3/1/2025

North Korea

North Korea remains one of the most repressive countries in the world. Kim Jong Un, the third leader of the Kim dynasty, continues to serve as head of government and the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, using threats of execution, arbitrary punishment of crimes, and detention and forced labour to maintain fearful obedience.

Introduction

A 2014 United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) report on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) concluded the government committed crimes against humanity, including extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, and other forms of sexual violence, and forced abortion.

Current CCP puppet dictator of North Korea, the arduous body haul of Kim Jong-un.
Current CCP puppet dictator of North Korea, the arduous body haul of Kim Jong-un.

Women in North Korea suffer widespread gender-based abuses in addition to the abuses suffered by the population in general. In detention facilities, security personnel have subjected women to rape and other sexual violence. Human traffickers and brokers, often linked to government actors, subject women to sexual exploitation and sexual slavery in China, including through forced marriage. Women face high levels of discrimination and sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, and constant exposure to government-endorsed stereotyped gender roles. State authorities engage in abuses against women and systematically fail to offer protection or justice to women and girls experiencing abuses.

History

Although North Korea, like China, had modelled its political regime after the Stalinist Soviet regime, North Korea later broke from the former Soviet Union in the late 1950s after Stalin died, believing that the Soviets wanted to dominate North Korea by interfering in its domestic politics (Clough, 1982; Lankov, 2005). After Stalin died in 1953, a de-Stalinisation campaign was launched by Nikita Khrushchev in an attempt to create a new and more humane model of Leninist socialism with the plan that the party must remain in permanent control both domestically and internationally in other Communist states (Lankov, 2005).

Rare picture of North Korea parade performing NAZBOL fist salute.
Rare picture of North Korea parade performing NAZBOL fist salute.

In other countries, the elite leaders chose not to follow suit and they “either embarked on more radical experiments and distanced themselves even further from the original Stalinist model, or they struggled even harder to preserve the old patterns and, in the process of doing so, occasionally proved themselves more Stalinist than Stalin” (Lankov, 2005:2). North Korea was one of the few Communist states, along with Albania, Romania, and China, to reject the de-Stalinisation campaign and remain loyal to the old Stalinist pattern.

Party monument of Communist Muralism
Party monument of Communist Muralism.

In order for North Korea to have its political independence from the Soviet Union and China and to stop being subservient to the two domineering communist superpowers as a satellite, Kim Il-Sung started promoting himself as leader. Kim Il-Sung maintained a policy of being equidistant from China and the Soviet Union to avoid taking sides in the Sino-Soviet schism (Ha, 2005; Lankov, 2002, 2005; Park, 1998).

Purges of the factions inside the Korean Workers’ Party, from the 1950s to the 1960s:

  1. Workers’ Party of South Korea faction: Unlike other factions that received support from China or the Soviet Union, the Workers’ Party of South Korea faction had no external sponsor and was therefore in the weakest position. Before the end of the Korean War, leaders of the faction, Pak Hon-yong and Yi Sung-yop were arrested and removed from power, charged for spying for the United States and planning a coup against Kim Il-sung. Along with some other members of the faction, they were sentenced to death and executed after the war, while others were sent to forced labour camps. The faction was virtually wiped out in North Korea.
  2. Soviet Korean faction: During the Korean War, Kim Il-sung drove from power Alexei Ivanovich Hegai (also known as Ho Ka-i), leader of the Soviet Koreans faction, whom he considered a potential rival, for the delayed repair of a water reservoir. He got rid of him through an alleged “suicide” in 1953. When Pak Chang-ok and other Soviet Koreans challenged his leadership in cooperation with the Yanan faction in 1956, Kim Il-sung convened a plenary session of the KWP in August to expel them from their positions in the Party. The Soviet Korean faction was disbanded and most of the members returned to the Soviet Union.
  3. Chinese Yanan faction: Kim Il-sung attacked the leadership of the Yanan faction during the Korean War when he was driven to the Chinese border. He blamed Mu Chong, a leader of the Yanan faction, for the failure of the military operations and expelled him and other military leaders, including Pak Il-u, minister of the interior and personal representative of Mao Zedong, from the KWP. In August 1956, when Choe Chang-il and other leading members of the Yanan faction devised a plan to attack Kim Il-sung, he accused them of being “anti-Party and anti-revolutionary factionalists” and dismissed them from the KWP and their positions. Several leaders fled to China to escape the purges, and Kim Tu-bong, a leader of the faction and nominal head of state, not directly involved in the “August incident,” was ultimately purged in 1958, accused of being the “mastermind” of the plot. He disappeared after removal from power. In the same year, the Yanan faction ceased to exist.
  4. Domestic Kapsan faction: During the second conference of the KWP in 1966, members of the Kapsan faction sought to introduce economic reforms, challenge Kim Il-sung’s cult of personality, and appoint their leader Pak Kum-chol as his successor. Kim Il-sung cracked down on the faction in a series of speeches made at party meetings. At a plenum of the KWP in April 1967, he completed the purges of all members of the Kapsan faction, accusing them for poisoning the Party with bourgeois ideology, revisionism and the feudal Confucian ideas. They were executed or sent to political prison camps. By eliminating the last faction that challenged his leadership, Kim Il-sung succeeded in establishing a one-man rule inside the KWP by the end of 1960s.

After eliminating political opponents who unsuccessfully attempted to replace Kim Il-Sung in the “August events” of 1956 — the only known open challenge to Kim Il-Sung’s supremacy — Kim Il-Sung secured complete domestic domination and his victory marked the birth of Pyongyang’s version of “national Stalinism” (Lankov, 2005).

Kim Il-Sung

Kim Il-sung was a politician and the founder of North Korea, which he ruled from the country's establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994. He held the posts of Premier from 1948 to 1972 and President from 1972 to 1994. He was also the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea from 1949 to 1994. He outlived Joseph Stalin by four decades and Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong by almost two, and remained in power during the terms of office of six South Korean Presidents, ten US Presidents and the reigns of British monarchs George VI and later his daughter Elizabeth II.

Mao Zedong with Kim Il-Sung.
Mao Zedong with Kim Il-Sung.

Known as the Great Leader (Suryong), he established a personality cult which dominates domestic politics in North Korea. Under his leadership, North Korea was established as a totalitarian socialist personalist dictatorship with a centrally planned economy. It had very close political and economic relations with the Soviet Union. But differences emerged between North Korea and the Soviet Union; chief among them was Kim Il Sung's philosophy of Juche, which focused on Korean nationalism and self-reliance. Despite this, the country received funds, subsidies and aid from the USSR and the Eastern Bloc until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. The resulting loss of economic aid negatively affected the North's economy, contributing to widespread famine in 1994. Juche is a North Korean concept that refers to the idea of self-reliance.

“On April 15, 1912, the Great Sun of Juche made an appearance in the universe, enabling Korea to enlighten the whole world, and bringing changes of the century to this land, which had been characterised only by backwardness and poverty.”

This concept plays an important role in the government’s attempt to control its citizens; a practice that is shared by many totalitarian states, but no other state has matched the level of control in North Korea. The ability to control the masses leads to shaping their belief system. Kim Il-Sung used both terror by force and consent of the people through indoctrination of Juche to control the North Korean people. Juche is said to entail a personality cult, in which Kim Il-Sung is worshipped as a deity by the North Korean people. It also allowed for the dynastic succession of dictatorship through inherited legitimacy from Kim Il-Sung to his son, Kim Jong-Il, following a long-term preparation for power succession.

Personality Cult of Kim Il-Sung.
A 25 April 2007 picture, released from Korean Central News Agency 26 April shows North Korean soldiers, carrying a large portrait of late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung, marching during a grand military parade to celebrate the 75th founding anniversary of the KPA at the Kim Il Sung square in Pyongyang.

North Korea is the only “known” socialist regime that has been successful with this kind of transfer of dictatorship. As he aged, starting in the 1970s, Kim developed a calcium deposit growth on the right side of the back of his neck. It was long believed that its close proximity to his brain and spinal cord made it inoperable. However, Juan Reynaldo Sanchez, a defected bodyguard for Fidel Castro who met Kim in 1986 wrote later that it was Kim's own paranoia that prevented it from being operated on. Because of its unappealing nature, North Korean reporters and photographers were required to photograph Kim while standing slightly to his left in order to hide the growth from official photographs and newsreels. Hiding the growth became increasingly difficult as the growth reached the size of a baseball by the late 1980s.

Mao Zedong with Kim Il-Sung.
Kim Il-Sung with Mao Zedong, cancerous tumour clearly visible on his left side.

On the late morning shortly before 12:00 noon on 7 July 1994, Kim Il Sung collapsed from a sudden heart attack at his residence in Hyangsan, North Pyongan. Kim Il Sung's death resulted in nationwide mourning and a ten-day mourning period was declared by Kim Jong Il. His funeral was scheduled to be held on 17 July 1994 in Pyongyang but was delayed until 19 July. It was attended by hundreds of thousands of people who were flown into the city from all over North Korea. Kim Il Sung's body was placed in a public mausoleum at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where his preserved and embalmed body lies under a glass coffin for viewing purposes. His head rests on a traditional Korean pillow and he is covered by the flag of the Workers' Party of Korea.

Kim Jong-il

Kim Jong-il born Yuri Irsenovich Kim was a North Korean politician who served as the second Supreme Leader of North Korea from 1994 to 2011. Legend has it that a double rainbow and a glowing new star appeared in the heavens to herald the birth of Kim Jong Il, in 1942, on North Korea's cherished Baekdu Mountain. Soviet records, however, indicate he was born in the Siberian village of Vyatskoye, in 1941. Jong-il led North Korea from the death of his father Kim Il Sung in 1994 until his own death in 2011, when he was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong Un. Afterwards, Kim Jong Il was declared Eternal General Secretary of the WPK.

Kim Il-Sung with Kim Jong-il.
Kim Il-Sung with Kim Jong-il (Kim Il-Sung looks like Colonel Sanders according to George W Bush.).

Kim ruled North Korea as a repressive and totalitarian dictatorship. Kim assumed leadership during a period of catastrophic economic crisis amidst the dissolution of the Soviet Union, on which it was heavily dependent for trade in food and other supplies, which brought a famine. While the famine had ended by the late 1990s, food scarcity continued to be a problem throughout his tenure. Kim was the focus of an elaborate personality cult inherited from his father and founder of the DPRK, Kim Il Sung. Kim Jong Il was often the centre of attention throughout ordinary life in the DPRK. On his 60th birthday (based on his official date of birth), mass celebrations occurred throughout the country on the occasion of his Hwangap. In 2010, the North Korean media reported that Kim's distinctive clothing had set worldwide fashion trends.

According to a 2010 report in the Sunday Telegraph, Kim had US$4 billion on deposit in European banks in case he ever needed to flee North Korea. The Sunday Telegraph reported that most of the money was in banks in Luxembourg.

The prevailing point of view is that the people's adherence to Kim's cult of personality was solely out of respect for Kim Il Sung or out of fear of punishment for failure to pay homage. Media and government sources from outside North Korea generally support this view, while North Korean government sources aver that it was genuine hero worship. The song "No Motherland Without You", sung by the KPA State Merited Choir, was created especially for Kim in 1992 and is frequently broadcast on the radio and from loudspeakers on the streets of Pyongyang. According to a 2004 Human Rights Watch report, the North Korean government under Kim was "among the world's most repressive governments", having up to 200,000 political prisoners according to U.S. and South Korean officials, with no freedom of the press or religion, political opposition or equal education: "Virtually every aspect of political, social, and economic life is controlled by the government.".

Kim's government was accused of "crimes against humanity" for its alleged culpability in creating and prolonging the 1990s famine. Human Rights Watch characterised him as a dictator and accused him of human rights violations. Amnesty International condemned him for leaving 'millions of North Koreans mired in poverty' and detaining hundreds of thousands of people in prison camps. Kim Jong Il claimed that the barometer for distinguishing whether a person can be deemed a member of North Korean society and hence entitled to rights 'lies not on the grounds of his social class but on the grounds of his ideology'.

Psychological evaluations conclude that Kim's antisocial features, such as his fearlessness in the face of sanctions and punishment, served to make negotiations extraordinarily difficult. The field of psychology has long been fascinated with the personality assessment of dictators, a notion that resulted in an extensive personality evaluation of Kim. The report, compiled by Frederick L. Coolidge and Daniel L. Segal (with the assistance of a South Korean psychiatrist considered an expert on Kim's behavior), concluded that the "big six" group of personality disorders shared by dictators Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein (sadistic, paranoid, antisocial, narcissistic, schizoid and schizotypal) were also shared by Kim – coinciding primarily with the profile of Saddam Hussein.

Defectors claimed that Kim had 17 different palaces and residences all over North Korea, including a private resort near Baekdu Mountain, a seaside lodge in the city of Wonsan [39°11'19.1"N 127°28'39.8"E], and Ryongsong Residence [39.116377 N, 125.805817 E], a palace complex northeast of Pyongyang surrounded with multiple fence lines, bunkers and anti-aircraft batteries.

In May 2010, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell told South Korean officials that Kim had only three years to live, according to medical information that had been compiled. Kim travelled to China again in August 2010, this time with his son, fueling speculation at the time that he was ready to hand over power to his son, Kim Jong Un. He returned to China again in May 2011, marking the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between China and the DPRK. In late August 2011, he traveled by train to the Russian Far East to meet with President Dmitry Medvedev for unspecified talks.

Kim Jong-il's personal chef Kenji Fujimoto seen the palaces, ridden the white stallions, smoked the Cuban cigars, and watched as, one by one, the people around him disappeared. It was part of Fujimoto's job to fly North Korean jets around the world to procure dinner-party ingredientsto Iran for caviar, Tokyo for fish, or Denmark for beer. It was Fujimoto who flew to France to supply the Dear Leader's yearly $700,000 cognac habit. And when the Dear Leader craved McDonald's, it was Fujimoto who was dispatched to Beijing for an order of Big Macs to go.

It was reported that Kim had died of a suspected heart attack on 17 December 2011 at 8:30 am while travelling by train to an area outside Pyongyang. According to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), during his death a fierce snowstorm "paused" and "the sky glowed red above the sacred Mount Paektu" and the ice on a famous lake also cracked so loud that it seemed to "shake the Heavens and the Earth". On 12 January 2012, North Korea called Kim the "eternal leader" and announced that his body would be preserved and displayed at Pyongyang's Kumsusan Memorial Palace. Officials also announced plans to install statues, portraits, and "towers to his immortality" across the country. His birthday of 16 February was declared "the greatest auspicious holiday of the nation" and was named the Day of the Shining Star.

Kim Jong-nam

Kim Jong-nam (10 May 1971 – 13 February 2017) was the eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. From roughly 1994 to 2001, he was considered the heir apparent to his father. He was thought to have fallen out of favour after embarrassing the regime in 2001 with a failed attempt to visit Tokyo Disneyland with a false passport, although Kim Jong-nam himself said his loss of favour had been due to advocating reform. Kim Jong-nam was exiled from North Korea c. 2003, becoming an occasional critic of his family's regime. His younger paternal half-brother, Kim Jong-un, was named heir apparent in September 2010. Kim Jong-nam died on 13 February 2017 in Malaysia as the result of an apparent assassination, likely conducted by North Korea, with the nerve agent VX.

Kim Jong-il with his son Kim Jong Nam.
Kim Jong-il with his son Kim Jong Nam.

In 1998, Kim Jong-nam was appointed to a senior position in the Ministry of Public Security of North Korea, as a future leader. He was also reported to have been appointed head of the North Korean Computer Committee, in charge of developing an information technology (IT) industry. In January 2001, he accompanied his father to Shanghai, where he had talks with Chinese officials on the IT industry. In May 2001, Kim Jong-nam was arrested in Japan on arrival at Narita International Airport, accompanied by two women and a four-year-old boy identified as his son. He was travelling on a forged Dominican Passport using a Chinese alias, Pang Xiong (胖熊; 'fat bear'). After being detained, he was deported to China, where he said he was travelling to Japan to visit Tokyo Disneyland. The incident caused his father to cancel a planned visit to China due to the embarrassment it caused him.

