Political Prison Camps

Political prisons don’t officially exist, so if you aren’t immediately executed you are likely to remain there for the rest of your life, however short that may be. These camps are built in the back of beyond and often disguised as farms or military buildings. They are known about widely but never mentioned officially. They serve as a powerful deterrent to the masses. People speak in hushed tones of those that are “sent to the mountains”. The populous is right to be frightened.

The DPRK still strenuously denies the existence of political prison camps even though human rights groups have reported on them since the 80’s and they appear to have existed since the 50’s.

Even in official papers the prisons are referred to as “controlled areas” and inmates as “moved people”. Chillingly the camp authorities have received orders to kill all prisoners in case of an armed conflict or revolution so as to destroy the primary evidence of the camps’ existence.

Despite the secretive nature of these places the commission managed to get testimonies from some former inmates and prison guards. These testimonies were corroborated by satellite images of compounds and identifiable structures.

There are four large political prison camps known to exist in DPRK called No.14, No.15, No.16 and No.25. It’s virtually impossible to know how many people are held at these institutions but non-governmental organizations, based on satellite images and testimony from guards and prisoners who were in the camps in the 1990s and early 2000s, estimate a range from 150,000-200,000 inmates.

☛ More: Inside North Korean Death Camps