A new report has been released by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) confirming the closure of two North Korean prison camps. The report builds on the 2012 HRNK report Hidden Gulag Second Edition and finds the remaining number of incarcerated prisoners on political grounds to be “extremely high.” Up to 130,000 political prisoners are known to be held in these camps where they are subjected to malnutrition, forced labor, torture, and other extreme measures of punishment. Access to these areas is constantly denied to outsiders by North Korean authorities.

 

Camp No. 22, one of the two closed camps, is said to have had a sharp reduction in its population due to a shortage of food.  The report also goes on to examine whether the dismantling of Camp No. 18 in 2006 could serve as a precedent for ending the entire political penal labor system.  HRNK Co-Chair Roberta Cohen has stated that all political prisoners, including those who are missing and have died while incarcerated, should be accounted for and the UN Commission of Inquiry should make this the highest priority.

 

The report’s author, David Hawk, is a prominent human rights researcher and advocate. A former Executive Director of Amnesty International USA and former United Nations human rights official, he has scrutinized the human rights atrocities of the North Korean prison camps for over a decade. HRNK aims to draw attention to human rights abuses in North Korea and seeks creative ways to end the isolation of the North Korean people.  It became the first organization to propose the establishment of a UN commission of Inquiry o the human rights situation in North Korea.

 

Source: HRNK