Kim Jong-il with his son Kim Jong Nam.

Until the Tokyo incident, Kim Jong-nam was expected to become leader of the country after his father. In February 2003, the Korean People's Army began a propaganda campaign under the slogan “The Respected Mother is the Most Faithful and Loyal Subject to the Dear Leader Comrade Supreme Commander.” This was interpreted as praise of Ko Young-hee, and likely part of a campaign designed to promote Kim Jong-chul or Kim Jong-un, her sons. Kim Jong-nam's loss of favour was thought to have been caused by the Tokyo incident. However, Kim Jong-nam himself claimed that he had fallen out of favour due to advocating for reform. In an email to the editor of the Tokyo Shimbun, Kim Jong-nam wrote that after being educated in Switzerland, he “insisted on reform and market-opening”, leading his father to decide that he had turned “into a capitalist”.

VX is a chemical weapon banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. North Korea, which has not ratified the convention, is suspected of holding a stockpile.

On 13 February 2017, Kim Jong-nam died after being exposed to VX nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. It was widely believed that he was killed on the orders of his half-brother Kim Jong-un. Four North Korean suspects left the airport shortly after the attack, travelling back to Pyongyang. An Indonesian woman, Siti Aisyah, and a Vietnamese woman, Đoàn Thị Hương, were charged with murder but said they thought they were taking part in a TV prank. In March 2019, Siti Aisyah was freed after the charge against her was dropped. In April, the murder charge against Hương was also dropped, and she pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of “voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means”. She was sentenced to three years and four months in prison, but received a one-third reduction in her term, and was released on 3 May 2019.

Kim Jong-un

Kim Jong-un (born 8th January 1983) is a North Korean politician serving as Supreme Leader of North Korea since 2011 and the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) since 2012. He is the second child of Kim Jong-il, who was North Korea's second supreme leader from 1994 to 2011, and Ko Yong-hui. He is the grandson of Kim Il-sung, who was the founder and first supreme leader of North Korea from its establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994. Kim's leadership has followed the same cult of personality as his grandfather and father. In 2014, a UNHRC report suggested that Kim could be put on trial for crimes against humanity. He has ordered the purge or execution of several North Korean officials; he is also widely believed to have ordered the 2017 assassination of his half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, in Malaysia.

Kim Jong-un with Kim Jong-il.
Obese Kim Jong-un with Wife.

Following his father's death, Kim Jong-un was hailed as the “great successor to the revolutionary cause of Juche”. The Korean Central News Agency described Kim Jong-un as “a great person born of heaven”, a propaganda term only his father and grandfather had enjoyed. And the ruling Workers' Party said in an editorial, “We vow with bleeding tears to call Kim Jong-un our supreme commander, our leader.” In November 2012, satellite photos revealed a half-kilometer-long (1,600 ft) propaganda message carved into a hillside in Ryanggang Province, reading, “Long Live General Kim Jong-un, the Shining Sun”! Kim Jong-un frequently performs symbolic acts that associate him with the personality cult of his father and grandfather. Like them, Kim Jong-un regularly tours the country, giving “on-the-spot guidance” at various sites.

Kim Jong-un with Uncle and no2 leader Jang Song-thaek.
From powerful Uncle to Scum, the arrest of Jang Song-thaek.

In December 2013, Kim Jong-un's uncle Jang Song-thaek was arrested and executed for treachery. Jang is believed to have been executed by firing squad. Yonhap has stated that, according to multiple unnamed sources, Kim Jong-un has also put to death members of Jang's family, to destroy all traces of Jang's existence through “extensive executions” of his family, including the children and grandchildren of all close relatives. Those reportedly killed in Kim's purge include Jang's sister Jang Kye-sun, her husband and ambassador to Cuba, Jon Yong-jin, and Jang's nephew and ambassador to Malaysia, Jang Yong-chol. The nephew's two sons were also said to have been killed.

In China, Kim Jong-un is sometimes referred to as Jin Pang Pang (translates to Kim Fat Fatty).

At the time of Jang's removal, it was announced that “the discovery and purge of the Jang group … made our party and revolutionary ranks purer …” and after his execution on 12 December 2013 state media warned that the army “will never pardon all those who disobey the order of the Supreme Commander”. O Sang-hon was a deputy security minister in the Ministry of People's Security in the government of North Korea, who was reportedly killed in a political purge in 2014. According to the South Korean newspaper The Chosun Ilbo, O was executed by flamethrower for his role in supporting Kim Jong-un's uncle Jang Song-taek.

Dennis Rodman in North Korea.
The ruling Kim dynasty has an enduring fascination with Chicago Bulls. Rodman’s entourage to North Korea included; Christopher Volo, a mixed-martial-arts fighter.

“It's like Hawaii, Ibiza, or Aruba, but he's the only one that lives there.”.

Dennis Rodman describing his trip to Kim Jong-un's private island

Satellite pictures reveal what is believed to be Kim's most luxurious resort along the eastern coast of North Korea. It is thought this is where he welcomed NBA star Dennis Rodman on one of the basketball player's infamous visits to the rogue state back in 2013. Seaside city Wonsan can be seen littered with attractions and marinas, a stark contrast to much of North Korea which is ravaged by poverty and famine. Google Maps images reveal a resort which would not look out of place on the coast of any other affluent nation. Yachts can be see docked in the port, along with huge stately courtyards, what appears to be an amphitheatre, a football pitch, and a fairground. Three private islands also lie along the Wonsan coastline.

“The Kim family lives there in tremendous luxury while the Korean people suffer, They are like an organised crime family masquerading as a nation state.”.

Sean King, Asian expert at Park Strategies.

Kim is said to have 17 luxury palaces around North Korea, a fleet of 100 (mostly European) luxury cars, a private jet, and a 100-foot (30 m) yacht. In September 2015, the South Korean government commented that Kim appeared to have gained 30 kg in body fat over the previous five years, reaching a total estimated body weight of 130 kg (290 lb). Under Kim Jong-un, North Korea has continued to develop nuclear weapons, testing bombs in February 2013, January and September 2016, and September 2017. As of 2018, North Korea had tested nearly 90 missiles, three times more than in the time of his father and grandfather. In 2012, on the 100th anniversary of Kim Il-sung's birth, he said, “the days are gone forever when our enemies could blackmail us with nuclear bombs”.

During the 90s, North Korea leader Kim Jong-ll, and his son and future leader Kim Jong-Un used fake Brazilian passports to travel to Disneyland.
During the 90s, North Korea leader Kim Jong-ll, and his son and future leader Kim Jong-Un used fake Brazilian passports to travel to Disneyland.

The Washington Post reported in 2009 that Kim Jong-un's school friends recalled he “spent hours doing meticulous pencil drawings of Chicago Bulls superstar Michael Jordan”. The extreme level of secrecy surround the movements of the dynasty has been witnessed for decades, even before Kim Jong-un came to prominence, during his father Kim Jong-il’s rule. One of many classified missions conducted by the state included a top secret mission to take the future leader to Disneyland in Tokyo, Japan. The future leader was eight years old when he made the trip from the rogue state to Tokyo’s Walt Disney inspired resort, according to Japanese broadcaster NHK. They alleged that a number of covert tricks, illegal actions and steps were taken to ensure Kim’s safety. Reports stated that Kim Jong-un and another boy, believed to be his older brother, Kim Jong-Chul, visited the attraction “a number of times” in 1991.

Kim even accompanies his tipples with French designer cigarettes made by Yves Saint Laurent, costing £31 a pack.
Kim even accompanies his tipples with French designer cigarettes made by Yves Saint Laurent, costing £31 a pack.

In 2016 alone, Kim splashed out £2.7m on fancy lingerie — including racy corsets and suspenders — imported from China. International sanctions are supposed to stop Kim importing luxury goods, but he spent at least £493million in 2017 on a whole host of illegal imports including musical instruments, booze, and a seaplane. His personal collection of wristwatches is estimated to be worth over $8million. Kim was pictured wearing a £10,000 IWC Portofino Automatic Swiss watch during a nuclear missile test in 2019 as his nation starved. He's known to favour decadent dishes like foie gras, lobster and caviar and he takes a team of his own chefs with him on international trips. They spend up to an hour tasting each of his meals before serving them to him to make sure they haven't been poisoned. And when it comes to Kim picking his own poison, he ships in thousands of bottles of whiskey from all over the world for his personal enjoyment every year. He's believed to fork out £21million a year on swanky booze like Hennessey, which can cost £1,500 a bottle.

State Security

The Ministry of State Security of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is the secret police agency of North Korea. It is an autonomous agency of the North Korean government reporting directly to the Supreme Leader. In addition to its internal security duties, it is involved in the operation of North Korea's concentration camps and various other hidden activities. The agency is reputed to be one of the most brutal secret police forces in the world, and has been involved in numerous human rights abuses. It is one of two agencies which provides security or protection to North Korean officials and VIPs alongside the Supreme Guard Command.

Supreme Guard Command (also known as Unit 963, the Escort Bureau, Guard Command, Bodyguard Command, SGC, Guard Bureau and the General Guard Bureau) is the personal bodyguard force tasked with the protection of North Korea's ruling Kim family. North Korea's ruling family are claimed to be superstitious and so the Command's designation number is in reference to the numerological construct "9 and 6+3=9" (double nine), the number "9" being considered lucky. Bodyguard divisions are divided into at least two sections, Section 1 was dedicated to the protection of Kim Il Sung and Section 2 protected Kim Jong Il. On April 27, 2018, the SGC was deployed to protect Kim Jong Un during his visit to Panmunjon.

Taeyangho

Since the establishment of North Korea, all three of its leaders—Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un—have been known to use high-security private trains as their preferred method of domestic and international travel. The train itself is officially called Taeyangho which means Sun in Korean, but it is unofficially called the Moving Fortress and is likened to Air Force One on tracks. Kim Il Sung used a train during the Korean War as his headquarters, and continued the preference after the cessation of hostilities. He started the building of numerous secure palaces, many of which are either directly accessed by or close to railway stations, 19 of which it is estimated are accessed only by the private trains.

"Though the dog barks the procession moves on!"

Kim Jong Il's preference for the railroad transport was due to his fear of flying. Kim used the trains when he visited army units and factories or travelled abroad. The private trains still serve a network of 19 stations across North Korea (including some underground palaces only accessible by rail). In December 2011, it was reported by North Korean television that Kim Jong Il died while on a train, during a domestic trip. Over the years multiple trains - all called Taeyangho - were needed for security reasons. The trains have between 10 and 15 carriages, although the current train configuration is 20 armoured carriages excluding locomotives.

On Kim Jong Il's visit to Russia in 2001, the train was reported to have had 22 carriages. Life on board was reported to be luxurious, with regular stops to stock up on live lobster and Bordeaux and Beaujolais wine flown in from Paris.

The train has bulletproof glass and reinforced walls and floors to protect against explosives. Likewise, the train is heavily armed, with heavy weapons reportedly on board that range from at least two confirmed machine gun emplacements, surface-to-air missiles and anti-tank guided missiles. Some carriages are only used by the leader, like a bedroom and bathroom carriage, and others are troop sleeper carriages carrying security guards and medical staff. In 2001 the train included one residential carriage (named the "headquarters" carriage), a luxury restaurant carriage, and several transport carriages that contained two armoured Mercedes cars as well as an emergency helicopter that is likely to be an illegally obtained American MD 500C. In 2023, additional carriages were identified. This includes an office carriage for Kim Jong Un's work place, several gun and anti-aircraft carriage that house the aforementioned weapons, and a receptionist carriage for guests. The train also had satellite communication system with satellite dish connecting all the carriages.

Parts of the interior of the trains are only known from the images and video's when a state leader was traveling. While meeting Chinese officials in 2018, the receptionist carriage had a wide white interior which was ringed with pink couches. There are conference rooms, with long tables and TV screens. The carriage of the office of Kim had a desk and chair; a map of China and the Korean peninsula on the wall behind it. Footage from 2020 showed a carriage decorated with flower-shaped lighting and zebra-printed fabric chairs. n August 2011, Kim Jong Il visited Ulan-Ude, Russia, roughly 4,500 kilometres (2,800 mi) by train from Pyongyang. In Ulan-Ude, he met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. In March 2018, the Kim family's train was reportedly sighted in Beijing, which, along with heightened security around the Chinese government's Diaoyutai State Guesthouse led to speculation that Kim Jong Un and his wife Ri Sol-ju were visiting China. This was confirmed when they met with General Secretary of the Communist Party Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan.

Repression

On November 18, 2014, the United Nations voted in favour of a draft resolution to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. According to the most recent fully documented report on North Korea published by the UN in 2014, there are around 100,000 political prisoners in North Korean gulags living and dying in conditions of the utmost barbarity.

Civil liberties

North Korea's founder Kim Il-sung rejected the concept of civil rights for people who oppose the regime. There is an extensive system of informants throughout North Korea, which monitor Koreans with respect to political and other possible infractions without reference to formal civil rights. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has officially acknowledged the widespread human rights violations that regularly occur in North Korea. United Nation's Human Rights Resolution 2005/11 referred to specific types of abuses within North Korea:

Freedom of expression

The North Korean constitution has clauses guaranteeing the freedoms of speech and assembly. In practice, other clauses take precedence, including the requirement that citizens follow a socialist way of life. Criticism of the government and its leaders is strictly curtailed, and making such statements can because for arrest and consignment to one of North Korea's “re-education” camps. There are numerous civic organisations, but all of them appear to be operated by the government. All routinely praise the government and perpetuate the personality cults of the Kim family. Defectors indicate that the promotion of the cult of personality is one of the primary functions of almost all films, plays, and books produced within the country.

Freedom of movement

North Korean citizens usually cannot freely travel around the country, let alone travel abroad. Emigration and immigration are strictly controlled. Only the political elite may own or lease vehicles, and the government limits access to fuel and other forms of transport due to frequent shortages of gasoline/petrol, diesel fuel, crude oil, coal, and other fossil fuels due to the severe sanctions placed on North Korea by the U.S. and other nations (satellite photos of North Korea show an almost complete absence of vehicles on all of its roads throughout the country, even in its cities).

According to The Independent, in May 2016 Kim Jong-un temporarily banned all weddings and funerals across the country, and freedom of movement into and out of the capital, preparing for a meeting, on 6 May, of the Workers' Party of Korea, the first gathering of its kind in 36 years. On 28 July 2020, UN human rights reported that women detained in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are being subjected to multiple, serious human rights violations at the hands of security and police officials. The women have been given inadequate quantity and poor quality of food, leading to extreme malnutrition.

Censorship

North Korea ranks among some of the most extreme censorship in the world, with the government able to take strict control over communications. North Korea sits at the bottom of Reporters Without Borders' 2023 Press Freedom Index, ranking 180 out of the 180 countries investigated. A Freedom House report states that all media outlets are owned and controlled by the North Korean government. As such, all media in North Korea get their news from the Korean Central News Agency. According to Voice of America, the government of Kim Jong Un still has absolute authority over and control of the press and information and has been repeatedly ranked one of the top 5 countries in the world with the least amount of media freedom.

Censorship is a form of media monopoly, where the government oversees all media content in order to maintain obedience. North Korea utilises a three-tiered approach to control its citizens at the ideological, physical, and institutional level. This applies not only to North Korean residents but also to visitors. While this media censorship is harmful for many due to its harsh punishments for those who obtain unapproved content, it is most destructive to children. Since children are more impressionable, they are easier to manipulate, and North Korea takes advantage of this by pushing its own agenda. Kim Jong Un only prioritises what he deems to be pertinent information, forcing adolescents to think the same as their leader, without any hope for change.

As for adults, the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) acknowledges multiple violations of human rights in North Korea that are connected to censorship and governmental control, specifically violations of freedom of thought and expression. There are even some extremes, documented in a report by the U.S. Department of State that include forced labor, rape, forced abortions, and many other horrific human rights violations in the country. Journalists' safety is also impacted by censorship. According to Reporters Without Borders the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) restricts and controls the production and distribution of information while also prohibiting independent journalism. Over the years journalists in North Korea have faced many safety hazards when working in the field. They have been arrested, deported, sent to forced labor camps, and even killed.

