Yodok concentration camp

Yodok concentration camp
Chosŏn'gŭl	요덕 제15호 관리소
Hancha	耀德第十五號管理所
McCune–Reischauer	Yodŏk Che Sibo-ho Kwalliso
Revised Romanization	Yodeok Je Sipo-ho Gwalliso
Other name
Chosŏn'gŭl	요덕 정치범수용소
Hancha	耀德政治犯收容所
McCune–Reischauer	Yodŏk Chŏngch'ibŏm Suyongso
Revised Romanization	Yodeok Jeongchibeum Suyongso

Yodok concentration camp (also romanized Yodŏk, Yodeok, or Yoduk) is a political prison camp in North Korea. The official name is Kwan-li-so (penal labor colony) No. 15. The camp is used to isolate people seen as hostile to the regime for lifetime from society, punish them for political misdemeanors^[1] and exploit them with hard labor.^[2]

Contents 1 Location 2 Description 3 Conditions in the camp 3.1 Living conditions 3.2 Slave labor 3.3 Malnutrition 4 Human rights violations 4.1 Torture 4.2 Executions 4.3 Abuse and forced abortions 5 Demand for closure 6 Prisoners (Witnesses) 7 Literature/Musical/Film 8 See also 9 References 10 External Links

Location

The camp is located in Yodok county, South Hamgyong province in North Korea. It stretches in the valley of Ipsok river, surrounded by the mountains Paek-san (1,742 m or 5,715 ft in the north), Modo-san (1,833 m or 6,014 ft in the northwest), Tok-san (1,250 m or 4,101 ft in the west) and Byeongpung-san (1,152 m or 3,780 ft in the south).^[3]

Description

Yodok camp has two parts, a “total control zone” for political prisoners in lifelong detention and a “revolutionary zone” similar to the reeducation camps.^[4]

• The “total control zone” (Chosŏn'gŭl: 특별독재대상구역) with the prison labor colonies Pyongchang-ri and Yongpyong-ri is for people whom the authorities perceive to have committed anti-regime crimes or who were denounced to be politically unreliable e. g. returnees from Japan or Christians^[5]. These prisoners are never released.^[6]
• The “revolutionary zone” (Chosŏn'gŭl: 혁명화대상구역) with reeducation camps Ipsok-ri, Kuup-ri and Daesuk-ri is to punish people for less serious political crimes (e. g. illegally leaving the country, listening to South Korean broadcasts or critical remarks on government policy). These prisoners are eventually released after serving their sentences.^[7]

In the 1990s an estimated 30,000 prisoners were in the larger “total control zone” and an estimated 16,500 prisoners were in the smaller “revolutionary zone”,^[8] but recent satellite images indicate a significant increase in the scale of the camp.^[9] Most prisoners are deported to Yodok without trial or following grossly unfair trials on the basis of “confessions” obtained through torture. Often people are imprisoned together with family members and close relatives, including little children and old people,^[10] based on the guilt by association (Sippenhaft) principle.^[11]

The camp is around 378 km² (146 mi²) wide.^[12] It is surrounded by a 3 - 4 m ( 10 - 13 ft) high barbed-wire fence and walls with electric wire, with watchtowers in regular intervals. The camp is patrolled by 1,000 guards with automatic rifles and guard dogs.^[13]

In 2004, a Japanese television station aired what it said was footage^[14] showing scenes from the camp.

Conditions in the camp

Living conditions

The prisoners live in primitive dusty huts with dried mud for walls, rotten leaking roofs of straw laid on wooden planks and a floor covered with straw and dry plant mats.^[15] In a room of around 50 m² (540 ft²) 30 - 40 single prisoners sleep on a sort of bed made out of a wooden board with a blanket to cover.^[16] Most huts are not heated, even in winter at temperatures below - 20 °C ( - 4 °F ),^[17] therefore most prisoners have frostbites and swollen hands and legs in winter.^[18] Camp inmates also suffer pneumonia, tuberculosis, pellagra and other diseases, but there is no medical treatment available.^[19]

The new prisoners get the clothes that their predecessors had worn until their dying day.^[20] Most prisoners are poorly dressed in dirty and worn-out clothes with holes and rags.^[21] They have no proper shoes, socks or gloves and usually no spare clothes.^[22] Dead prisoners are buried naked, because the others take all leftover possessions of dead prisoners.^[23] All prisoners are covered with a thick layer of dirt, as they are overworked and have almost no opportunity to wash themselves or their clothes.^[24] As a result the prisoners’ huts stink and are full of lice, fleas and other insects.^[25] Prisoners have to queue in front of dirty community toilets, one for 200 prisoners, using dry leaves for cleaning.^[26]

The camp guards make prisoners report on each other and designate prisoners as foremen to control a group. If one person does not work hard enough, the whole group is punished. This creates animosity among the detainees, destroys any solidarity and forces them to create a system of self-surveillance.^[27]

