North Korea operating 4 political prison camps with up to 65,000 detainees: Report

North Korea is operating four political prison camps, where up to 65,000 people are believed to be imprisoned and placed under forced labor, a report showed on October 17.

North Korea is currently operating four prison camps ― Camp 14, Camp 16, Camp 18 and Camp 25 ― in South Pyongan Province and North Hamgyong Province, according to the report by the state-funded Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU).

The latest report was updated from its 2013 report with U.S. satellite imagery and testimonies from North Korean defectors.

North Korea has long been labeled one of the worst human rights violators in the world. The North does not tolerate dissent, holds thousands of people in political prison camps and keeps tight control over outside information.

Camp 14, established in Kaechon, South Pyongan Province, in 1965, was expanded after followers of Jang Song-thaek, an uncle of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who was executed in 2013 for plotting to overthrow the regime, were transferred from Camp 18.

Camp 18 was initially placed in Pukchang County of North Hamgyong Province but relocated to the current location in Kaechon in 2006.

Camp 16 is near the Punggye-ri nuclear testing site in North Hamgyong Province. Outside experts raised the possibility that inmates at the prison camp might be mobilized for labor at the nuclear facility.

Camp 25 in Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province, is a prison-like facility unlike other political prisons that look like a village from the outside. It has a capacity to host around 5,800 detainees.

The report estimates that around 53,000 to 65,000 people are being detained across the four facilities, down from the 80,000 to 120,000 estimate in the 2013 report.

However, it said the decline in the number was not due to the North’s move to improve its human rights situation but was driven in part by the closure of Camp 15, also dubbed the Yodok concentration camp, known for its notorious brutality.

North Koreans are subject to imprisonment at these facilities when they act against Kim Jong-un’s orders or the ruling party’s line, commit an anti-state crime or engage in religious activities.

North Korea, which has previously outright denied the existence of such prison camps, indirectly recognized the facilities for the first time during a universal periodic review at the UN office in Geneva in November.

Yonhap