Kim Jong Il upheld his father's authoritarian regime and strict censorship. He was known for using military propaganda to distract North Korean citizens from their lack of freedoms and access to outside information. Despite only giving citizens access to hyper-militarised government propaganda, many cell phones and DVDs were obtained illegally under Kim Jong Il. In 1983, Kim Jong Il's book The Great Teacher of Journalists was translated into English. In this book, Kim Jong Il guides journalists to take the best pictures of their leader, study their leader's works, and instill loyalty to their leader in others. Kim Jong Il includes stories of his remarkable feats in this book, detailing a time when he saved a reporter from death and when he edited a writer's political essay to perfection.

The North Korean Ullim, an Android-based tablet computer available since 2014, has a high level of inbuilt surveillance and controls. The tablet takes screenshots of apps opened by the user and saves browsing history. The tablet also only allows access to a limited number of approved applications, shares watermarking data to track the distribution of content between people and only allows users to access content created on the tablet or from the tablet.

Radio or television sets that can be bought in North Korea are preset to receive only the government frequencies and sealed with a label to prevent tampering with the equipment. It is a serious criminal offence to manipulate the sets and receive radio or television broadcasts from outside North Korea. In a party campaign in 2003, the head of each party cell in neighborhoods and villages received instructions to verify the seals on all radio sets. According to the Daily NK, it is possible to broadcast news for North Korea through short-wave radio. Possessing a short-wave radio is against the law in North Korea, but the radios are allegedly confiscated and resold by corrupted agents of the secret police.

High-ranking officials have access to cellphones and the internet while others are limited to the programed government stations that broadcast propaganda. Every television is monitored and inspected throughout each year to ensure there are no outside stations being transmitted illegally. Additionally, songs heard on both televisions and radios are supervised to be based on praising communism and the party leaders, with the superstition that members of the Kim family are writing them. In North Korea, journalism as a job is to guard, defend, and advocate for both the party and party leaders. Since the role is defined as being a political activist and a fighter who can mobilise a crowd, a journalist in North Korea should be deemed a supporter of Kim Il Sung and a fervent political activist, with a war correspondent spirit and political qualification.

Reporters in North Korea spend their time writing articles that reflect North Korea in a positive light. Kim Jong Il used to punish the people who wrote from a different point of view, saying "Words describe one's ideas.".

Journalists in North Korea are reeducated continuously. The organisation that takes charge of the reeducation of journalists in North Korea is the 'Chosen Reporter Alliance'. It is the strongest and the most systematised organisation among the reporters and journalists' political idea education organisations. The organisation trains journalists and reporters on philosophy, economics, world history, world literature, and foreign languages. Arguing about the contradictions in the system of North Korea itself is considered treason and is treated as a major violation in North Korean society. Over 70 percent of reports of Korean Central Broadcasting are allotted for Kim's idolisation and propaganda system. The rest of the reports are spent on blaming and predicting the collapse of the United States, Japan, and South Korea.

The national media is focused almost entirely on political propaganda and the promotion of the personality cults surrounding Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. It emphasises historical grievances toward the U.S. and Japan. As North and South Korea use different television systems (PAL and NTSC, respectively), it is not possible to view broadcasts across the border between the two countries; however, in areas bordering China, it has reportedly been possible to receive television from that country. A United Nations envoy reported that any North Korean citizen caught watching a South Korean film may result in that person being sent to a labour camp.

Sexual Slavery

The Kippumjo (translated as Pleasure Squad, Pleasure Brigade, or Pleasure Group), sometimes spelled Kippeumjo (also Gippumjo or Gippeumjo), is a collection of groups of approximately 2,000 women and girls reportedly maintained by the leader of North Korea for the purpose of providing entertainment, including that of a sexual nature, for high-ranking Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) officials and their families, as well as, occasionally, distinguished guests. Little is known outside North Korea about the Kippumjo, and most reports are based on the accounts of North Koreans who have defected, particularly Mi-Hyang, who told the magazine Marie Claire in 2010 that she had been a Kippumjo member, and Kenji Fujimoto, who says he was a chef to Kim Jong Il.

Pleasure group team three: the Gamujo – a dancing and singing team.

Most of them go into arranged marriages with personal guards or senior cadres cleared to work in foreign affairs. Some even go on to become cadres themselves.

Defector Jang Jin-sung, Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee – A Look Inside North Korea.

The first two syllables of the name, kippum, is a native Korean word meaning joy or happiness. The suffix jo is a Sino-Korean word which describes a group of people, roughly analogous to the terms "squad" or "team". Bradley K Martin's 2004 book Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader is based on a combination of visits to North Korea, research and interviews with defectors carried out in the early 1990s. Martin writes that Kim Il Sung was not just interested in pleasure, but also in rejuvenating himself through absorbing a young virgin's ki, or life-force, during sex.

The 2,000-strong harem is said to be made to sing and dance for the nation's elite — but also take part in bizarre sexual games and orgies. It's made even more disturbing by the fact that some members of the Pleasure Squad are said to have been as young as 13, taken directly out of school into sex work.

According to Fox News, the Kippumjo have existed since the administration of North Korea's first leader, Kim Il Sung. The first group was recruited in 1978 by Ri Dong-ho, the First Vice Director of the United Front Department of the Workers' Party of Korea, for the purpose of entertaining Kim at the Munsu Chodaeso. In 2015, Kim Jong Un, the son and successor to Kim Jong Il, was said to be seeking new members for his own Kippumjo after his father's group of women had been disbanded, according to the Chosun Ilbo. The recruiting and training of Kippumjo in 2015 was administered by the Fifth Department of Staff of the Organic Direction of the Party (called Ogwa).

Famine

The North Korean famine, also known as the Arduous March or the March of Suffering, was a period of mass starvation together with a general economic crisis from 1994 to 1998 in North Korea. The famine stemmed from a variety of factors. Economic mismanagement and the loss of Soviet support caused food production and imports to decline rapidly. A series of floods and droughts exacerbated the crisis. The North Korean government and its centrally planned system proved too inflexible to effectively curtail the disaster. Estimates of the death toll vary widely. Out of a total population of approximately 22 million, somewhere between 240,000 and 3,500,000 North Koreans died from starvation or hunger-related illnesses, with the deaths peaking in 1997. A 2011 U.S. Census Bureau report estimated the number of excess deaths from 1993 to 2000 to be between 500,000 and 600,000.

Professor Hazel Smith of Cranfield University describes how North Korean puppet Communism was heavily dependent on strings pulled from Russia:

“the methods of the past that had produced short-to medium-term gains might have continued producing further small economic benefits if the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc had remained and continued to supply oil, technology, and expertise.”.

Women suffered significantly due to the gendered structure of North Korean society, which deemed women responsible for obtaining food, water, and fuel for their families, which often included extended families. Simultaneously, women had the highest participation rate in the workforce of any country in the world, calculated at 89%. Therefore, women had to remain in the workforce and obtain supplies for their families. Pregnant and nursing women faced severe difficulties in staying healthy; maternal mortality rates increased to approximately 41 per 1000, while simple complications such as anaemia, haemorrhage and premature birth became common due to vitamin deficiency. It was estimated that the number of births declined by about 0.3 children per woman during that period.

Famished Children of North Korea.
Famished Children of North Korea.

Children, especially those under two years old, were most affected by both the famine and the poverty of the period. The World Health Organisation reported death rates for children at 93 out of every 1000, while those of infants were cited at 23 out of every 1000. Undernourished mothers found it difficult to breast-feed. No suitable alternative to the practice was available. Infant formula was not produced locally, and only a small amount of it was imported. The famine resulted in a population of homeless, migrant children known as Kotjebi. North Korea has not yet resumed reliable self-sufficiency in food production and periodically, it relies on external food aid from South Korea, China, the United States, Japan, the European Union and others. In 2002, North Korea requested that food supplies no longer be delivered. In 2011, during a visit to North Korea, former US President Jimmy Carter reported that one third of children in North Korea were malnourished and stunted in their growth because of a lack of food. He also said that the North Korean government had reduced daily food intake from 5,900 to 2,900 kJ (1,400 to 700 kcal) in 2011.

Famished Children of North Korea.
Famished Children of North Korea.

Escaped North Koreans reported in September 2010 that starvation had returned to the nation. North Korean pre-school children are reported to be an average of 3 to 4 cm (1.2 to 1.6 inches) shorter than South Koreans, which some researchers believe can only be explained by conditions of famine and malnutrition. Although the Food Security and Information Network (FSIN) acknowledged a major famine in North Korea in its 2017 report, the group also noted that statistics showing the scale of the famine are hard to find due to the repressive nature of the Kim regime as well as its efforts to convey the illusion of prosperity. According to a 2017 report by the United Nations, which made estimates based on satellite images and economic data, roughly two out of five citizens are malnourished. It has identified more than 13 million North Koreans in need of economic assistance, who are likely struggling to survive in the current conditions.

Internment

There are two types of Interment camps, Kwan-li-so (관리소) and Kyo-hwa-so (교화소):

Kwan-li-so: Political Penal Labor Colonies.

North Korea denies the existence of the political prison camps. Controlled by the State Security Department (Guk-ga An-jeon Bo-wi-bu) Prisoners are "forcibly disappeared" (deported to the kwan-li-so without any judicial process of legal recourse). Incommunicado detention (no contact with the outside world). Most inmates are imprisoned for life in "total control zones" (wan-jeon-tong-je-gu-yeok). Historically, up to three generations of family members imprisoned under "guilt by association" (yeon-jwa-je) system. All prisoners detained for political offences

Kyo-hwa-so: Long-Term Prison Labor Facilities

North Korea recognises the existence of the kyo-hwa-so in the DPRK Criminal Law (Article 30). Controlled by the Ministry of People's Security (in-min Bo-an-bu). Many prisoners undergo minimal judicial procedures. Not incommunicado; families can sometimes bring food to the prisoner. Usually fixed-term sentences, after which the prisoner is released. Some released early due to severe illnesses or as part of a nationwide amnesty to commemorate the birth of the "Great Leader" or the founding of the Koreans Workers' Party. Prisoners detained for criminal and political offences.

Suffering

Conditions inside North Korean prison camps are unsanitary and life-threatening. Prisoners are subject to torture and inhumane treatment. Public and secret executions of prisoners, even children, especially in cases of attempted escape, are commonplace. Infanticides (and infant killings upon birth) also often occur. The mortality rate is very high because many prisoners die of starvation, illnesses, work accidents, or torture.

Factionalists or enemies of class, whoever they are, their seed must be eliminated through three generations.

Kim Il-sung

Lee Soon-ok gave detailed testimony on her treatment in the North Korean prison system to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 2002. In her statement, she said:

I testify that most of the 6,000 prisoners who were there when I arrived in 1987 had quietly perished under the harsh prison conditions by the time I was released in 1992.

Many other former prisoners, including Kang Chol-hwan and Shin Dong-hyuk, gave detailed and consistent testimonies on the human rights crimes in North Korean prison camps. Cruelty inflicted upon the people of North Koreans is incomprehensalbe for many people in the western world. Former prison guard Ahn Myung Chul has reported that young doctors practice surgeries on prisoners without anesthesia. He also described deliberate efforts to study physical resistance by starving prisoners to death. According to him, “The people who carry out these executions and these experiments all drink before they do it. But they are real experts now; sometimes they hit prisoners with a hammer, on the back of the head.

The intent was to exterminate the family lineage of those deemed to be the enemies of “the people” in North Korea. And to a considerable extent, the regime succeeded.

David R Hawk, P.38 Hidden Gulag 2012

The poor prisoners then lose their memory, and they use them as zombies for target practice. When the Third Bureau is running out of subjects, a black van is known as “the crow” turns up and picks out a few more prisoners, sowing panic among the rest. The crow comes about once a month and takes forty or fifty people off to an unknown destination.

Starvation: Eating snakes and rats.
"Pigeon torture".
The solitary confinement room.
"Scale," "Airplane," and "Motorcycle" positions.
Pump torture: We were ordered to sit and then stand hundreds of times.
Grabbing rats in the solitary confinement cell, 120cm x 100cm (47in x 39in).

Exacerbating the problem Western leaders did nothing but inflict starvation on the remaining Northern Koreans (the entire dystopian society is a prison camp) with international sanctions, psychotic dictators do not care about their people and use the actions of the west to distract resentment and hatred away from themselves.

Kaechon Kwan-li-so (Camp 14)

The camp was established around 1959 in central North Korea, near Kae'chŏn county, South Pyongan Province. It is situated along the middle reaches of the Taedong river, which forms the southern boundary of the camp, and includes the mountains north of the river, including Purok-san. Bukchang, a concentration camp (Kwan-li-so No.18) adjoins the southern banks of the Taedong River.

Satellite view of Camp 14
Satellite view of Camp 14

The camp is about 155 km2 (60 sq mi) in area, with farms, mines, and factories threaded through the steep mountain valleys. The camp includes overcrowded barracks that house males, females, and older children separately, a headquarters with administrative buildings, and guard housing. Altogether, around 15,000 are imprisoned in Kaechon internment camp. The main purpose of the Kaechon internment camp is to keep politically unreliable persons classed “unredeemable” by the North Korean government isolated from society and to exploit their labour. Those sent to the camp include officials perceived to have performed poorly in their job, people who criticise the regime, their children, anyone who was born in the camp, and anyone suspected of engaging in “anti-government” activities.

He, [Prisoner Kim Yong] was shocked by the skinniness and discolouration of the other prisoners, who looked to him like soot-covered stick men.

Prisoners have to work in one of the coal mines, in agriculture, or in one of the factories that produce textiles, paper, food, rubber, shoes, ceramics, and cement. Livestock raising is considered the occupation of choice for the prisoners, as it gives them the chance to steal animal food and pick through animal droppings for undigested grains. Food rations are scant, consisting of salted cabbage and corn. The prisoners are emaciated; they lose their teeth, and their gums blacken. Many die of malnourishment, illness, work accidents, and the after-effects of torture. Many prisoners resort to eating frogs, insects, rats, snakes, and even cannibalism in order to try to survive.

Another hunger-crazed prisoner, Kal Li-yong, died after having his mouth smashed by a feces-covered stick for having stolen a leather whip, which he soaked in water and then ate the softened leather.

Eating rat flesh helps prevent pellagra, a common disease in the camp, resulting from the absence of protein and niacin in the diet. In order to eat anything outside the prison-sanctioned meal, including these animals, prisoners must first get permission from the guards.

Screenshot from the film Camp 14, Kaechon internment camp, North Korea.
Screenshot from the film Camp 14, Kaechon internment camp, North Korea.

There are 78 punishment cells in the camp, each 60 cm (24 inches) wide and 110 cm (43 inches) high, where prisoners are locked up several days. Afterwards, many of them are unable to walk and some even die. Prisoners are often beaten, kicked or whipped. Lee Soon-ok was tortured, being forced to drink a large quantity of water until she fainted (water torture) and almost died. During her sentence, she witnessed many types of torture. Pregnant women are forced to have abortions by injections. Lee Soon-ok witnessed babies born alive being murdered directly after birth. As with all the prison camps, public executions are commonplace and usually done in front of all of the prisoners.

Prisoner: Lee Soon-ok

Lee Soon-ok (1987–1992 in Kaechon) was imprisoned on alleged embezzlement of state property, when she refused to put material on the side for her superior. She was sentenced to 13 years in a prison camp, but released earlier under a surprise amnesty. Lee Soon-ok (born 1947 in Chongjin, North Korea) is a former prisoner of a North Korean political prison and the author of Eyes of the Tailless Animals: Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman, an account of her ordeal of being falsely accused, tortured, and imprisoned under poor conditions for crimes against the state and her subsequent release from prison and defection from the country. Since leaving North Korea, she has resided in South Korea.

Lee was a manager in a North Korean government office that distributed goods and materials to the country's people when she was falsely accused of dishonesty in her job. She believes she was one of the victims of a power struggle between the Workers' Party and the public security bureau police. Following her arrest, she was severely tortured and threatened for months but maintained her innocence.