Slave labor

Men, women and children are exploited with hard labor seven days a week,^[28] treated essentially as slaves.^[29] Labor operations include a gypsum quarry and a gold mine, textile plants, distilleries, a coppersmith workshop,^[30] agriculture and logging. Many work operations are backbreaking and dangerous and work accidents often occur.^[31]

Work shifts in summer start at 4 am in the early morning and end at 8 pm in the evening.^[32] Work shifts in other seasons or work units start at 5:30 am, but work hours in the evening are very often extended after 8 pm, even in the darkness, when work quotas are not met.^[33] Then after dinner, from 9pm to 11 pm prisoners have to attend ideological education and struggle sessions, where inmates who do not meet the targets are severely criticized and beaten.^[34] If prisoners can’t memorize the instructions by Kim Il-sung, they are not allowed to sleep or their food rations are reduced.^[35]

Most of the primary school children attend school in the morning. Main subject is the history of revolution of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.^[36] In the afternoon they have to do hard labor. The work quota for children is enormous in terms of the amount of work and the intensity. The children are beaten with a stick for failure to meet the day's quota.^[37] Primary school children have to carry heavy logs 12 times a day over 4 km (2.5 mi)^[38] or a dung buckets of 30 kg (66 lb) 30 times a day.^[39] Other child works involve collecting 20 kg (44 lb) of plants in the mountains or cultivating 130 – 200 m² (1400 - 2,100 ft²) of field.^[40] Sometimes even children die in work accidents.^[41] Older children have to work all day and from the age of 16 they get the same work quota as adults.^[42]

Malnutrition

Prisoners are constantly kept on the verge of starvation.^[43] The daily rations for prisoners are between 100g and 200g (3.5 - 7 oz) of corn, boiled into a poorly prepared gruel, three times a day.^[44] Depending on the agricultural produce of the year it could be even less.^[45] If prisoners do not finish their daily work quota or violate minor rules, the daily rations are still reduced or temporarily discontinued,^[46] no matter if prisoners are sick, crippled or disabled.^[47] The prisoners are so hungry that they eat, whatever wild animals they could catch, though they are severely punished if seen by the guards.^[48] Prisoners eat rats, snakes, frogs, salamanders, worms, insects.^[49] To avoid being detected, they mostly eat the raw meat, often even with skin.^[50] Wild animals are the only source of meat or fat, as the food rations never contain any meat or plant oil.^[51] To fill their stomachs, some prisoners sneak into the pigsties and steal pig slops.^[52] They even pick undigested corn kernels out of animal dung purely to survive.^[53]

Lee Young-kuk estimates that end of the 1990s around 20 % of prisoners in Daesuk-ri died from malnutrition each year, but new prisoners arrived every month.^[54] All former prisoners frequently saw people dying.^[55]

Human rights violations

Torture

The following torture methods are described in testimonies of former prisoners:

• “Pigeon torture”:^[56] The prisoner’s arms are tied behind his back, his legs tied together, hanged in mid-air from the ceiling for several days.^[57]
• Forced water ingestion: The prisoner is strapped to a table and forced to drink large amounts of water. Later the guards jump on a board laid on the swollen stomach to force the water out.^[58]
• Immersion in water: A plastic bag is placed over the prisoner’s head and he is submerged in water for long periods of time.^[59]
• Prisoners are beaten every day, for example if work quotas were not met,^[60] if they do not kneel down quick enough before the guards or just to humiliate them.^[61] Often prisoners are disabled or die from the beatings.^[62] Even children are severely beaten^[63] and tormented.^[64]
• The prisoners are treated arbitrarily at the guards’ mercy and the guards could abuse them as they want. For example former prisoners witnessed a man being tied by the neck to a vehicle and dragged for a long distance^[65] and a primary school child being beaten and kicked hard on his head.^[66] In both cases the prisoners died soon after.

Executions

Prisoners who violate camp rules, e. g. stealing food or attempting to escape, are usually publicly executed, in case they are not yet directly shot at the spot.^[67] Summary executions^[68] take place in front of assembled prisoners several times each year^[69] and every former prisoner has witnessed them.^[70] Before the execution the prisoners are tortured and not given food.^[71] Often prisoners forced to watch the execution cannot endure the scene without protest and are then killed as well.^[72]

Instead of execution, a more common method to kill prisoners singled out to die is to assign them work they could not finish. When they did not finish the work, their food rations were reduced as punishment. Eventually the combination of heavy work and less food leads to death by starvation for many.^[73] Prisoners released from Yodok have to agree to a written oath with a hand stamp. The pledge reads: “I will face execution, if I reveal the secrets of Yodok.”^[74]

