safe haven to defectors, South Korea is home to scores of camp survivors. All of them have been debriefed by the South Korean intelligence service, which presumably knows more about the camps than any agency outside of Pyongyang.

But South Korea avoided public criticism of the North's gulag. It abstained from voting on the United Nation resolutions that criticised North Korea's record on human rights and did not mention the camps during leadership summits in 2000 or 2007. Meanwhile, under a "sunshine policy" of peaceful engagement, South Korea made major economic investments in the North and gave huge, unconditional annual gifts of food and fertiliser.

Government policy changed last year under President Lee Myung-bak, who has halted unconditional aid, backed UN resolutions that criticise the North and tried to put human rights on the table in dealing with Pyongyang. In response, North Korea has called Lee a "traitor", squeezed inter-Korean trade and threatened war.

An Myeong Chul was allowed to work as a guard and driver in political prison camps because, he said, he came from a trustworthy family. His father was a North Korean intelligence agent, as were the parents of many of his fellow guards.

In his training to work in the camps, An said, he was ordered, under penalty of becoming a prisoner himself, never to show pity. It was permissible, he said, for bored guards to beat or kill prisoners. An worked in the camps for seven years before escaping to China in 1994. He now works in a bank in Seoul.

An said the camps play a crucial role in maintaining totalitarian rule. "All high-ranking officials under Kim Jong Il know that one misstep means you go to the camps, along with your family," he said. Partly to assuage his guilt, An has become an activist and has been talking about the camps. He was among the first to help investigators identify camp buildings using satellite images. Still, he said, nothing will change in camp operations without sustained diplomatic pressure, especially from the US.

The US has been a fickle advocate. In the Clinton years, high-level diplomatic contacts between Washington and Pyongyang focused almost exclusively on preventing North Korea from developing nuclear weapons and expanding its ballistic missile capability. President George W. Bush's administration took a radically different approach, labelling North Korea as part of an "axis of evil", along with Iran and Iraq.

In recent months, North Korea has reneged on its promise to abandon nuclear weapons, kicked out UN weapons inspectors, exploded a second nuclear device and created a major security crisis in Northeast Asia. Containing that crisis has monopolised the Obama administration's dealings with North Korea. The camps, for the time being, are a non-issue.

Kim Young Soon, once a dancer in Pyongyang, said she spent eight years in Camp 15 during the 1970s. Under the guilt-by-association rule, she said, her four children and her parents were also sentenced to hard labour there. At the camp, she said, her parents starved to death and her eldest son drowned. Her husband was shot for trying to flee the country, as was her youngest son after his release from the camp.

It was not until 1989, more than a decade after her release, that she found out why she had been imprisoned. A security official told her then that she was punished because she had been a friend of Kim Jong Il's first wife and that she would "never be forgiven again" if the state suspected that she had gossiped about the Dear Leader.

She escaped to China in 2000 and now lives in Seoul. At 73, she said she is furious that the outside world doesn't take more interest in the camps. "I had a friend who loved Kim Jong Il and for that the government killed my family," she said. "How can it be justified?"