However, a promise made by an interrogator to not take any punitive action against her husband and son if she confessed—a promise that she would find out to have been false—finally convinced her to plead guilty to the charges. For six years, Lee was imprisoned in Kaechon concentration camp where she reported witnessing forced abortions, infanticide, instances of rape, public executions, testing of biological weapons on prisoners (see human experimentation in North Korea), extreme malnutrition, and other forms of inhumane conditions and depravity.

Lee described an experiment in which 50 healthy female prisoners were selected and given poisoned cabbage leaves (sauerkraut Germany?). All of the women were required to eat the cabbage, despite cries of distress from those who had already eaten. All 50 died after 20 minutes of vomiting blood and anal bleeding. Refusing to eat the cabbage would allegedly have meant reprisals against them and their families.

Lee’s story was published in South Korea in 1996 in the original Korean. Her story was subsequently translated into English and published in the United States in 1999. Lee has also testified about the North Korean human rights situation before the United States Congress. It is not clear why she was released, although Lee suspects that the officials responsible for jailing her were the subjects of investigations by higher-ranking members of North Korea's government.

Lee converted to Christianity (Christian missionaries always exploit captive mentalities) and so includes Christianity in everything she speaks and campaigns relentlessly for “Christian rights” in South Korea; not realising the church of Christianity is a more insidious, slow burn form of Communist dictatorship that has for eighteen hundred years tortured and killed millions of indigenous European people. Both Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong were Christians, Stalin presented Russia as a defender of Christian civilisation.

Prisoner: Ji Hae-nam

Ji Hae-nam (1993–1995 in Kaechon) was imprisoned for disruption of the socialist order, as she sang a South Korean pop song and was denounced by a neighbour. She was sentenced to 3 years in a prison camp, but released after 2 years and 2 months.

Hoeryong Kwan-li-so (Camp 22)

Hoeryong concentration camp (or Haengyong concentration camp) was a prison camp in North Korea that was reported to have been closed in 2012. The official name was Kwalliso (penal labour colony) No. 22. The camp was a maximum security area, completely isolated from the outside world. In the 1990s, there were an estimated 50,000 prisoners in the camp. Prisoners were mostly people who criticised the government, :131–132 people deemed politically unreliable (not including purged senior party members).

Satellite view of Camp 12
Satellite view of Camp 22

Based on the guilt-by-association principle (yeonjwaje) they are often imprisoned together with the whole family including children and the elderly, and including any children born in the camp. All prisoners were detained until they died; they were never released.

Kwon Hyok, a former head of security at Camp 22, described laboratories equipped with gas chambers for suffocation gas experiments, in which three or four people, normally a family, are the experimental subjects. After the people undergo medical checks, the chambers are sealed and poison is injected through a tube, while scientists observe from above through glass. In a report reminiscent of an earlier account of a family of seven, Kwon claims to have watched one family of two parents, a son and a daughter die from suffocating gas, with the parents trying to save the children using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for as long as they had the strength.

I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber, The parents, son and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.

Kwon Hyok, chief of management at Camp 22 and former military attaché at the North Korean Embassy in Beijing.

Kwon's testimony was supported by documents from Camp 22 describing the transfer of prisoners designated for the experiments. The documents were identified as genuine by Kim Sang Hun, a London-based expert on Korea and human rights activist. Hyok's testimony is also backed up by Soon Ok-lee, who was imprisoned for seven years. 'An officer ordered me to select 50 healthy female prisoners,' she said…

One of the guards handed me a basket full of soaked cabbage, told me not to eat it but to give it to the 50 women. I gave them out and heard a scream from those who had eaten them. They were all screaming and vomiting blood. All who ate the cabbage leaves started violently vomiting blood and screaming with pain. It was hell. In less than 20 minutes they were quite dead.

Soon Ok-lee imprisoned for seven years at Camp 22

Hyuk has drawn detailed diagrams of the gas chamber he saw. He said: 'The glass chamber is sealed airtight. It is 3.5 metres wide, 3 m long and 2.2 m high_ [There] is the injection tube going through the unit. Normally, a family sticks together, and individual prisoners stand separately around the corners. Scientists observe the entire process from above, through the glass.'. 'It would be a total lie for me to say I feel sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death. Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So, I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all.'

Defectors have smuggled out documents that appear to reveal how methodical the chemical experiments were. One stamped 'top secret' and 'transfer letter' is dated February 2002. The name of the victim was Lin Hun-hwa. He was 39. The text reads: 'The above person is transferred from … camp number 22 for the purpose of human experimentation of liquid gas for chemical weapons.' Kim Sang-hun, a North Korean human rights worker, says the document is genuine. He said: 'It carries a North Korean format, the quality of paper is North Korean, and it has an official stamp of agencies involved with this human experimentation. A stamp they cannot deny. And it carries names of the victim and where and why and how these people were experimented [on].'

Hyuk, reported that corpses were loaded into cargo coaches together with the coal, to be burnt in a melting furnace. The coal was delivered to the Chongjin power plant as well as to Chongjin and Kimchaek steel mills, while the food was delivered to the State Security Agency or sold in Pyongyang and other parts of the country. Camp No. 22 was so close to Hoeryong City, the residents of Hoeryong commonly knew about the prison camp. Local residents of Hoeryong report that regular citizens—farmers from Saebyeol and Eundeok counties, and miners from Onsong—were now moving into the farm-land and mines previously worked by prisoners.

The camp was divided into several prison labour colonies:

There was an execution site in Sugol Valley, at the edge of the camp.

Former guard Ahn Myong-chol describes the conditions in the camp as harsh and life-threatening. He recalls the shock he felt upon his first arrival at the camp, where he likened the prisoners to walking skeletons, dwarfs, and cripples in rags. Ahn estimates that about 30% of the prisoners had deformities, such as torn off ears, smashed eyes, crooked noses, and faces covered with cuts and scars resulting from beatings and other mistreatment. Around 2,000 prisoners, he says, had missing limbs, but even prisoners who needed crutches to walk were still forced to work.

Ahn estimated that 1,500–2,000 people died of malnutrition there every year, mostly children. Despite these deaths, the inmate population remained constant, suggesting that similar numbers of new inmates arrived each year. Children received only very basic education. From the age of 6 onward they were work assigned, such as picking vegetables, peeling corn, or drying rice, but received very little food — only 360 g (13 oz) in all per day. Consequently, many children died before the age of ten years. Elderly prisoners had the same work requirements as other adults. Seriously ill prisoners were quarantined, abandoned, and left to die.

Ahn explained how the camp guards are taught that prisoners are factionalists and class enemies that have to be destroyed like weeds down to their roots. They are instructed to regard the prisoners as slaves and not treat them as human beings. Based on this, the guards may at any time kill any prisoner who does not obey their orders. Kwon reported that as a security officer, he could decide whether or not to kill a prisoner if he or she violated a rule. He admitted that once he ordered the execution of 31 people from five families in a collective punishment because one member of a family tried to escape.

In the 1980s, public executions took place approximately once a week, according to Kwon. However, Ahn reported that in the 1990s they were replaced by secret executions, as the security guards feared riots from the assembled crowd. Kwon was required to visit the secret execution site a number of times; there, he saw disfigured and crushed bodies. In case of serious violations of camp rules, the prisoners are subjected to a process of investigation, which produced human rights violations, such as reduced meals, torture, beating, and sexual harassment. In addition, there is a detention centre; many prisoners die in detention and even more leave the detention building crippled.

Ahn and Kwon reported about the following torture methods used in Haengyong-ri

Prisoners are beaten every day, if, for example, they do not bow quickly or deeply enough before the guards, if they do not work hard enough, or do not obey quickly enough. It is a frequent practice for guards to use prisoners as martial arts targets. Rape and sexual violence are very common in the camp, as female prisoners know they may be easily killed if they resist the demands of the security officers.

Ahn reported about hundreds of prisoners each year being taken away for several “major construction projects”, such as secret tunnels, military bases, or nuclear facilities in remote areas. None of these prisoners ever returned to the camp. Ahn is convinced that they were secretly killed after finishing the construction work to keep the secrecy of these projects.

Single prisoners lived in bunkhouses with 100 people in one room. As a reward for good work, families were often allowed to live together in a single room inside a small house, without running water. Houses were in poor condition; walls were made from mud and typically had many cracks. All prisoners were allowed access only to dirty and crowded communal toilets.

Prisoners had to do hard physical labour in agriculture, mining, and inside factories from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. (7:00 p.m. in winter), followed by ideological re-education and self-criticism sessions. New Year’s Day was the only holiday for prisoners. The mines were not equipped with safety measures and, according to Ahn, prisoners were consequently killed almost every day

Former guards/prisoners (witnesses):

Satellite images from late 2012 showed the detention centre and some guard towers being razed, but all other structures appeared operational. It was reported that 27,000 prisoners died of starvation within a short time and the surviving 3,000 prisoners were relocated to Hwasong concentration camp between March and June 2012. Furthermore, it was reported that the camp shut down in June, security guards removed traces of detention facilities until August and then miners from Kungsim mine and farmers from Saebyol and Undok were moved into the area. According to another report, the authorities decided to close the camp to cover its tracks after a warden defected.

Yodok Kwan-li-so (Camp 15)

Yodok concentration camp was a kwalliso in North Korea. The official name was Kwan-li-so (penal labour colony) No. 15. The camp was used to segregate those seen as enemies of the state, punish them for political misdemeanours, and put them to hard labour. It was closed down in 2014. The colony is bound to the north by Mt. Paek (1,742 meters, or 5,715 feet, high), to the north-east by Mt. Modo (1,833 meters, or 6,014 feet, high), to the west by Mt. Tok (1,250 meters, or 4,101 feet, high) and to the south by Mt. Byoungpung (1,152 meters, or 3,780 feet, high). The valley is entered from the east by the 1,250-meter (4,101-foot) Chaebong Pass.

Satellite view of Camp 15

The whole encampment (378 km2 or 146 sq mi in area) is surrounded by a barbed-wire fence measuring 3 to 4 meters (10 to 13 feet) in height. In some areas, there are walls 2 to 3 meters (7 to 10 feet) tall, topped with electrical wire. Along the fence there are watchtowers measuring 7 to 8 meters (23 to 26 feet) in height, set at 1-kilometer (0.62-mile) intervals, and patrolled by 1,000 guards armed with automatic rifles and hand grenades. Additionally, there are teams with guard dogs. Inside the camp, each village has two guards on duty at all times.

Yodok camp had two parts:

In the 1990s, the total control zone had an estimated 30,000 prisoners while the smaller revolutionary zone had about 16,500 prisoners; later satellite images, however, indicate a significant increase in the camp's scale. Most prisoners were deported to Yodok without trial, or following unfair trials, based on confessions obtained through torture. People were often imprisoned together with family members and close relatives, including small children and the elderly, based on guilt by association (Sippenhaft).

population of the camp in the early 1970s numbered 20,000, some 60 percent of whom were the families of the presumed “wrong-doers.

The prisoners lived in dusty huts with walls made of dried mud, a roof (rotten and leaking) made of straw laid on wooden planks, and a floor covered with straw and dry plant mats. In a room of around 50 m2 (540 sq ft), 30–40 prisoners slept on a bed made of a wooden board covered with a blanket. Most huts were not heated, even in winter, where temperatures are below −20 °C (−4 °F), and most prisoners got frostbite and had swollen limbs during the winter. Camp inmates also suffered from pneumonia, tuberculosis, pellagra, and other diseases, with no available medical treatment.

The camp guards made prisoners report on each other and designate specific ones as foremen to control a group. If one person did not work hard enough, the whole group was punished. This created animosity among the detainees, destroyed any solidarity, and forced them to create a system of self-surveillance.

New prisoners received clothes that predecessors had worn until their deaths. Most clothes were dirty, worn-out, and full of holes. Prisoners had no proper shoes, socks, or gloves, and usually no spare clothes. The dead were buried naked because other prisoners took their possessions. All prisoners were covered with a thick layer of dirt, as they were overworked and had almost no opportunity to wash themselves or their clothes. As a result, the prisoners’ huts were foul-smelling and infested with lice, fleas, and other insects. Prisoners had to queue in front of dirty community toilets, one for every 200 prisoners, using dry leaves for cleaning.

Men, women, and children performed hard labour seven days a week and were treated as slaves. Labour operations included a gypsum quarry and a gold mine, textile plants, distilleries, a coppersmith workshop, agriculture, and logging. Serious work accidents often occurred. Work shifts in summer started at 4 a.m. and ended at 8 p.m. Work shifts in other seasons started at 5:30 a.m., but were often extended past 8 p.m. when work quotas were not met, even when dark. After dinner, prisoners were required to attend ideological education and struggle sessions from 9 to 11 p.m., where inmates who did not meet the targets were severely criticised and beaten. If prisoners could not memorise the instructions given by Kim Il-sung, they were not allowed to sleep, or their food rations were reduced.

Most of the primary school children attended school in the morning. The main subject was the history of the revolution of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. In the afternoon they carried out hard labour with very high work quotas in terms of amount and intensity. Children were beaten with a stick for failure to meet the day's quota. Primary school children had to carry heavy logs 12 times a day over 4 km (2.5 mi) or dung buckets of 30 kg (66 lb) 30 times a day. sometimes children died in work accidents. Elder children had to work all day and, from the age of 16, were assigned the same work quotas as adults.

Prisoners were constantly kept on the verge of starvation. The daily rations for prisoners were between 100 and 200 g (3.5 and 7.1 oz) of corn boiled into gruel, served three times a day. Depending on the agricultural produce of the year, rations could be less. If prisoners did not finish their daily work quota or violate minor rules, the daily rations were reduced or temporarily discontinued, no matter if they were sick, crippled, or disabled. Some prisoners sneaked into the pigsties and stole pig slops or picked undigested corn kernels out of animal faeces to survive. Lee Young-kuk estimates that at the end of the 1990s, around 20% of prisoners in Daesuk-ri died from malnutrition each year, with new prisoners arriving each month. All former prisoners say they frequently saw people dying.

Former Prisoners (Witnesses):

Hwasong Kwan-li-so (Camp 16)

Hwasong concentration camp (spelled Hwasŏng or Hwaseong and recently renamed as "Myeonggam") is a labor camp in North Korea for political prisoners. The official name is Kwan-li-so (Penal-labor colony) No. 16. The camp is located in Hwasong County (Myonggan County), North Hamgyong Province in North Korea. It is situated along the upper reaches of the Hwasong River in a secluded mountain valley. The western border is Mantapsan, a 2,205-metre-high (7,234 ft (2.2 km)) mountain. On the north and east sides, the camp reaches the Orangchon River valley. The entrance gate is right on the Hwasong River and on the road from Hwasong, 8 km (ca. 5 miles) west of Hwasong-up (Myonggan-up). The camp is not included in maps, but the entrance gate and the ring-fence with watchtowers can be recognised on satellite images.

Hwasong camp is a penal-labor colony in which detainees are imprisoned for life with no chance to be released. With around 549 km2 (212 sq mi) in area, it is the largest prison camp in North Korea. Puhwa-ri (Chosŏn'gŭl: 부화리), 4 km (2.5 mi) north of the entrance gate, is the camp headquarters. The number of prisoners is estimated at 20,000. They are classified as “anti-revolutionary and anti-party elements” and held on charges such as opposing the succession of Kim Jong-il. Many of the prisoners are merely family members of suspected wrongdoers, who are held captive in a “guilt-by-association” punishment. It is believed that the camp was founded in the 1990s.

Prisoners are exploited for hard, dangerous, and deadly labour in mining, logging, and agriculture. According to Mr. Lee, a former security officer in Hwasong camp, the inmates were overworked and had very little time to rest. Prisoners had to work all day until they fulfilled their quotas and attend self-criticism meetings afterward. Often they were allowed to sleep only four hours in the night. Mr. Lee witnessed many fatal accidents in the workplace. The North Korean nuclear tests made in 2006, 2009, 2013 and 2016 at Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site is just 2 km (1.24 miles) to the west of the camp border. Several defectors reported that political prisoners were forced to dig tunnels and build underground facilities in areas exposed to nuclear radiation.

