NORTH KOREA

Correctional institutions in North KoreaThe truth abou
t the detention camps near the Chinese borderConcluding
observations of the United Nations Human Rights
Committeeon Democratic People's Republic of Korea

(Abstracts related to public executions, forced labour, imprisonment, pre-trial detention)

16 October 2001

Correctional institutions in North Korea

Chosun.com (31.08.2001)/ HRWF International Secretariat (16.10.2001) C Website: www.hrwf.net/ Email: info@hrwf.net - Convicted criminals and minor offenders in North Korea are incarcerated in detention centers, labor reformatories, prisons and concentration camps, the last of which are dubbed control centers.

Offenders of relatively light rules and regulations are kept in detention centers before being referred to the Ministry of People's Security (the police). Detained there are those who have absented themselves from their jobs without permit, or who have boarded trains without a pass. Widely known detention centers are those located in Kanri, a key railroad center in the Pyongyang suburbs, and in Sinsongchon, South Pyongan Province.

Detention ranges in length from a few weeks to several months. Detainees undergo various physical labor and political indoctrination courses. Incidents of detention in this category of correctional institutions are not entered in one's criminal records.

Once convicted, criminals are sent to either labor reformatories or prisons. Detained in reformatories are offenders guilty of violence, thievery or defamation, among other crimes, who have been given prison terms of no more than two years. Some minor offenders are incarcerated in reformatories without undergoing due judicial process, but under summary decisions made by the Ministry of People's Security. Those who have been deported from China after fleeing the country merely in search of food are recently being sent to labor reformatories, according to North Korea watchers here.

Reformatories are classified into two: one accommodating those serving one year and the other those serving up to two years. The former is often called No. 22 reformatory, and the latter No. 66 or No. 88 reformatories. Famous among them are No. 22 reformatory in Orang, North Hamgyong province, No. 66 reformatory in Chonma, North Pyongan province, and No. 88 reformatory in Wonsan, Kangwon province. Inmates there are given arduous physical labor and harsh treatment aimed at indoctrinating them. Hence they are called labor drill units as well.

Prisons accommodate convicts sentenced to two-year terms or more. They are also of two kinds; one accommodating general offenders and the other political criminals. While the No. 7, or Reformation Bureau of the Ministry of People's Security administers reformatories and general offender prisons, prisons housing political criminals are managed by the State Security Agency (intelligence). Once sent to political prisons, few ever get out of them. Notorious are prisons located in Chongjin, North Hamgyong province; Kaechon, South Pyongan; and Sunghori, Pyongyang, the last of which was relocated a few years ago when its existence became known to the public.

Kept in concentration camps are political criminals branded as anti-party or anti-revolutionary sectarians and their families. In the North, they are often called a numerical control center, specially restricted area or just restricted area. Like political-offender prisons, they are administered by the State Security Agency and inmates are given no access to judicial procedures or protest.

Concentration camps are divided into two: completely restricted areas and areas of possible conversion. Prisoners put in completely restricted areas are not permitted to return to normal life for good, have their human rights infringed upon and are subject to cruel labor, according to North Korea watchers. Those kept in areas of possible conversion have some chance of resuming a normal life. They can listen to No. 3 broadcasting station, the radio sets hooked to which have only one fixed dial, and their children may attend schools. No. 15 control center located in Odok, South Hamgyong province, alone has both completely restricted and possible-conversion areas.

The truth about the detention camps near the Chinese border

By Kim Sung Min

Chosun Journal/ HRWF International Secretariat (16.10.2001) C Website: www.hrwf.net/ Email: info@hrwf.net - On October 1st, 1995, I left my hometown, where I was born and had spent more than 30 years, with happy and sorrowful memories. Yes, it was and still is my hometown. But when I was leaving, there was no one shedding tears or saying a prayer or two for the uncertain future ahead of me. There was not even a hint of sadness in that moment of separation. Having lost both parents in my early teens, my hometown meant nothing to me but hunger, loneliness and despair.

Since I was fourteen, I drifted from one 'home' to another learning how to cope with hunger and to read others' faces trying to become a good boy. In 1978, as a seventeen-year-old boy, I was conscripted into the North Korean People's Army, Kim Jong Il's most favored organization, for 10 years and one month. During all those years, I was a well-trained war machine who was ready to do whatever was needed under the banner of "Reunify the country with the red force."

Upon completion of military service in 1988, I was admitted to the Kim Hyung Jik College of Education. When I graduated from the college four years later, I got a letter of appointment from the authorities, which made me an officer of the People's Army. For a man who had spent a total of 15 years in a military uniform, the military spirit naturally became the supreme value of life. Nothing else could match that.