Abuse and forced abortions

Women in the camp are completely unprotected against sexual assaults by the guards.^[75] Prisoners are often ordered to strip naked to be beaten and harassed.^[76] A defector said, that it has become routine for security agents to sexually abuse female prisoners.^[77] Sometimes women die after being raped.^[78] Pregnant women were usually given forced abortions.^[79]

Demand for closure

Amnesty International summarize the human rights situation in Yodok camp like this: Men, women and children in the camp face forced hard labour, inadequate food, beatings, totally inadequate medical care and unhygienic living conditions. Many fall ill while in prison, and a large number die in custody or soon after release. The organization demands to immediately close Yodok and all other political prison camps in North Korea to stop the appalling, systematic and widespread human rights abuses.^[80] This demand is supported by the International Coalition to Stop Crimes against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK), an international coalition of over 40 human rights organizations.^[81]

Prisoners (Witnesses)

• Kang Chol-hwan (1977 - 1987 in Yodok) was imprisoned as 9 year old child, because his family returned from Japan and was considered as politically unreliable.^[82]
• An Hyuk (1987 - 1989 in Yodok) was imprisoned at the age of 18, because he illegally left North Korea.^[83]
• Kim Tae-jin (1988 - 1992 in Yodok) was imprisoned at the age of 18, because he illegally left North Korea.^[84]
• Lee Young-kuk (1995 - 1999 in Yodok), former bodyguard of Kim Jong-il, was kidnapped in China and imprisoned, because he illegally left North Korea and criticized the country.^[85]
• Kim Eun-cheol (2000 - 2003 in Yodok) was imprisoned at the age of 19, because he illegally left North Korea.^[86] In a group of seven refugees he was repatriated by Russia, as the United Nations granted them refugee status, but failed to protect them.^[87]
• South Korean citizens Shin Suk-ja and her daughters Oh Hye-won and Oh Kyu-won (since 1987 in Yodok; the daughters were 9 and 11 years then) were imprisoned, because her husband Oh Kil-nam did not return from a stay abroad.^[88] Two years before the family was lured from Germany to North Korea on North Korean agents’ false promises.^[89]
• South Korean citizen Jeong Sang-un (since 2010 in Yodok) is an unrepatriated Korean War prisoner and was imprisoned as 84 year old man, because he illegally left North Korea.^[90]

Kang Chol-hwan and An Hyuk testified that they met Shin Suk-ja while they were imprisoned in Yodok.^[91]

Literature/Musical/Film

• Literature: In 2001 Kang Chol-hwan has written the book "The Aquariums of Pyongyang" describing life in Yodok camp during his childhood.^[92]
• Musical: In 2006 Jung Sung-san (another former prisoner of Yodok camp) has directed the musical "Yoduk Story" about Yodok camp.^[93]
• Film: In 2008 Andrzej Fidyk has made the film "Yodok Stories" about the life in Yodok camp. Some North Korean refugees are acting in this film. The film is based on scenes from the musicals and on witness accounts.^[94]

See also

• Human rights in North Korea
• Shin Suk-ja
• Hoeryong concentration camp
• Yoduk Story
• List of Korea-related topics

References

External Links

• Satellite imagery and witness accounts of North Korean political prison and reeducation camps
• Committee for Human Rights in North Korea: The Hidden Gulag - Overview of North Korean prison camps with testimonies and satellite photographs
• Amnesty International: North Korea: Political Prison Camps - Document on camp conditions (torture, executions, hunger, child labor, forced labor) in Yodok and other camps
• Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights: Documents - Testimonies and witness accounts of North Korean refugees
• Freedom House: Concentrations of inhumanity – Analysis of the phenomena of repression associated with North Korea’s political labor camps
• National Human Rights Commission of Korea: Survey Report on Political Prisoners’ Camps in North Korea – Overall and systematic analysis of political prison camps on the basis of in-depth interviews with North Korean witnesses
• Christian Solidarity Worldwide: North Korea: A case to answer – a call to act – Report to emphasize the urgent need to mass killings, arbitrary imprisonment, torture and related international
• Life Funds for North Korean Refugees: Are they telling the truth? – Eye-witness accounts from North Korean prison camps
• Washington Post: North Koreas Hard Labor Camps - Explore North Korean prison camps with interactive map of Yodok camp
• The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag - Book review of Kang Chol-hwan’s account from Yodok
• BBC News: 'Life of hard labour' in North Korean camp - Report on Kang Chul-hwan and Yodok camp
• Los Angeles Times: North Korean ex-prisoners recall ordeal in gulag - Former Yodok prisoners report that suspects and their relatives are incarcerated without trial
• Amnesty International: End horror of North Korean political prison camps - Petition by Amnesty International to close Yodok camp
• Amnesty International: Yodok Prison Camp in North Korea - Video by Amnesty International on analyzing Yodok satellite images and testimonies

Political prison camps of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) Bukchang Chongjin Haengyong Hwasong Kaechon Yodok