Information is extremely limited, as the camp has always been a maximum security camp under strict control and surveillance. An unidentified teenager reported how he was sent to the camp with his entire family at age 13. He witnessed his father being beaten cruelly and his mother and sisters being raped by security officers. Residents from nearby villages heard about the horrific conditions inside the camp but were never allowed to get near the camp. Security officer Lee explained the methods to execute prisoners in an interview with Amnesty International. He witnessed prisoners forced to dig their graves and being killed with hammer blows to their necks. He also witnessed prison officers strangling detainees and then beating them to death with wooden sticks. According to him, several women were raped by the officials and executed secretly thereafter.

Former Prisoners (Witnesses)

Pukchang Kwan-li-so (Camp 18)

The camp is in Pukchang County and Tukchang district, P'yŏngan-namdo province in North Korea. It is situated along the middle reaches of the Taedong river, which forms the northern boundary of the camp, and also includes the mountains south of the river. On the other side of the Taedong river is the Kaechon internment camp (Kwan-li-so No. 14). here are several prison labor colonies with barracks for the prisoners and housing for the guards: the 4th, 5th, and 6th divisions. Family members are often allowed to live together. Around 50,000 prisoners live in Pukchang concentration camp. Kim Yong reported the presence of foreign prisoners, but there is no other source to confirm this.

Satellite view of Camp 18.

According to Hwang Jang-yop, the former leader of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Pukchang camp is the oldest North Korean prison camp and was already erected by 1958. Like in Yodok camp, there is one section for political prisoners in lifelong detention and another section functioning as a reeducation camp. Possibly, these sections were completely separated earlier and therefore are named Pukchang and Tukchang respectively. While all the other political prison camps belong to the State Security Department, Pukchang camp is run by the Interior Ministry.

Pukchang camp isolates people from society who are deemed by the North Korean government to be politically unreliable. It was established to exploit the prisoners with hard and dangerous labor. Within the camp borders, there are at least five coal mines, where all capable prisoners have to work from early in the morning to late in the evening. Furthermore, there is a cement factory and some other factories. Rules in Pukchang camp seem to be slightly less strict compared to the human rights situation in other political prison camps. Despite this, prisoners are still shot in cases of escape attempts, thefts of food, or violations of instructions. Kim witnessed more than 100 public executions per year, with prisoners being tortured and then shot or hanged as a deterrent to the other prisoners.

The most common causes of death are malnutrition, work accidents, and illnesses. Kim reported that in the 1990s, her family only received 7 kg (15 lb) of corn per month and occasionally some bean paste (Doenjang), or salt. In order to survive, they had to search for edible plants, leaves, and insects. She saw bodies lying around the camp and reported cases of cannibalism. Since the prisoners have to work 16–18 hours in the mines every day without any protection, after a few years most suffer from pneumoconiosis and many die from it. Kim developed a pulmonary tumour because of the inhaled dust. Work accidents often lead to limb amputations. Many children have frostbite because they have no shoes and have to go barefoot even in winter.

Kim reported that the prisoners have no human rights and are treated at the guards’ mercy. To humiliate the prisoners, the guards would often force them to get on their knees, and then spit into the prisoner's mouths and make them swallow the spit. If prisoners do not immediately obey, they are savagely beaten. The prisoners are monitored almost continuously by security agents and are urged to spy on each other and to denounce other prisoners.

Former Prisoners (Witnesses):

According to some sources, the camp ceased operations in 2006. The satellite images, however, show that the mine inside the camp is still operating with civilian labourers. It is likely that some parts of the camp still hold political prisoners, but most of the former camp area has stopped functioning as a labour camp. In 2016, it was reported that camp 18 had either been re-opened or merged with camp 14 on the other side of the river. Satellite images showed a new security perimeter and increased activity in the area. There also seemed to be an operational ferry between the two camps, giving the suggestion that the camps may have merged.

Camp No. 18 shared with Camp No. 15 (Yodok) a characteristic that differed from other camps such as Camp No. 14 (Kaechon), Camp No. 22 (Heoryong), or Camp No. 25 (Chongjin) in that there were prisoners at Camps No. 15 and 18 who were released, whereas at the other kwan-li-so camps, the prisoners were detained without trial and subjected to forced labor until death.36 For this reason, there are many more former prisoners from Camps No. 15 and 18 who subsequently fled to China and South Korea, and who have provided the outside world with testimony about the North Korean prison camp system.

The releases at Camp No. 18 were of a different nature, and therein lies their significance. At Camp No. 18, at various times over the last several decades, entire “villages” within the sprawling labour camp described above were de-commissioned as prison labour camps. Most of the prisoners residing in those villages were “cleared” of their wrongdoings, and their liberties—to the extent that non-elite North Koreans have liberties—were restored, including their freedom to travel or move elsewhere within North Korea.

The process was called madang haeje, “broad clearance.” Thirty-nine Prisoners in those villages who were not “cleared” were transferred to other villages within Camp No. 18 that continued to function as forced labour prison camp villages.There was a madang haeje “broad clearance” in the mid-1980s. Another “broad clearance” took place in the mid-1990s, as other villages within Camp No. 18 were decommissioned as forced labour.

A former Camp No. 18 official who defected to South Korea explained these releases:

The reason for the release of prisoners in 1989 was that many of the prisoners were the third and fourth generation of offenders such as landlords, capitalists, collaborators with the Japanese colonial government, and other people with bad family background… In fact, the prisoners were the grandchildren of offenders, and they found the grandchildren were, in fact, innocent, and decided to release them.

However, while the “cleared” former prisoners were technically and legally allowed to leave, many stayed, even with their citizen rights restored—etching out a penurious existence living in their same houses and working in the same places. Essentially, these former prisoners had been detained for so long—multiple decades in numerous instances—that they had lost all contact and connection with their families, friends, and colleagues in their home villages or towns. The mines, formerly operated with prison labour, now operate as civilian enterprises. Analysis of satellite photos seems to confirm that “the fence lines of the camp are still visible, but the main checkpoints seem to be dismantled or degraded.

Chongjin Kwan-li-so (Camp 25)

Chongjin concentration camp (Chosŏn'gŭl also spelled Ch'ŏngjin) is a labour camp in North Korea for political prisoners. The official name is Kwan-li-so (Penal-labour colony) No. 25. Satellite images show a major expansion of the camp after 2010. The camp is located in the city of Chongjin in the North Hamgyong province of North Korea. It is situated in Suseong district (Susŏng-dong) of Songpyong-guyok, around 7 km (4.3 mi) northwest of the city center and 1 km (0.62 mi) west of Susŏng River (Susŏngch'on).

Chongjin camp is a lifetime prison. Like the other political prison camps, it is controlled by the state security agency. But while the other camps include many vast prison-labour colonies in remote mountain valleys, Chongjin camp is only one big prison building complex similar to the re-education camps. The camp is around 500 m (1500 ft) long and 500 m (1500 ft) wide, surrounded by high walls and fences, and equipped with guard towers. The number of prisoners is estimated to be between 3000 and 5000.

Close up*
Old Camp 25.
Expansion Camp 25.

* “No. 4” is the bicycle factory, and “No. 5” is a barracks. And “No. 2?” It’s a crematorium.

A South Korean human rights NGO showed satellite photos of this structure and its surrounding areas to several former residents of Chongjin, two of whom identified the structure in the photographs as Camp 25. One of the former Chongjin residents had gone out to the prison camp to visit a friend who was a guard there. The other former resident had driven a truck to the prison camp to pick up a shipment of the bicycles made there by the prison labourers.

Detailed analysis of satellite images shows a major expansion of the camp perimeter in 2010. The size of the camp increased 72 percent, from 580 m2 (6,200 sq ft) to now 1,000 m2 (11,000 sq ft). Along the new fence line, 17 additional guard posts were erected. In the eastern part of the new perimeter, several new buildings were erected from 2011 to 2013, possibly to be used as prisoner housing. There are no first-hand witness accounts on the camp; however, there are some reports by North Korean defectors on prisoners in Chongjin camp. Lim Kook-jae, a South Korean abducted to North Korea in 1987 aboard the Dong Jin 27, died in Chongjin camp, according to a human rights organisation.

Chungsan Kwan-li-so (Camp 11)

The camp is in Chungsan county, in South Pyongan province of North Korea. It is in the Yellow Sea coast, around 50 km (31 mi) west of Pyongyang. Chungsan camp is a sprawling largely women's penitentiary with between 3,300 and 5,000 prisoners. Since 1999 the camp is used to detain female defectors, which account for 50–60% of the prisoners, while others are incarcerated for theft, prostitution, unauthorised trade, etc. The food rations are very small. According to a former prisoner, one third of the prisoners died from combinations of malnutrition, disease, and forced labor within a year.

Kangdong Kyo-hwa-so (Camp 4)
Satellite view of Camp 11 (click to expand)

In interviews other former prisoners reported about:

Former Prisoners (Witnesses):

The camp is surrounded by agricultural plots, where the prisoners have to grow rice and corn for delivery to the Ministry of Public Security. The food rations are very small. According to a former prisoner, one third of the prisoners died from combinations of malnutrition, disease, and forced labour within a year. Dead prisoners are buried in mass graves on a nearby hill. She reported that the prisoners were often beaten with iron bars, if they did not work hard enough. She got very ill because her wounds from the beatings got infected.

Kangdong Kyo-hwa-so (Camp 4)

The camp consists of a large prison compound situated between Samdung-ri and the Nam River, in Kangdong-gun, in South Pyongan province of North Korea, about 30 km (19 mi) east of downtown Pyongyang. The main section of the camp is around 250 m (820 ft) long and 200 m (660 ft) wide, surrounded by a high wall. The whole camp is roughly 2 km (1.2 mi) long by 1.5 km (0.93 mi) wide, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. In 1997 there used to be around 7,000 prisoners. Most of them are either soldiers or residents of Pyongyang, sentenced from 5 to 20 years. Working facilities include a cement factory, a coal mine, a limestone quarry, a glass factory and some agriculture.

Kangdong Kyo-hwa-so (Camp 4)
Satellite view of Camp 4 (click to expand)

According to a former prisoner, an average of 500 prisoners die annually, mostly due to waterborne illnesses. Another former prisoner reported high death rates due to work accidents, malnutrition, and disease. Seriously ill prisoners are sent home on sick leave to reduce the apparent number of deaths in detention. In the limestone quarries the prisoners have to do hard labor in hazardous conditions, with prisoners often receiving or sustaining chest ailments and lung diseases from limestone dust. Moreover, as the prisoners are rarely allowed to wash their faces, many suffer from skin abrasions and infections.

Prisoners live in unsanitary conditions; they sleep on the floor in groups of 50 to 100 people, without bathing or changing their clothes. Food rations consist of only 50 g (2 oz) of corn and wheat and some cabbage soup per meal and all prisoners are seriously underweight. A former prisoner witnessed eight public executions during the eight months he was held in the camp. Rule violations are punished with reduced rations, extended sentences, and detainment in very small punishment cells. There is a criticism session every week, in which the prison officials criticise prisoners in front of a large group of prisoners.

Kaechon Kyo-hwa-so (Camp 1)

Kyo-hwa-so No. 1, Kaechon is also transliterated as Gaechon, which is located in Yaksu-dong, Kaechon City and thought to be one of the oldest kyo-hwa-so prison camps. Estimated number of Prisoners: 4,000 to 6,000. Type of prisoners: Men, women, political prisoners, border crossers, genuine criminal offenders, Japanese-Koreans. Type of Labor: Textile production, Leather manufacturing. Kaechon Kyo-hwa-so (Camp 1) is not to be confused with Kaechon internment camp (Kwan-li-so Nr. 14), which is located 20 km (12 mi) to the south-east.

Kangdong Kyo-hwa-so (Camp 4)
Satellite view of Camp 1 (click to expand)

The human rights situation in the camp is described in detail by Lee Soon-ok in her testimony to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. She explains how the prisoners have no rights and how they are treated at the mercy of the guards. The prisoners are forced to work around 18 hours per day at the camp's factories. If someone does not work quickly enough, he or she is beaten. Sometimes prisoners sleep at their workplaces to fulfill the production quota. All this involves frequent work accidents and many prisoners are crippled from the work or from torture.

Former Prisoners (Witnesses):

Prisoners are forced to sleep in a room with 80 to 90 people in 30 square metre (322 square feet) flea-infested rooms. Prisoners are only occasionally allowed to use the toilet (one for about 300 people) and may only take a shower after several months. Diseases like paratyphus are common, resulting from the bad nutrition. Food rations are 100 grams of broken corn three times a day and a salt soup. In case of rule violations food rations are reduced. Lee Soon-ok reported that prisoners even killed rats and ate them raw in order to survive.

There are 78 punishment cells in the camp, each 60 cm (24 inches) wide and 110 cm (43 inches) high, where prisoners are locked up several days. Afterwards many of them are unable to walk and some even die. Prisoners are often beaten, kicked or whipped. Lee Soon-ok was tortured being forced to drink a large quantity of water until she fainted (water torture) and almost died. During her sentence she witnessed many types of torture. Pregnant women are forced to have abortions by injections. Lee Soon-ok witnessed babies born alive being murdered directly after birth.

Sariwon Kyo-hwa-so (Camp 6)

Kyo-hwa-so No. 6 Sariwon is a "reeducation camp" in Sariwon, North Hwanghae. It holds roughly 3,500-4,000 prisoners. Type of prisoners: Men, political prisoners. Type of Labor: Clothing and Shoe factory, farming, "model detention facility".

Kangdong Kyo-hwa-so (Camp 4)
Satellite view of Camp 6 (click to expand)

Sariwon was one of the earliest North Korean prison camps to become widely known about outside of North Korea because of the involvement of Amnesty International in the release of Ali Lameda and Jacques Sedillot. They were members in good standing in the Venezuelan and French, respectively, communist parties.

In 1967, both were recruited to Pyongyang by the North Korean Foreign Ministry to translate the writings of Kim Il-sung into Spanish and French. Lameda was a poet and author whose writings were well known throughout Latin America.

Onsong Kyo-hwa-so (Camp 12)

The Onsong concentration camp was an internment camp in Changpyong, Onsong County, North Hamgyong, North Korea. It housed approximately 15,000 political prisoners. The camp was officially known as Concentration Camp (Kwan-li-so) No. 12. Although information about the camp is scarce, two defectors have alleged the forcible suppression of a large riot in May 1987 at the camp.

Kangdong Kyo-hwa-so (Camp 4)
Satellite view of Camp 12 (click to expand)

According to the testimony of Ahn Myong-chol, a guard at a similar camp, and Mun Hyon-il, a nearby resident, the riot started when one political prisoner at the camp killed a guard in protest of the guard's treatment of another prisoner; he was then joined by 200 others at the scene who overcame another guard. At the height of the riot, some 5,000 prisoners were openly in revolt.

Reinforced from a second camp, guards proceeded to open fire on the rioters with machine guns, the defectors have stated. Reports on the number of dead vary; the defectors claim all rioters were executed, while a third defector previously involved with the North Korean security services describes being told of the execution of only a third. The camp was closed in 1989, a decision thought to be because of its proximity to the border with China. The prisoners were then transferred to Hoeryong concentration camp.

Tongrim Kyo-hwa-so (Camp 2)

Kyo-hwa-so No. 2 Tongrim is a "reeducation camp" in Tongrim County, North Pyongan. Its number of prisoners and its state of operation are unknown.

Kangdong Kyo-hwa-so (Camp 4)
Satellite view of Camp 2 (click to expand)

This location has not been confirmed by HRNK prisoner testimony. It has been listed in NKDB reports in 2011 and 2016, as well as KINU reports in 2014 and 2016.

Detention

Otto Warmbier

Otto Frederick Warmbier was an American college student who was imprisoned in North Korea in 2016 on a charge of subversion. In June 2017, he was released by North Korea in a vegetative state and died soon afterward. Warmbier entered North Korea as part of a guided tour group on December 29, 2015. On January 2, 2016, he was arrested at Pyongyang International Airport while awaiting departure from the country. He was convicted of attempting to steal a propaganda poster from his hotel, for which he was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment with hard labour.

