The worst place in the world.
Today, anyone, of course, if you have money, you can arrange a tour to North Korea. Tour with a cheerful selfie at an exotic background, under the supervision of the special services and dedicated guides, where any unauthorized deviation from the route and other acts of negligence punishable. In the best case, immediate expulsion, and at worst (as it happens mostly with Americans) is a multi-year sentence to labor camps.
But as frightening as this may sound, do not confuse “safe” zone for foreigners with real prisons for the Koreans. The authorities refuse to provide information and especially to avoid international inspections. Information about what is actually happening behind the barbed wire, collect the crumbs.This is mainly information from former prisoners of the 80-ies – 90-ies, but there are more recent history.
The fact that the conditions in the prisons and camps the most terrifying, easy to guess. Security guards are specially trained to brutal treatment of detainees: torture, secret and public executions for them – the usual routine and even fun. But there is high mortality due to starvation, disease and accidents during hard labor, because people, in fact, doomed to death, medical care is not provided. Many things, such as bikes, clothing, and products made and grown heavy manual labor of hundreds of thousands of prisoners.
In the protection of the camp are not only men:
Camps are divided into two types: a labor colony for political prisoners (now in the country, presumably, 6 colonies) and “re-education centers” for criminals (15 to 20).
To get to the number of prisoners is easier: for example, sang a South Korean song or accidentally damaged a portrait of the leaders of the nation (enough to serve tea on the newspaper with their picture) – and now without a trial “criminal” relocated to the camp. And together with all the nearest kin: parents, children, brothers, sisters, even grandmothers, grandfathers and grandchildren are all considered “guilty by Association”. In most cases, this camp is their home for life.
Propaganda slogan and portraits of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il-sung, the North Korean view of the village from the Chinese side :
Colonies are located in remote mountain valleys, completely isolated from the world. In fact, the prisoners turned into slaves engaged in hard and dangerous labour using the most primitive tools – mostly in the mines and in agriculture.
Re-education centers similar to the classic prison is a large prison complexes of buildings surrounded by high walls. There are real criminals, but on equal terms with them serving sentences of many ordinary Koreans who have settled for the “crime” of poverty and despair (stolen food, was engaged in illicit trade, tried to cross the border, etc.).
This photo was taken in the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas. But it gives at least a partial idea of how might look the camp area.
Prisoners centers also employed slave labor, mainly in the prison factories. Those who could not meet the standard, tortured or permanently placed in a special camera so tiny that it is impossible to stand or lie down in full growth.
Artist’s drawing based on testimony of Kim Kwang Ira, which 2 years spent in the camps, and in 2009, fled to South Korea:
In contrast to the colonies for political prisoners, the centres of rehabilitation of prisoners after a day of work is subjected to indoctrination and forced to memorize speeches of Kim Il sung and Kim Jong-Il and to undergo “rituals of self-criticism and repentance.”
In South Korea, there are so-called “training camps of self-denial” organized by the military to civilians, to those (of course, optional) “strengthen the spirit and body.” In this picture a heavy six-day training are students and preschoolers. In North Korea the camp children are forcibly hauling logs 365 days a year, while starved and subjected to beatings.
Thanks to eyewitnesses, we can learn the details of everyday life in specific camps.
Hwaseong camp (correctional labor colony №16)
The largest camp in the country (about 560 square kilometers – like Volgograd or Vladivostok), of course, not marked on maps, but on clear satellite images can be considered gate and fence with guard towers on the perimeter. Here the prisoners, or as they are called, “anti-party and counter-revolutionary elements” among the 20 thousand people serving life sentences without the right to relief.
This camp buildings as their shows satellite map by Google: as you can see, the objects are smeared.
Just 2 kilometres from the Western border of the camp, the DPRK conducted its underground nuclear test: the last was on January 6 of this year, the previous – in 2006, 2009 and 2013. Defectors told me that the prisoners are forced to dig tunnels and build underground facilities in radioactive areas.
Witnesses. There are only two: a teenage relative of one of the prisoners got to the camp with his family when he was 13, and If someone (name not real) – a former bodyguard of Hwaseong. According to the latter, of members of families upon arrival to the camp separated, so that they may never meet. To work convicts go 10 km on foot, in winter often with a 25-degree frost.
The task was not to execute prisoners, but he saw how they were strangled with a wire, beaten with wooden sticks, forced to dig their own graves and killed a powerful hammer blow on the head.
Torture “Dove” knotty prisoners hung arms from behind and beaten to a bloody vomiting.
“Scale, airplane, motorcycle”: the prisoners are forced to stand in such awkward positions until they collapse unconscious.
The guard leg is pushing the prisoner into a narrow gap in the wall.
According to Lee, the guards of the Hwaseong do not consider the torture, mockery or cruelty. Moreover, they brag to each other with their sadistic methods, and guilt is unfamiliar to them, because the prison staff is totally “brainwashed”.