Then, a thunderous news hit me one day. It was the death of 'our great leader' Kim Il Sung, who had been to me, like to everyone else in North Korea, the Immortal Sun. His death was followed by bizarre and appalling rumors, such as hungry people killing each other to eat their flesh. As if to confirm those rumors, people often saw corpses of elderly people and children in dark corners of city streets or remote mountain trails. Every station and every street market began to be crowded with elderly people and children who were either abandoned or ran away for lack of food.

Listening to their horror stories, I could not help but ask myself what I was doing as a member of the People's Army whose duty should be to protect the people from all evil forces. I concluded from the terrible experiences that the politics of the Republic had nothing to do with the welfare and happiness of its people and that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was born only to kill democracy on this land. This absurd society, where one segment was busy with talks about Kim Jong Il's succession as if preparing a coronation while people in other segments were starving, made me really sick. The moment of choice came for me, and I chose freedom and a better life.

One day I crossed the Tumen River, the border waterway between China and North Korea. As I was a runaway military officer on the active list, getting caught meant instant execution, and every step I took on that foreign soil was crucial to saving my life. My only hope was to go to South Korea somehow, but I didn't know how. For a North Korean refugee, finding things to eat is a major daily concern; no passage was open to that land of hope and safety.

Finally, I arrived at the destination of my long journey, the Korean embassy in China. However, nothing was further away from my expectation than their reception. "Go away quickly and go back! What if the Chinese police catch you? We have no way to handle cases like yours." Without knowing it, I was clenching my fists and my teeth, and a streak of blood was running from my mouth. They didn't seem to have the slightest idea about what North Korean refugees in China like me were going through.

By mentioning the Chinese police and this and that excuse, they succeeded in driving me away. I spat and spat at them, at their inhumanity even to their brothers. Frustrating though it was, I had no choice but to continue my personal exodus to the land of freedom and safety. I somehow managed to sneak to the port city of Dalian and was lucky to find a Korean merchant ship. As night fell, I proceeded to the ship. But then, a group of Chinese armed police rushed out of the darkness and handcuffed me without asking questions.

I was escorted to the police station in Dalian's port, and put in jail. Two days later, on February 24th, I was transferred to the City of Dalian's prison, where on the way I was escorted by three Chinese officials, including the chief of the External Affairs Department of the city's Public Security Bureau. I had to stay in that cell with Chinese petty criminals for about forty days, while they conducted an investigation and waited for the decision from higher authorities. Anyway, that is what I was told. I pleaded with them whenever I found the opportunity, often with tears, not to send me back to North Korea, saying, "I would rather stay here in prison all my life than go back and be executed." It was useless. Soon I was transferred to Tumen, under the escort of five armed guards.

The fact that Tumen is a border town near North Korea was good enough to drive me into a state of terror. Looking at those who took me in, I realized instantly that they were specialists in dealing with refugees from North Korea, like me. The first thing they told me to do was to take off all my clothes to search for something only they knew. I had to give them all I had, my body and clothes, so they could do their "search," trembling with shame and fear. Then, they roughly pushed me to a wall, and began taking pictures of my front, my back, my sides and every part of me. Abysmal shame and terror overpowered me, and I became an animal that was half-dead.

After the search, they dragged me further inside through 2 sets of iron doors, and put me into a tiny prison cell, which I shared with seven of my countrymen who had also escaped from North Korea for a variety of reasons. The room had neither windows nor a ventilation system. The heavy iron door I had just passed through was the only path to the outside world. I wondered if I would die from lack of oxygen, even though my cellmates assured me that no one had died because of that, at least until then. In the room there was a spy camera at one corner of the ceiling, a toilet pot like a toy, and several pieces of dirty, ragged blankets and pillows.

This is one of the detention camps located at the border between China and North Korea, which China built to put away the North Korean refugees they catch. The detention camp at Tumen, which is managed by special agents of the Chinese Security Bureau (similar to the U.S. CIA), Jilin Province, is completely segregated from the outside world by high walls and barbed wire. Even within the camp building, every movement by inmates is closely monitored and controlled by the three iron doors and one prison gate as well as the well-trained guards.

What is waiting for these refugees is forced repatriation to North Korea, a situation they want to avoid at any cost. To prevent refugees from taking any drastic action, camp officials often cajole them by saying that they might send them to the so-called "Farm for Brainwashing through Labor" in China rather than send them back to North Korea if the refugees cooperate with them by adhering to the camp regulations. That is why inmates try to survive in the camp.