Shortly after his sentencing in March 2016, Warmbier suffered a severe neurological injury from an unconfirmed cause and fell into a coma, which lasted over a year. North Korean authorities did not disclose his medical condition until June 2017, when they announced he had fallen into a coma as a result of botulism and a sleeping pill. He was freed later that month, still in a comatose state after 17 months in captivity. He was repatriated to the United States and arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 13, 2017. Warmbier never regained consciousness and died on June 19, 2017, six days after his return to the United States, when his parents requested his feeding tube be removed.

Otto Warmbier arriving into the United States in a Coma, few days later he died.
Otto Warmbier arriving into the United States in a Coma, he died less than a week later.

A coroner's report stated that he died from an unknown injury causing lack of oxygen to the brain. In June 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump condemned Kim Jong-un's “brutal” regime and described Kim as a “madman” after the death of American student Otto Warmbier who had been imprisoned during a visit to North Korea. In 2018, a U.S. federal court found the North Korean government liable for Warmbier's torture and death, in a default judgment in favor of Warmbier's parents after North Korea did not contest the case.

Kim Sang-duk

Kim Sang-duk, also known as Tony Kim, is a Korean-American professor who was detained in North Korea for 382 days. On May 9, 2018, it was reported that Kim was released from custody. Before being detained, Kim taught accounting at the Business Administration School of Yanbian University of Science and Technology (YUST) in the northeastern Chinese city of Yanji, near the China–North Korea border. According to Voice of America Korea reports, he was a regional director in charge of transporting foreign aid materials to several areas affected by the 2016 floods in North Korea, and his humanitarian work has gone on for more than 10 years.

On April 22, 2017, Kim and his wife were detained, and Kim was subsequently arrested at Sunan International Airport in Pyongyang as he was waiting to board a flight. In May 2017, Kim was allegedly accused of "committing criminal acts of hostility aimed to overturn [North Korea]." Kim was one of three Americans who were released from detention in North Korea in May 2018 in advance of a U.S.-North Korea summit. The others are Kim Dong-chul and Kim Hak-Song. At the time of his arrest, Kim had completed a one-month assignment as a guest lecturer in international finance and management at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a YUST sister institution, according to the chancellor of PUST, Park Chan-mo.

"We would like to express our deep appreciation to the United States government, President Trump, Secretary Pompeo, and the people of the United States for bringing us home...We thank God, and all our families and friends who prayed for us and for our return. God Bless America, the greatest nation in the world".

Kim Dong Chul, Kim Sang-duk and Kim Hak Song, Jointed statement via the State Department 10/5/2018.

North Korean authorities did not immediately announce the reason for Kim's arrest. He had not been returned to the United States when the Olympic Games occurred in Pyeongchang South Korea during 2018, although a spokesperson for the United States State Department informed the news media: "We are working to see U.S. citizens who are detained in North Korea come home as soon as possible.". On May 9, 2018, several news outlets reported that Kim and fellow American detainees Kim Dong Chul and Kim Hak Song had been granted amnesty following a meeting between Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Pyongyang to discuss details of the planned summit between Kim and President Donald Trump.

Kim Dong Chul

Kim Dong Chul (born 1953) is a Korean-American businessman who was imprisoned by the government of North Korea (DPRK) in October 2015 and sentenced to 10 years of hard labor for alleged espionage. Kim Dong Chul is a naturalised U.S. citizen of Korean origin. Once a resident of Fairfax, Virginia, Kim had been living in China with his wife, and owns a business in a special economic zone of the DPRK. It has been claimed that Kim was a Christian, and involved in missionary work.

Kim Dong-chul, who claims to be a naturalised United States citizen and has been held in North Korea since October 2015, was presented to officials and reporters at a news conference in Pyongyang.

Kim was arrested in October 2015. His status was not publicly known until January 2016, when DPRK introduced him to a CNN crew visiting Pyongyang. CNN was allowed to interview Kim, but only through an interpreter. In March 2016, he appeared at a government-arranged news conference in Pyongyang and "apologised for trying to steal military secrets in collusion with South Koreans"; the South Korean authorities have denied any involvement. Kim's arrest and captivity, according to Russell Goldman of The New York Times, followed a pattern also seen with other detentions of U.S. nationals by North Korea: "A forced confession, a show trial, a sentence to years of hard labor with little chance of appeal.".

In an interview with NK News published on July 29, 2019, Kim admitted that he was spying for the American CIA and South Korean NIS since 2009.

Merrill Newman

In October 2013, Newman left his home in Palo Alto, California, for North Korea as part of a nine-day trip organised by Juche Travel Services, a travel agency that specialises in trips to North Korea. According to family members, Newman had generally been enjoying his trip and had communicated with them via telephone and postcards. On October 26, after boarding an Air Koryo airliner in Pyongyang on which he was scheduled to depart the country, Newman was removed by a single, uniformed official. Newman's traveling companion reported the arrest to U.S. officials via telephone upon the aircraft's arrival in Beijing later that day.

On November 29, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a video showing Newman signing a letter of apology and confession for war crimes committed during the Korean War. According to the accompanying report, the video had been recorded the preceding November 9. It went on to state that Newman had "masterminded espionage and subversive activities against North Korea and in this course he was involved in killings of service personnel of the Korean People's Army and innocent civilians" and that, during his visit, Newman had been found with an e-book containing subversive material.

The KCNA story also reported that Newman said he had served during the Korean War as a military adviser to the "Kuwol unit of the U.N. Korea 6th Partisan Regiment" and had asked his government tour guides to help him contact surviving members of the Kuwol Partisan Comrades-in-Arms Association. (United Nations Partisan Infantry Korea units were clandestine, special forces groups that operated during the Korean War and whose activities were not publicly acknowledged until 1990.). Kim Heyon, a former member of Newman's Korean War military unit, said that the irregular warfare engaged in by the partisan units had left Newman a permanently marked man in North Korea: "They detained him because he served in the Kuwol regiment. He is just a very bad guy for them."

On December 7, Newman was released. After flying from Pyongyang to Beijing, Newman met with U.S. Embassy officials, who bought him a ticket to San Francisco International Airport; a medical officer provided him with medications, and cleared him to fly. Newman boarded the flight the same day, declining an offer from Vice President Joe Biden, who was touring East Asia at the same time, to take a later flight out of Seoul on Air Force Two. After returning to the United States, Newman declined interview requests from media but casually remarked he had been well taken care of and held in comfortable conditions during his detention. Newman did not immediately retract his written confession, however, and "smirked" at a reporter who asked him about it.

In a subsequent written statement released by Newman's family, Newman declared his confession had been coerced, writing that "the words were not mine and were not delivered voluntarily.". In the same statement, however, Newman confirmed the veracity of the earlier KCNA report that he had requested his North Korean tour guides put him in contact with former anti-communist insurgents, but claimed it was for reasons of "curiosity" and his intention in making contact with guerrilla fighters had been "misinterpreted ... as something more sinister.". In 2014, journalist Mike Chinoy published an e-book about Newman's detention, The Last P.O.W.

Kidnap

Regarding the alleged abduction of Japanese nationals, on September 17, 2002, the North Korean Government officially admitted to the kidnapping of 13 Japanese citizens at a meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Yoichi Shimada, a Fukui University professor in Japan, states that North Korea appeared to abduct foreign citizens to:

  1. Eliminate witnesses who happened to run into North Korean agents in action.
  2. Steal victims' identities and infiltrate agents back into the countries concerned.
  3. Force abductees to teach their local language and customs to North Korean agents.
  4. Brainwash them into secret agents; the fishermen hardly had access to valuable intelligence, but they still could be trained as spies and sent back to the South.
  5. Use abductees' expertise or special skills.
  6. Use abductees as spouses for unusual residents in North Korea, especially lone foreigners such as defectors or other abductees.

These six patterns are not mutually exclusive. Especially numbers 2, 3, and 4 derive from Kim Jong Il's secret order of 1976 to use foreign nationals more systematically and thereby improve the quality of North Korean spy activities, contributing to his "localisation of spy education.". Further, better-educated people could be employed by the institutions responsible for waging propaganda campaigns against the South in, say, their broadcast facilities.

North Korean abductions have not been limited to northeast Asia and many documented abductees have been kidnapped while abroad, making the issue of serious concern to the international community.

Ali Lamada and Jacques Sedillot

Ali Lamada and Jacques Sedillot were recruited in 1967 by the DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs and placed in the Department of Publications to translate the writings of Kim Il-sung into Spanish and French respectively. Lamada was an active member of the Venezuelan Communist Party, and his poetry and books were well known in the Spanish-speaking world. Both Lamada and Sedillot were arrested in September 1967. Sedillot was accused of being a French imperialist spy. No charges were initially brought against Lamada, who was simply arrested and coerced to confess to spying by means of solitary confinement in a 2-meter by 1-meter cell (7 feet by 3 feet by 10 feet) in the Ministry of Interior for a year on below subsistence level food rations. During this time, he lost 22 kilograms (more than 50 pounds) and his body became covered with sores.

Lameda suffered from paralysis in his left leg due to the long hours of sitting in a fixed position, while a tumor developed on his back. But the harsh conditions in North Korean prison took a greater toll on the elderly ex-colonel Sedillot. He passed away in Pyongyang on Jan. 6, 1976, according to Lameda.

After a year, Lamada was returned to his residence in Pyongyang and placed under house arrest but was picked up two months later and sentenced to twenty years of forced labour for being a spy. He was driven some three hours from Pyongyang and thrown into a punishment cell in a prison camp, where, handcuffed for three weeks, he slept on the floor without a blanket or mattress in freezing temperatures. Transferred to the main prison-camp building, he was locked in unheated rooms and his feet suffered frostbite. His toenails dropped off, and his feet became covered with sores. From guards, he learned that the name of the prison camp was Sariwon, where some 6,000 to 8,000 prisoners worked twelve hours per day assembling jeep parts. A doctor told Lamada that there was a special section of the prison camp where 1,200 sick persons were held.

They killed everything except my memory.

Lameda upon leaving the DPRK 11/1974

While imprisoned at Sariwon prison labour camp [Camp 25], Lamada learned from guards and “order-lies,” who were privileged prisoners, some of whom had been held previously in other prison labour facilities, of approximately twenty other prison labour camps holding, Lamada calcu-lated, at that time roughly 150,000 prisoners altogether.The government of Venezuela and the President of Romania intervened on behalf of Lamada, and both he and Sedillot were released in May 1974. Sedillot died in Pyongyang of prison-related illnesses before he could return to France. Lamada recuperated in Eastern Europe before returning to Venezuela, where he published his account of his experience in the North Korean prisons and the Sariwon prison labour camp.

Shin Sang-ok

Shin Sang-ok (October 11, 1926 – April 11, 2006) was a South Korean film producer and director with more than 100 producer and 70 director credits to his name. His best-known films were made in the 1950s and 60s, when he was known as The Prince of South Korean Cinema. He received the Gold Crown Cultural Medal, the country's top honour for an artist. He is also known for having been kidnapped by the late North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, for producing critically acclaimed films. In 1978, Shin's former wife, Choi Eun-hee, an actress who starred in many of his films, was kidnapped in Hong Kong and taken to North Korea. Shin came suspected of causing her disappearance and when he travelled to Hong Kong to investigate, he was kidnapped as well.

Shin Sang-ok and wife with Kim Jong-il
Shin Sang-ok and wife with Kim Jong-il.

The kidnappings were on orders of future leader Kim Jong-il, who wanted to establish a film industry for his country to sway international opinion regarding the views of the Workers' Party of Korea. Shin was put in comfortable accommodation, but after two escape attempts was placed in a prison for over two years. Once his re-education in North Korean ideology was thought complete, he was taken to Pyongyang in 1983 to meet Kim Jong-il and learn why he had been abducted to North Korea. His ex-wife was brought to the same dinner party, where she first learned that Shin was also in North Korea. They remarried shortly afterwards, as suggested by Kim Jong-il.

From 1983 on, Shin directed seven films, with Kim Jong-il acting as an executive producer. The last and best-known of these films is Pulgasari, a giant-monster film similar to the Japanese Godzilla. In 1986, eight years after his kidnapping, Shin and his wife escaped while in Vienna for a film festival. They managed to obtain political asylum from the US embassy in Vienna, and Kim Jong-il became convinced that the couple had been kidnapped by the Americans. Shin and his wife lived covertly for two years in Reston, Virginia, under American protection and authorities debriefed the couple about Kim Jong-il and their experience in North Korea.

David Louis Sneddon

David Louis Sneddon is an American university student who disappeared in Yunnan Province, China after traveling alone through Tiger Leaping Gorge. Over 12 years later, on August 31, 2016, the Abductee's Family Union of South Korea claimed that it had gathered intelligence demonstrating Sneddon had been abducted by North Korean agents and taken to North Korea where he became the personal English language tutor to Kim Jong-un. The official position of the Chinese Government is that Sneddon died after falling into the Jinsha River, which passes through Tiger Leaping Gorge, although no body has ever been recovered.

The United States eventually adopted the Chinese Government's position. However, after discovery of compelling evidence that Sneddon was abducted by the North Korean regime, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously voted on September 28, 2016, to direct the U.S. State Department and all other intelligence agencies to reopen the investigations into Sneddon's whereabouts. The U.S. Senate passed a similar resolution by unanimous vote more than two years later on November 29, 2018. North Korea denies its involvement in Sneddon's disappearance. Local news sites say that Sneddon is married to Kim Eun Hye and goes by the name of Yoon Bong Soo.

Megumi Yokota

Megumi Yokota is a Japanese citizen who was abducted by a North Korean agent in 1977 when she was a thirteen-year-old junior high school student. She was one of at least seventeen Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The North Korean government has admitted to kidnapping Yokota, but has said that she died in captivity. Yokota's parents and others in Japan have publicly expressed the belief that she is still alive in North Korea and have waged a public campaign seeking her return to Japan.

Megumi Yokota
Megumi Yokota

Megumi Yokota was abducted on 15 November 1977 at the age of thirteen while walking home from school in her seaside village in Niigata Prefecture. It's believed that she was abducted because she happened to witness activities of North Korean agents in Japan and so the agents wanted to silence her. North Korean agents reportedly dragged her into a boat and took her straight to North Korea to a facility, where she was taught the Korean language. She was eventually assigned to a university where North Korean spies were taught foreign languages, customs and practices. Here she taught Japanese to spies who were being trained to infiltrate Japan.

We know it kidnapped a sweet 13-year-old Japanese girl from a beach in her own country to enslave her as a language tutor for North Korea's spies.

Donald Trump, President of the United States, Speech to the United Nations General Assembly September 19, 2017.

Also at the earlier facility were two South Korean high school students, aged 18 and 16, who had been abducted from South Korea in August 1977 and in August the next year, three more 16-year-old South Korean students were abducted and taken to the same facility. These included Kim Young-nam [ja], who would reportedly later marry Yokota. After many years of speculation and no new leads, in January 1997, information about Megumi's abduction was disclosed to Yokota's parents by Tatsukichi Hyomoto, a secretary to Diet member Atsushi Hashimoto, by a phone call. In 2002, North Korea admitted that she and others had been abducted, but claimed that she had committed suicide on March 13, 1994, and returned what it said were her cremated remains.

Yokota was alleged to have died at the age of 29. However, the death certificate provided in support of this assertion appears to have been falsified, and DNA tests on the remains said to be hers were not a positive match.

It is widely believed, especially in Japan, that Yokota is still alive. In November 2011 a South Korean magazine, Weekly Chosun, stated that a 2005 directory of Pyongyang residents listed a woman, named Kim Eun-gong, with the same birth date as Yokota. The directory gave Kim's spouse's name as "Kim Yong Nam". Japanese government sources verified on 18 November 2011 that they had reviewed the directory but had yet to draw a conclusion on the identity of the woman listed. Sources later indicated that Kim Eun-gong was actually Yokota's 24-year-old daughter. In 2012, it was reported that North Korean authorities were keeping Kim under strict surveillance.