Here is not the ceremony nor with women, nor with children. Women guards raped, then often secretly kill, not to spread rumors (officially they are called “missing”), and pregnant women are punished, by sending her work to provoke a miscarriage. Or do a forced abortion.
Torture “Clock”: the guards call randomly time – a pregnant woman must reveal it. It continues to dehydration.
The Yodok camp (correctional labor colony No. 15)
This camp is divided into 2 zones: “zone of total control” and “revolutionary zone”. In the first place people who, in the opinion of the authorities, committed crimes against the regime or politically unreliable (for example, North Koreans who visited Japan and Christians). They will never release. In the 90 years under the “total control” contained 30 thousand people, including about 6 thousand Christians.
A nice at the gates of a women’s prison near the border with China
In the “revolutionary zone” send “not dangerous criminals”, they are released after serving their sentence – unless, of course, they manage to survive in the most severe conditions. In this part of the camp, as you might guess, far fewer prisoners (in the 90s it was 16.5 thousand).
The total area of the Consumer – 370 square kilometres (more than the Rostov-on-don and Krasnoyarsk).
Approximate territory of the camp Eater on Google satellite map:
The camp is surrounded by 4-metre barbed-wire fence, which fired electricity (eyewitnesses recalled how it was the first time in rainy days), and the observation towers around the perimeter. In the protection – 1 000 submachine gunners with dogs and hand grenades.
North Korean soldiers train dogs to exercise
The prisoners ‘ barracks are worse than cattle trails: mud wall, thatched roof, protected from rain, grass mats for the floor. One room of 50 square meters divided 30-40 people. Camera never heated, so in winter, 20 degrees below zero, prisoners frostbitten ears and limbs.
Frame secret survey, if conducted in the camp and was shown on Japanese TV:
In the camp there is complete lack of sanitation: there is no full showers, no Laundry, and only one toilet for 200 prisoners. Prison switching from one to another, it is removed from the dead and give new arrivals.
South Korean soldiers get the experience of being “North Korean prison cell”:
The guards forced the prisoners to inform on each other and distinguished appoint “elders” over groups of inmates. If at least one person is not working properly, then we should punish the whole group. This creates an atmosphere of anger and hostility, eliminate any solidarity and mutual aid – so the system of “surveillance of all for all”.
In 80-ies – 90-ies of the prisoners worked 7 days a week during the summer from 4 am to 8 PM winter 5:30 in the morning. In addition to the working rules, they must succeed on “the lessons of ideology.” Those who, for example, is not versed in the teachings of Kim Il sung, deprived of sleep or receive reduced rations. However, even “normal”, not an abbreviated food is so scarce that the prisoners eating caught rodents and snakes to survive.
In the new century seems to have been some improvements, although they are difficult even to name the word. If the prisoners were given 150-200 grams of corn slo brew, now, according to the stories, they get vegetable soup and a bowl of rice with beans and corn. But still the portions are so small that often the father would steal food from his own son. And any bad food (e.g. grains, which give the prisoners for disembarkation) mixed with feces. However, according to eyewitnesses, many still manage to steal them to wash and eat.
It’s lunch North Korean woman who lost their homes after the Typhoon and floods. Approximately such portion of a receive convicts, it is not excluded that one for the day.
Released from camp put on a hand seal, forcing them to keep quiet about camp life. The inscription reads: “I will be executed, if divulge the secrets of the Consumer”. Therefore, the stories can only be heard from the North Koreans, who managed to flee abroad.
The witness: the 48-year-old Jeong Kwang-Il, accused of espionage for the fact that during a trip to China, contact with South Korean citizen. He spent in the Consumer 3 years, from 2000 to 2003, then with the risk to life and moved across the border to the South. The former prisoner said that the rise in camp was 5 am, from 6 to 12 work in the fields, then an hour for lunch, from 13 to 19 – work again, dinner, and “political re-education”. And until sahverdili the lesson, you can’t go to sleep.
“There are two legal ways to kill prisoners beaten to death and starve to death – told Jeong Kwang-Il. – Usually people, already severely weakened, dying without food for 2 weeks”. He says that in the winter the bodies are not buried because the ground is heavily frozen, and send “at the warehouse”. In March, prisoners are forced to clean up these “warehouses”. By the time the half-decayed bodies are eaten by rodents and insects, and they are simply dumped into the pit like garbage.
The young North Korean leader Kim Jong-UN inspects border observation post. Watching he as for what is happening in the prisons?
For obvious reasons, the North Korean authorities never sent to such camps detention. They are kept in complete isolation (except for a couple of guards who are forbidden to engage in conversations), fed three times a day (without abundance, but still), to observe the rules of hygiene (in chambers there is a shower). Torture did not apply to them, and give the work more or less feasible – for example, to plant fruit trees.
Tourists looking at the North Korean coast observation post in South Korea near the demilitarised zone:
However, enormous sentences (student in America just the other day got 15 years for what broke propaganda poster in the hotel) over to foreigners short-lived stints and deportation to their homeland.
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