One should have been smart enough to realize that what they were saying were complete lies, and taken certain resolute measures. But in such an unusual situation, people often make the wrong decision, and so did I. I decided to stay calm and cooperate with them, hoping to be transferred some day to the farm they talked about. I gave honest answers to their questions about when and where I had been in China, and whom I met and for what reason, etc., etc. Their interrogation lasted for days, often interrupted because they wanted to check if I was giving correct answers.

Then, one day I was told to come out to the prison yard, where two soldiers were waiting for my arrival. They dashed over to me, handcuffed me, and pushed me into a van. The van was already on the Tumen Bridge even before I knew what was going on. It takes only five minutes to the Tumen Bridge by van from the camp. By the time I realized what was happening to me, I was right there in North Korea, the last place I wanted to be on earth.

I was handed over to a group of North Korean soldiers that took part in the ritual of changing handcuffs, from Chinese to North Korean state property. As if well prepared for my arrival, the North Korean soldiers dragged me to Kim Il Sung's Tower of Immortality, a monument erected at a place directly opposite the Domun (Tumen) Customs House. There, a man who said he was the director of Onseong-gun Office of the National Defense Agency, the powerful military organization that could be compared to the CIA of the U.S., introduced me to a crowd of civilians who were gathered around the tower for my arrival, using the term "bandong-bunja (reactionary)," a title that I had become so familiar with.

He told the crowd to look at me closely to see what a traitor looked like, and had me walk among them. Angry shouts of "you, dirty rat," "you, betrayer," and "die, you turncoat" were shouted at me. Some spat in my face, and some threw their shoes at me. Then, I was hit by a stone on my forehead, and heard loud cheers coming from the crowd. The cheering made these people even more excited, and soon my face and head became covered with blood from the stones hitting me. I kept walking, and cursed not them, my poor countrymen, but myself, for the stupidity of having not killed myself in front of the Korean Embassy or while in the detention camp in Tumen. After the ritual, I was escorted to the Onseong-gun Office of the National Defense Agency.

I have heard that there are talks about North Korean refugees going on at the United Nations, whether the refugees should be treated as political refugees or illegal immigrants who left their country just for economic reasons. One thing I can say to those who are involved in the debate is that in North Korea all North Koreans who escaped their country with reasons similar to mine are treated as political offenders. My case clearly shows this. As soon as I was taken into the building of the Onseong-gun's NDA, they started to 'interrogate' me under the charge of high treason. It was an interrogation session conducted more by physical abuse than by words.

They didn't ask me who I was, where I lived, what I did at home and abroad and why I committed such a horrible crime of betraying my own country. It wasn't important to them, or perhaps they already knew all about me and others who were in the same situation. They broke my fingers, ballooned my face, and pickled my whole body in dark blood. After going through the hell of the "preliminary interrogation" that seemed to last forever, I was then put in a prison cell where lice and fleas were waiting for me. Every minute I prayed to God to put an end to my suffering, to take my life.

After eight days of imprisonment in the Onseong-gun Office of the NDA, I was put on a train to Pyongyang, escorted by armed guards from the Headquarters of the NDA. "You too are a poor little thing," said the military officer leading the guards, in response to my question of where we were going. "Don't you know? What do you think a thing like you deserves but execution by a firing squad? Your colleagues are waiting for you, and there will be a public trial for you five days from now," he added.

Now was the time to get myself killed, I thought. I couldn't bear the thought of being shot dead as a traitor to the Republic in front of the soldiers I had once led as their captain. I made the decision to jump off the train, even if to be killed by the train wheels. Passing by Sinseongchon Station near Pyongyang, I jumped off the running train, and found that I once again had become a free man instead of a dead man. I ran and ran and ran toward the north. On April 3rd, I crossed the Tumen River again to re-start life as an illegal immigrant, which would last for nearly four years. Thanks to God, my horror story suddenly took a turn for the best on February 9th, 1999, when I was admitted to the country where I always wanted to be, the Republic of Korea, which was, and still is, a true Republic to me.

Now, as a man who survived all kinds of inhuman conditions through the valley of the shadow of death and now living in a free society, I have something to tell the conscience of mankind. What I have to say is, of course, about the North Korean refugees in China, a group of people, including children and women, who are leading among the most tragic of lives in the world today. No one exactly knows how many there are. The suggested figures among humanitarian groups or concerned government officials vary widely from none to thousands or even to millions.

