This noteworthy Wall Street Journal article appeared a few weeks ago.
SEOUL—North Korea's system of prison camps has turned more brutal in recent years but also more difficult to hide, according to new research based on defector testimonies and satellite imagery.
Two recent reports, by researchers in the U.S. and South Korea, portray an acute desperation and horror inside North Korea's notorious prison camps—a closed and secretive system inside one of the world's most closed and secretive states. More than 200,000 people are sentenced to live and work in grueling conditions there, many until they die, according to the accounts as well as private and governmental estimates. . . .
. . . a consistent portrait emerges of North Korea's six giant kwan-li-so, or "total control camps," where people are sent, often without trial, for offenses including defacing a picture of one of North Korea's leaders, attending a church service or leaving the country without permission. Nearly all are in remote, mountainous regions. Some cover more ground than major cities in the U.S. and Europe.
Hunger and fear are constant. Failure to obey rules and guards' orders can lead to torture and even death. Most prisoners perform difficult labor, sometimes in mines and factories, during the day and spend nights in barracks or smaller quarters without heating and plumbing. Sexual abuse of women is common.
A former female prisoner in one such facility, Camp 18, recalled coming upon a fellow prisoner who, apparently crazed from hunger, had beaten her daughter to death and was cooking the body in a pot. The prisoner, who is identified only by a pseudonym, says she last saw the woman being seized by camp guards. Following this 2008 incident, the prisoner said she escaped to South Korea.
Her account is in a report published this month by South Korea's National Human Rights Commission. The full report is built on testimony from 800 defectors, including dozens who arrived in the South in the past year. The report also includes accounts from smaller prisons and "re-education centers" that are as horrific as those from the larger camps. . . .