In August 2012, Choi Seong-ryong stated that sources in North Korea had told him that Kim Eun-gong had been placed under the supervision of Kim Jong-un's sister, Kim Yo-jong, and that the North Korean government may be planning on using Yokota's daughter as a "card" in future negotiations with Japan. Reportedly, in 2010 the North Korean government offered to allow Yokota's parents to visit Kim Eun-gyong in a country "other than Japan" but the Japanese government and Yokota's parents were wary about the offer, suspecting it as a ploy by the North Korean government to seek an advantage in ongoing diplomatic negotiations.

Hijacking

Korean Air Lines YS-11

The Korean Air Lines YS-11 hijacking occurred on 11 December 1969. The aircraft, a Korean Air Lines NAMC YS-11 flying a domestic route from Gangneung Airbase in Gangneung, Gangwon, South Korea to Gimpo International Airport in Seoul, was hijacked at 12:25 PM by North Korean agent Cho Ch'ang-hŭi. It was carrying four crewmembers and 46 passengers (excluding Cho); 39 of the passengers were returned two months later, but the crew and seven passengers remained in North Korea. The incident is seen in the South as an example of the North Korean abductions of South Koreans.

According to passenger testimony, one of the passengers rose from his seat 10 minutes after takeoff and entered the cockpit, following which the aircraft changed direction and was joined by three Korean People's Air Force fighter jets. The aircraft landed at Sǒndǒk Airfield near Wonsan at 1:18 pm. North Korean soldiers boarded the aircraft afterwards, blindfolded the passengers, and instructed them to disembark. The aircraft was damaged beyond repair on landing. North Korea claimed that the pilots had flown the aircraft there to protest the policies of then-President of South Korea Park Chung Hee.

Hwang In-cheol
Hwang In-cheol was two when his father was kidnapped with 49 other South Koreans on board a Korean Air Lines flight. He now wages a tireless campaign to bring his father home, but time and government support are against him.

The passengers were subjected to attempts at indoctrination for up to four hours a day. The South Korean police initially suspected that the co-pilot conspired with two North Korean agents in the hijacking. The night after the hijacking, 100,000 South Koreans held a mass rally in freezing weather to protest about the hijacking, and burned an effigy of Kim Il Sung. On 25 December, North Korea proposed to hold talks on the matter. Talks were finally held in late January 1970. Sixty-six days after the incident, North Korea released 39 of the passengers on 14 February through the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom, but kept the aircraft, crew, and remaining passengers.

The statements provided by the released passengers refuted North Korea's claims that the hijacking was led by the pilots; instead, they pinned the blame on one of the passengers. One man claimed to have looked out the window of the aircraft despite instructions from the North Korean guards, and saw the hijacker being driven away in a black sedan. Another passenger was reported to have become mentally deranged as a result of his captivity, and lost the ability to speak.

Kal
The front page of the JoongAng Ilbo on Dec. 12, 1969, the day after a South Korean plane was hijacked and forced to land in Wonsan, east of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

The fate of most of the unreturned passengers has not been confirmed. They were educated, upper-class people; Song Yeong-in formerly of the National Intelligence Service commented at the families' committee inaugural meeting in 2008 that they were probably retained by North Korea specifically for their propaganda value. Oh Kil-nam, who defected to the North for a time in 1986, said that he met the two flight attendants as well as the Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation employees Hwang and Gim employed making propaganda broadcasts to the South and that later he heard from his daughter that the captain and first officer were working for the Korean People's Air Force.

Korean Air Flight 858

Korean Air Flight 858 was a scheduled international passenger flight between Baghdad, Iraq, and Seoul, South Korea. On 29 November 1987, the aircraft flying that route exploded in mid-air upon the detonation of a bomb planted inside an overhead storage bin in the airplane's passenger cabin by two North Korean agents. The agents, acting upon orders from the North Korean government, planted the device before disembarking from the aircraft during the first stop-over, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. While the aircraft was flying over the Andaman Sea to its second stop-over, in Bangkok, Thailand, the bomb detonated and destroyed the Korean Air Boeing 707-3B5C.

Everyone aboard the airliner was killed, a total of 104 passengers and 11 crew members (almost all were South Koreans). The attack occurred 34 years after the Korean Armistice Agreement that ended the hostilities of the Korean War on 27 July 1953. The two bombers were traced to Bahrain, where they both took ampules of cyanide hidden in cigarettes when they realised they were about to be taken into custody. The man died, but the woman, Kim Hyon-hui, survived and later confessed to the bombing. She was sentenced to death after being put on trial for the attack, but was later pardoned by the President of South Korea, Roh Tae-woo because it was deemed that she had been brainwashed in North Korea.

Front page of the Dec. 1, 1987 issue of The Korea Herald.

Kim's testimony implicated Kim Jong Il, who at that time was the future leader of North Korea, as the person ultimately responsible for the incident. The United States Department of State specifically refers to the bombing of KAL 858 as a "terrorist act" and, except between 2008 and 2017, has included North Korea on its State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Charles E. Redman, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, said in January 1988 that the incident was an "act of mass murder," adding that the administration had "concluded that the evidence of North Korean culpability is compelling. We call on all nations to condemn North Korea for this terrorist act."

Kim Jong Il became the leader of North Korea in 1994, succeeding his father. In 2001, right-wing activists and relatives of the victims killed in the attack demanded that Kim Jong Il be arrested for terrorism offences when he visited Seoul later in the year. Two petitions were filed against him, with the activists and relatives stating that there was strong evidence—namely Kim's testimony—to suggest he was ultimately responsible for the bombing. They also called for him to make a public apology for the incident and formally compensate the victims' families.

Passport photos of Kim Seung-il, who went by the name Hachiya Shinichi...
...and Kim Hyon-hui, who used the name Hachiya Mayumi

“She [Kim Hyon-hui] said she was trained as a secret agent for seven years and eight months, including a year in a clandestine camp deep in the mountains where she was taught martial arts, shooting, radio communications and how to survive in the wilderness.”.

Kim Hyon-hui later released a book, The Tears of My Soul, in which she recalled being trained in an espionage school run by the North Korean army, and being told personally by Kim Jong Il to carry out the attack. She was branded a traitor by North Korea and became a critic of North Korea after seeing South Korea. Kim now resides in exile, and under constant tight security, fearing that the North Korean government wants to kill her. It is also believed that Kim Jong Il masterminded the Rangoon bombing of 1983, in which North Korea attempted to assassinate South Korean president, Chun Doo-hwan.

Defection

Since 1953, 100,000–300,000 North Koreans have defected, most of whom have fled to Russia or China. 1,418 were registered as arriving in South Korea in 2016. In 2017, there were 31,093 defectors registered with the Unification Ministry in South Korea, 71% of whom were women. In 2018, the numbers had been dramatically dropping since Kim Jong-un took power in 2011, trending towards less than a thousand per year, down from the peak of 2,914 in 2009.

Expansion Camp 25
Typical routes to South Korea by North Korean defectors are through China and South-East Asia.

According to the State Department estimates, 30,000 to 50,000 out of a larger number of hiding North Koreans have the legal status of refugees. China does not grant asylum or refugee status to North Koreans and, with few exceptions, considers them undocumented migrants and deports them to back to North Korea. A 2009 world refugee study found that around 11,000 North Korean refugees remained in hiding in China close to the North Korean border.

The People’s Republic of China returns all refugees from North Korea, treated as undocumented migrants, usually imprisoning them in a short-term facility. Women who are suspected of being impregnated by Chinese men are subjected to forced abortions; babies born alive are killed. Abortions up to full term are induced by injection; live premature babies or full-term newborns are sometimes killed, but more commonly simply discarded into a bucket or box and then buried. They may live several days in the disposal container. Human-rights organisations have compiled a list of hundreds of North Korean defectors repatriated by China. The list includes humanitarian workers, who were assassinated or abducted by North Korean agents for helping refugees.

More women leave the North because they are more likely to suffer financial hardships. This is due to the prevalence of women in service sector jobs whereas men are employed in the military. According to South Korean government data, 45% of defectors cited economic reasons for defecting. According to NK News, men had a higher tendency to leave the country due to political, ideological or surveillance pressure. In the first half of 2018, women made up 88% of defectors to the South. In some cases, defectors voluntarily return to North Korea. Double defectors either take a route through third countries such as China, or may defect directly from South Korea. From 2012 to 2021 the Unification Ministry had recorded 30 defector returns, but there were likely more unrecorded returns.

A former South Korean MP estimated that in 2012 about 100 defectors returned to North Korea via China. In one case, a double defector re-entered North Korea four times. North Korea under Kim Jong Un has allegedly started a campaign to attract defectors to return with promises of money, housing, employment, and no punishments. A foreign diplomat in Pyongyang said in 2013 that not all returning defectors are trucked to prison; they can instead be put on TV for propaganda purposes. According to unconfirmed reports, government operatives have contacted defectors living in South Korea and offered them guarantees that their families are safe, 50 million South Korean Won ($44,000), and a public appearance on TV.

It was reported in 2013 that North Korea had aired at least 13 such appearances on TV where returning defectors complain about poor living conditions in the South and pledge allegiance to Kim Jong Un. In June 2017, Chun Hye-sung, a defector who had been a guest on several South Korean TV shows using the name Lim Ji-hyun, returned to the North. On North Korean TV, she said that she had been ill-treated and pressured into fabricating stories detrimental to North Korea. In November 2016, North Korean website Uriminzokkiri aired an interview with three double defectors who complained that they had been treated as second-class citizens. In 2021, a survey by the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights and NK Social Research found that 18% of 407 defectors polled were willing to return to North Korea.

North Korean defectors experience serious difficulties connected to psychological and cultural adjustment once they have been resettled. This occurs mainly because of the conditions and environment that North Koreans lived in while in their own country, as well as inability to fully comprehend new culture, rules, and ways of living in South Korea. Difficulties in adjustment often come in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is essentially a mental disorder that develops after a person has experienced a major traumatic event. In the case of North Koreans, such traumatic events and experiences include brutality of the regime, starvation, ideological pressure, propaganda, political punishments, and so on.

According to a recent survey, about 56% of the North Korean defectors are influenced by one or more types of psychological disorders. 93% of surveyed North Korean defectors identify food and water shortages and no access to medical care and, thus, constant illness as the most common types of their traumatic experiences preceding PTSD. Such traumatic experiences greatly influence the ways North Korean defectors adjust in new places. Traumatic events are not the only reason why North Koreans experience difficulty adjusting to the new way of living. Woo Teak-jeon conducted interviews with 32 North Korean defectors living in South Korea and found that other adjustment difficulties that are not related to PTSD occur due to such factors as the defector's suspiciousness, their way of thinking, prejudice of the new society, and unfamiliar sets of values.

In many instances, North Korean defectors seem to be unable to easily adjust to the new way of living even when it comes to nutrition. According to research conducted by The Korean Nutrition Society, North Koreans used to consuming only small portions of food in North Korea daily, continue to exercise the same type of habits even when given an abundance of food and provision. Psychological and cultural adjustment of North Koreans to the new norms and rules is a sensitive issue, but it has some ways of resolution. According to Yoon, collective effort of the defectors themselves, the government, NGOs, and humanitarian and religious organisations can help make the adjustment process smoother and less painful.

There are around 1,400 North Korean refugees in Europe, identifing North Korean communities in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. As of 2015, the largest North Korean community in Europe resides in New Malden, South West London. Approximately 600 North Koreans are believed to reside in the area, which is already notable for its significant South Korean community.

Source: European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea 2014.

Defectors from North Korea are a key source of first-hand information for intelligence officers, scholars, activists, and journalists. While their testimony is considered valuable, there is growing skepticism about the veracity of their accounts. Often defectors are cited anonymously to protect their identities, which makes it difficult to verify their information. Moreover, defectors often have limited experience and are not experts on North Korea. For their part, when surveyed in 2017 by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, many defectors complained that journalists had violated their right to privacy.

Felix Abt, a Swiss businessman who lived in the DPRK, argues that defectors are inherently biased. He says that 70 percent of defectors in South Korea are unemployed, and selling sensationalist stories is a way for them to make a living. He also states that the overwhelming majority of defectors come from North Hamgyong Province, one of North Korea's poorest provinces, and often have a grudge against Pyongyang and provinces nearby. he states that defectors in South Korea's resettlement process tailor their accounts over time to become less mundane and more propagandistic. He criticises journalists and academics for not being skeptical about even the most outlandish claims made by defectors.

Human Trafficking

A group called “A Woman's Voice International” alleged that the state forcibly drafts girls as young as 14 years old to work in the so-called kippŭmjo, which includes prostitution teams. The source used is unclear as to whether only adult kippŭmjo are assigned to prostitution or whether there is prostitution of children — other kippŭmjo activities include massaging and cabaret dancing. Claims were made that they are ordered “to marry guards of Kim Jong-il or national heroes” when they are 25 years old.

Before 2009, over 70% of female North Korean defectors were victims of human trafficking. Due to their vulnerability as illegal migrants, they were sold for cheap prices, around 3,000 to 10,000 yuan. Violent abuse started in apartments near the border with China, from which the women are then moved to cities further away to work as sex slaves. Chinese authorities arrest and repatriate these North Korean victims. North Korean authorities keep repatriates in penal-labour colonies (and/or execute them), execute the Chinese-fathered babies “to protect North Korean pure blood,” and force abortions on pregnant repatriates who are not executed.

Human Experimentation

Im Cheon-yong, a former officer in Pyongyang's armed forces, says mentally and physically disabled children are used as subjects in chemical weapons experiments in North Korea, a claim denied by the supporters of the communist nation. An officer in North Korea's special forces, Im had reservations about the nation in which he was living, and the regime that he served to the best of his abilities, but the “special training” he was required to undergo at a military academy in North Pyongan Province for the regime's elite troops helped to convince him that he needed to defect. “If you want to graduate from this academy, you need to learn how to confuse the enemy without revealing your forces, how to carry out assassinations, how to use chemical weapons and so on,”.

Im Cheon-yong

“And then we have what they call 'field learning'. For the biological and chemical warfare tests, we needed 'objects',” he added. “At first, they used the chemical agents on mice and showed us how they died. Then we watched the instructors carrying out the tests on humans to show us how a person dies. I saw it with my own eyes.”.

He said he got repulsed by what he had witnessed and managed to get over the border into China and arrived in South Korea in the mid-1990s. Now 50 years old, I'm is a prominent advocate of the regime change in Pyongyang and president of both the Soldiers' Alliance for Free North Korea and The Fellowship Foundation for Freedom. There are too many of these stories now for them not to be true,” Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor at Tokyo's Waseda University, and an authority on North Korean affairs “There were reports in the past, but it was difficult to confirm them, but the testimony that is emerging now is consistent and from numerous sources,” he added.

“Anyone who goes to Pyongyang will notice that there are no disabled people about at all,” he said. “We now know that they are being taken away as children and incarcerated in special camps. The regime does this because it insists to their people that North Korea is heaven on Earth, and there can be no disabled people in paradise”.

According to Im, experiments on humans date back to the late 1960s and one of the first facilities used for chemical and biological weapons tests on humans was constructed on the military controlled island of Mayang-do, just off the east coast port of Sinpo, which is also North Korea's most important submarine base. A second facility was subsequently constructed on an island off the west coast of the peninsula, while a third is in operation alongside a political prison camp outside the city of Hyanghari, the defector claims. "They use anthrax bacterium as well as 40 different types of chemical weapons that the regime has developed itself,” Im said.

Nuclear Program

The North Korean nuclear program can roughly be divided into four phases. Phase I (1956–80) dealt primarily with training and gaining basic knowledge. Phase II (1980–94) covers the growth and eventual suspension of North Korea's domestic plutonium production program. Phase III (1994–2002) covers the period of the "freeze" on North Korea's plutonium program (though North Korea pursued uranium enrichment in secret) and Phase IV (2002–present) covers the current period of renewed nuclear activities.