The truth is that a great number of these refugees are being caught, treated inhumanely and repatriated by force back to "their own country" to be drowned, tortured, maimed, hanged, or shot to death. Pretending not to have seen anything, we have encouraged those who inflict indescribable pain, both mental and physical, on these helpless human beings. It is a great shame for both Korea and the world. I plead particularly with people in the South to pay closer attention to the horrific situation which their brothers and sisters are subjected to. It cannot be a matter just for the Chinese and North Korean governments. It is a matter to be dealt with by the South Korean government from a historical perspective as well as a matter over which the future generations of reunified Korea will ponder again and again.

It is too cruel, or too foolish, for parents to haggle with doctors over hospital fees when there is a loving baby dying in an emergency room. There certainly are laws and procedures to be followed in international affairs, but I believe that the universal law of human rights should come first. We should do everything to make this clear for the reactionary governments of China and North Korea until they give up their policies of killing innocent people. The tragedy of North Korean refugees should end right now.

Concluding Observations of the Human Rights Committee:

Democratic People's Republic of Korea

27/07/2001. CCPR/CO/72/PRK.

(Concluding Observations/Comments)

HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE
Seventy-second session

CONSIDERATION OF REPORTS SUBMITTED BY STATES PARTIES
UNDER ARTICLE 40 OF THE COVENANT

Concluding Observations of the Human Rights Committee

Democratic People's Republic of Korea

1. The Committee considered the second periodic report of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (CCPR/C/PRK/2000/2) at its 1944th, 1945th and 1946th meetings, held on 19 and 20 July 2001, and adopted the following concluding observations at its 1953rd meeting, held on 26 July 2001.

C. Subjects of concern and recommendations

(...)
13. The Committee takes note of the delegation's information that the death penalty has rarely been imposed and carried out in the last three years. While the Committee appreciates that the number of offences carrying the death penalty has been reduced to five, it remains seriously concerned by the fact that out of these five offences, as the report states, four are essentially political offences (articles 44, 45, 47 and 52 of the Criminal Code), couched in terms so broad that the imposition of the death penalty may be subject to essentially subjective criteria, and not be confined to "the most serious crimes" only, as required under article 6, paragraph 2, of the Covenant. The Committee is also concerned by acknowledged and reported instances of public executions.

The State party should review and amend the above-mentioned articles of the Criminal Code, to bring them into conformity with the requirements of article 6, paragraph 2, of the Covenant. The State party should refrain from any public executions. It is invited to work towards the declared goal of abolishing capital punishment.

(...)

16. The Committee takes note of the information provided by the delegation on the conditions of detention in prisons of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The Committee nonetheless remains concerned about the many allegations of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and conditions and of inadequate medical care in reform institutions, prisons and prison camps, which appear to be in violation of articles 7 and 10 of the Covenant and of the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.

The State party should take steps to improve conditions in the facilities referred to above and all other facilities for detention in the DPRK. It must ensure that all persons deprived of their liberty are treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person, as required by article 10 of the Covenant. The State party must ensure that sufficient food and appropriate and timely medical care are available to all detainees. The Committee strongly recommends that the State party allow for independent internal and international inspection of prisons, reform institutions, and other places of detention or imprisonment.

17. Notwithstanding the explanations given by the delegation, the Committee continues to harbour serious doubts about the compatibility of the provisions of Chapter Two of the Labour Law of the DPRK, especially articles 14 and 18 thereof, with the prohibition of forced labour in article 8, paragraph 3(a), of the Covenant.

The State party should amend the abovementioned provisions of the Labour Law so as to avoid any potential conflict with the provisions of article 8 of the Covenant.

18. While noting the delegation's explanations about the nature and purpose of pre-trial detention and preliminary investigations tending to prolong the duration of pre-trial detention (see para. 65 of the report) , the Committee remains concerned about the compatibility of the State party's pre-trial detention practices and preliminary investigation procedures, with article 9 of the Covenant. The duration of detention before a person is brought before a judge is manifestly incompatible with article 9, paragraph 3, of the Covenant.

The State party's next report should contain statistics on the number of persons held in pre-trial detention and on the duration of and reasons for such detention. The State party must ensure that anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge is brought promptly before a judge. The State party must ensure that all of its practices are consistent with the provisions of article 9 of the Covenant and that detainees have access to counsel and are permitted to contact their families from the moment of apprehension.

(...)

30. The Committee requests that the information relating to its other recommendations and to the Covenant as a whole should be included in the third periodic report of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, to be submitted by 1 January 2004.