Nyongbyon

The Nyongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center is North Korea's major nuclear facility, operating its first nuclear reactors. It is located in Nyongbyon County in North Pyongan Province, about 100 km north of Pyongyang. The center produced the fissile material for North Korea's six nuclear weapon tests from 2006 to 2017, and since 2009 is developing indigenous light water reactor nuclear power station technology.

The reactor designs were based on declassified information about the British Magnox design at Calder Hall and elsewhere, and the spent fuel reprocessing plant on the multi-national European Company for the Chemical Processing of Irradiated Fuels (EUROCHEMIC) plant at Mol-Dessel in Belgium. Another 200 MWe Magnox full-scale power reactor was being constructed at Taechon, 20 km north-west of Nyongbyon, (39.928°N 125.569°E).

Hermit Kingdom

The term hermit kingdom is an epithet used to refer to any country, organisation or society that willfully walls itself off, either metaphorically or physically, from the rest of the world. North Korea is commonly regarded as a prime example of a hermit kingdom. Today, the term is often applied to North Korea in news and social media, and in 2009, it was used by Hillary Clinton, then the United States Secretary of State.

A man who smuggled copies of smash hit South Korean Netflix series “Squid Game” into North Korea has been sentenced to death, after authorities caught high school students watching the show, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA). U.S.-headquartered independent news agency RFA reported, quoting sources, that the series was smuggled in from China on USB flash drives and that the smuggler faces death by firing squad.

“A student who bought a drive received a life sentence, while six others who watched the show have been sentenced to five years hard labor, and teachers and school administrators have been fired and face banishment to work in remote mines”

RFA

In December 2020, North Korea passed the “Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture” act, which prohibits the entry and dissemination of cultural material like films, plays, music and books in the country. The act is mainly aimed at preventing the spread of media from South Korea and the U.S. and those found distributing or consuming these are liable to be punished. According to widespread reports, in April this year a man was publicly executed for selling drives and CDs containing South Korean material.

“Squid Game,” in particular, has been a source of anger in the dictatorship. North Korean propaganda site Arirang Meari excoriated the high-concept survival drama as depicting the “sad reality of a beastly South Korean society.” The RFA report suggests that there is great public anxiety over the fate of the high school students and that more people could be implicated in the investigation.

Religion

In ancient times, most Koreans believed in their indigenous religion socially guided by mu (shamans). Buddhism was introduced from the Chinese Former Qin state in 372 to the northern Korean state of Goguryeo, and developed into distinctive Korean forms. In present day North Korea there are no known official statistics of religions in North Korea. Officially, North Korea is an atheist state, although its constitution guarantees free exercise of religion, provided that religious practice does not introduce foreign forces, harm the state, or harm the existing social order.

Kim Il Sung stated that Koreans in the north focused on rebuilding the country rather than churches, and additionally that the younger generation simply did not believe paradise could be obtained through worship and simply chose not to embrace religion.

Religion was attacked in the ensuing years as an obstacle to the construction of communism, and many people abandoned their former religions in order to conform to the new reality. On the basis of accounts from the Korean War as well as information from defectors, an interpretation has held that the North Korea was the second country (after Albania) to have completely eradicated religion by the 1960s. Other interpretations have thought that they do represent genuine faith communities that survived the persecutions. An interpretation has considered that these religious communities may have been believers who genuinely adhered to Marxism–Leninism and the leadership of Kim Il-sung, thus ensuring their survival.

“Contrary to the common western view, it appears that North Korean leaders exhibited toleration to Christians who were supportive of Kim Il-sung and his version of socialism. Presbyterian minister Gang Ryang Uk served as vice president of the DPRK from 1972 until his death in 1982, and Kim Chang Jun, an ordained Methodist minister, became vice chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly. They were buried in the exalted Patriots' Cemetery, and many other church leaders received national honors and medals. It appears that the government allowed the house churches in recognition of the Christians' contribution to the building of the socialist nation.”.

Ryu Dae Young, Professor at Handong Global University, South Korea.

This interpretation has been supported by recent evidence gathered that has shown that the North Korean government may have tolerated the existence of up to 200 pro-communist Christian congregations during the 1960s, and by the fact that several high-ranking people in the government were Christians and they were buried with high honours (for instance Kang Yang Wook was a Presbyterian minister who served as vice president of North Korea from 1972 to 1982, and Kim Chang Jun was a Methodist minister who served as vice chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly).

Christian aid groups, including the American Friends Service Committee, the Mennonite Central Committee, the Eugene Bell Foundation, and World Vision, are able to operate in the country, but not allowed to proselytise.

Before 1948, Pyongyang was an important Christian center: The city was known as the "Jerusalem of the East". Many Korean Communists came from a Christian background; Kim Il-sung's mother, Kang Pan-sok, was a Presbyterian deaconess. North Korean Christians are officially represented by the Korean Christian Federation, a state-controlled body responsible for contacts with churches and governments abroad. In Pyongyang there are five church buildings: the Catholic Changchung Cathedral, three Protestant churches inaugurated in 1988 in the presence of South Korean church officials, and a Russian Orthodox church consecrated in 2006.

Sun Myung Moon (left) with North Korean leader Kim il-Sung in December, 1991. Moon, who was born in 1920 in the present-day North Korean province of North Pyongan. Moon considered himself the Second Coming of Christ, claiming to complete the mission Jesus Christ was unable to because of his crucifixion, that of beginning a new ideal family, and a larger human lineage, free from sin [racism?]. The Unification Church is well known for its mass weddings known as Blessing ceremonies. It has been criticised for its teachings and for its social and political influence, with critics calling it a dangerous cult, a political powerhouse, and a business empire. The Rev. Moon’s Church, the Unification Church, has made substantial investments in the DPRK, building the Pothonggang Hotel and Pyongyang Peace Embassy [39.020134°, 125.717641°] in Phyongchon-guyok, Pyongyang. The Unification Church also launched Pyeonghwa Motors in the DPRK. Pyeonghwa Motors was the first firm allowed to put up billboard advertisements in the DPRK. After the Korean War (1950–1953), he became an outspoken anti-communist. Moon viewed the Cold War between liberal democracy and communism as the final conflict between God and Satan, with divided Korea as its primary front line.

North Koreans, by Western definitions, would be considered non-religious but Buddhist and Confucian traditions still play a part in North Korean life. The Pew Research Center estimated that there were 3,000 Muslims in North Korea in 2010, an increase from the 1,000 Muslims in 1990. There is a mosque in the Iranian embassy in Pyongyang called Ar-Rahman Mosque, the only mosque in the country. The mosque was likely built for the embassy staff, but visits by other foreigners are deemed possible, too.

Propaganda

Propaganda in North Korea is controlled mainly by the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Workers' Party of Korea. is a department of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) tasked with coordinating the creation and dissemination of propaganda in North Korea. It is the highest propaganda organisation in the country. The history of the department can be traced back to the Soviet Civil Administration following the division of Korea in 1945. Agitation operations by the department reached their height in the years after the Korean War. Although nominally under the Central Committee of the WPK, the department reports directly to Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un.

Propaganda paintings show how North Korea views America and by association the West. They depict the alleged mass murder of Sinchon civilians between October and December 1950. The regime claims that around 35,000 people were brutally tortured and killed by US forces during that time.

Death to U.S. imperialists, our sworn enemy!
When provoking a war of aggression, we will hit back, beginning with the U.S.

The department is currently under the effective guidance of its deputy department director Kim Yo-jong, sister of Kim Jong Un, while its nominal head is Ri Il-hwan. The department has various bureaus and offices under its control. The department sets guidelines for all propaganda materials produced and all North Korean media is overseen by it. However, in order to maintain its clandestine nature, actions relating to repression of the media are nominally attributed to the Ministry of Culture. When newspapers are published in North Korea, they go through three rounds of censorship. The first is handled by the editors of the paper. The second and third levels are taken care of by the department. The department also translates foreign works, which are censored from the public, for the use of the country's political elite.

The country's supreme leaders have had hymns dedicated to them that served as their signature tune and were repetitively broadcast by the state media:

Every year, a state-owned publishing house releases several cartoons, many of which are smuggled across the Chinese border and, sometimes, end up in university libraries in the United States. The books are designed to instill the Juche philosophy of Kim Il Sung (the "father" of North Korea)—radical self-reliance of the state. The plots mostly feature scheming capitalists from the United States and Japan who create dilemmas for naïve North Korean characters.

Dark Tourism

In principle, any person is allowed to travel to North Korea; only South Koreans and journalists are routinely denied, although there have been some exceptions for journalists. For instance, Croatian journalists had special access in June 2012, although their phones were confiscated and returned as they departed and they had a special tour guide. Travel agents can help potential visitors through the bureaucratic process. A tourist visa typically comes in the form of a blue travel paper stating "tourist card" and bearing the country's official name (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) in English and Korean, which is stamped by North Korean customs instead of the passport.

For Westerners, there are a small number of private tour operators that help provide access to North Korea. These include Koryo Tours (known for its North Korean-related films such as Comrade Kim Goes Flying and strong history in the region); Uri Tours (known for its role in Eric Schmidt's and Dennis Rodman's trips to North Korea); Lupine Travel (a UK-based budget travel agency known for its DPRK Amateur Golf Open); Rocky Road Travel (a Berlin based company); Juche Travel Services (a UK-based company); and KTG (known for their small sized groups and affordable tours). FarRail Tours also takes tours to see operating steam railways and the Pyongyang Metro.

looking glass

State General Bureau of Tourist Guidance (formerly State General Bureau of Tourism) is a North Korean state agency that organises tourism in North Korea. Foreign tour operators have to work closely with the bureau; its staff accompanies all tours of foreigners. The bureau was founded on 15 May 1986. It was renamed State General Bureau of Tourist Guidance in January 1990. It is based in the Central District of Pyongyang. Its president is Ryo Sung-chol. State General Bureau of Tourist Guidance has been a member of the World Tourism Organisation since September 1987 and the Pacific Asia Travel Association since April 1995.

By and large, the North Korean tourism industry is overseen by Room 39, the organisation in charge of North Korea's slush funds. Room 39 guides the State General Bureau of Tourism, which in turn "manages the earnings and maintains surveillance over the tourists, ensuring they are contained within specifically designated areas.". Room 39 oversees many of the government's illegal activities (although the military also has its own illegal activity division) such as counterfeiting and drug production. In 2010, the department was reported to have had 17 overseas branches, 100 trading companies and banks under its control. By 2009, the office allegedly had upwards of $5 billion in assets, much of which was spread in banks throughout Macau, Hong Kong, and Europe.

Troy Collings

Troy Michael Collings was a New Zealand businessman and tour guide. In 2008, he co-founded Young Pioneer Tours, a company known for specialising in low-cost tours of North Korea and other remote places. Collings became interested in North Korea after watching the 2004 documentary A State of Mind about North Korean gymnasts training for the 2003 Pyongyang Arirang Mass Games. He later went on a research tour to the country. Collings was an advocate for North Korean tourism. He is quoted as saying that North Korea is open to everyone except South Koreans and journalists. He helped open the Tumen-Namyang border between China and North Korea to foreign tourists. He was the first westerner to travel across the Tumen-Namyang border, when he led a tour group across the border in 2013. In 2012, he launched the Pyongyang Deaf and Blind Centre charity.

Troy Collings
Troy Collings

In 2015, Collings confirmed the reopening of the North Korean border after an ebola scare. In the same year, he spoke about North Korean citizens having an ever-increasing choice of food at the Kwangbok Department Store in Pyongyang. In 2017, he was quoted as saying that hemp was as cheap as tobacco in North Korea. In 2017, Young Pioneer Tours were criticised after the death of Otto Warmbier, who was on a tour with the company. Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years on a charge of subversion and died in 2017. After Warmbier's death, Collings maintained that North Korea was a "safe place to visit", as Warmbier was the first person on a Young Pioneer Tour to be arrested. He maintained that North Korea was safe as long as local laws were adhered to, and also refuted claims that Young Pioneer tours targeted Americans, saying that none of their advertising had focused on Americans.

On 5 March 2020, it was announced that he had recently died of a heart attack at the age of 33.

Evan Hunziker

Evan Carl Hunziker was the first American civilian to be arrested by North Korea on espionage charges since the end of the Korean War. On August 24, 1996, Hunziker was taken into custody by North Korean police after swimming into the country across the Yalu River from the People's Republic of China. Hunziker spent three months in North Korean custody before being released and returned to the United States thanks to the negotiation efforts of then-New Mexico congressman Bill Richardson. However, less than a month after his return, Hunziker killed himself.

The North Korean government did not announce Hunziker's arrest until October 6, and analysts suspected they delayed the announcement until a more strategic time in an attempt to divert attention from two other international controversies: one regarding the unsolved murder of South Korean consul for the Russian Far East, Choe Deok-geun, in which North Korean involvement was suspected, and the other about the landing on South Korean soil of a North Korean submarine containing 26 commandos. On October 8, the North Korean government formally announced that they would charge Hunziker with espionage, a charge which could bring the death penalty.

Matthew Miller

Matthew Todd Miller is an American citizen who was detained in North Korea (DPRK). He had travelled to North Korea intending to get arrested. He was sentenced to six years of hard labor on September 14, 2014, for committing "acts hostile to the DPRK while entering under the guise of a tourist." He was released, along with Kenneth Bae, on November 8, 2014. According to North Korean state-run media, Miller entered North Korea alone on April 10, 2014, on a tourist visa arranged by US-based tour operator Uri Tours. Initial reports said that he tore up the visa upon arrival at the airport and declared his intent to seek political asylum. He was arrested for "unruly behaviour".

Miller was charged under Article 64 of the North Korean criminal code concerning acts of espionage, and was put on trial on September 14, 2014. He was swiftly convicted and sentenced to six years of hard labor (euphemistically termed "labor re-education") for committing "hostile acts". Miller had no lawyer during the 90-minute hearing, described as a "show trial" by The Washington Post, and authorities indicated that there was no possibility of appeal. Although earlier reports indicated that Miller sought political asylum in North Korea, the prosecution argued that this was a ruse intended to disguise Miller's real intention of committing espionage. According to the court, Miller admitted to having the "wild ambition" of experiencing conditions in prison to secretly investigate and expose the country's dim human rights situation.

Matthew Miller
Video still showing Matthew Miller in North Korea on 24 September. He told media he was being forced to dig in fields for eight hours a day.

After returning to the U.S., Miller told reporters he went to North Korea intending to get arrested, stating that "My main fear was that they would not arrest me when I arrived". Initially North Korean authorities had refused to arrest him and sought to return him on the next flight, but Miller refused. Miller had brought a notebook into North Korea incorrectly claiming he was a computer hacker involved with WikiLeaks and having attempted to access files at U.S. military bases in South Korea. He later assessed that this material was never taken seriously by the North Korean authorities, prompting them to ask him the real reasons behind his visit.

Conclusion

Multi-generation trauma mind-controlled slaves, debased and detached from the real world of family, friends, emotion, nurture, and love; stranded, knowing nothing besides being “threaded” through forced labour manifested by the cruellest form of Communist collectivisation. How much more evil does this brainwashing get? is this what is secretly being used, in a much more open environment, more subtle, less confined approach but equally terrorising (for some) within a subordinate western world? Is the forensic footprint of this most grotesque crime against humanity present in our world, slowly eroding, distorting cognition enough to void our conceptual reality.

“Although Leninist socialism tried to deposit this regime they still invited the personality cult tyrant of a zombified North Korea, an unholy ghost of Stalinist brutality, delivered unto mediumship table of deliberating consensus.”.

Think a slow burn, near-invisible projection, slipstreaming through compartmentalisations, defacing awareness, a co-opted consciousness steered and triggered by anxieties, laid dormant by depression and subjugated by fear invoking narratives, micro-traumas pre-programmed from horror movies that are being screened to us twenty-four seven. Everywhere we look we see an agenda, rising in plain sight as if we are seeing the face of a clock without ever being aware of the mechanism behind it. Humanity has never been so automated, machinated into compliance as it is today; but to what end, where is this march of the living dead going? Inescapable slavery, eternal servitude?

3/1/2025