North Koreans Reveal Brutal Truth Of What Life Is Really Like Inside The World’s Most Secretive Nation

Published on Monday, 17 February 2014

ONE was a sex slave forced into abuse and another saw starvation deaths on a daily basis.

Then there’s the woman who spent nine years in a brutal prison camp for the seemingly harmless crime of gossiping.

Even a prison official who was forced to witness the executions was left so traumatised he can still see blood spatters and bodies heaped on the ground.

This is the North Korea you probably never knew existed.

For the first time footage of these damning testimonies provides a shocking insight into how North Korea treats some of its citizens, including those sent to repressive prison camps 15 and 16, known as Yodok and Kwanliso.

The testimonies from a former prison guard, a prison detainee, an army officer and a trafficked sex worker reveal what life’s really like inside the world’s most secretive nation.

Their claims are so damning they were provided to the UN as part of its inquiry into North Korea’s human rights abuses.

The inquiry, headed by former supreme court judge Michael Kirby, will release its final report tomorrow.

Amnesty International, which provided information to the inquiry on a wide variety of human rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity, has released the footage of those who testified before the inquiry.

Among those are a former prison guard, who spoke to exclusively to Amnesty about how officials would rape women from the camp and then kill them, as well as detailing the methods used for executing prisoners.

The prison official, who’s name is not given, said detainees were forced to walk between 12 to 14 miles (19-20 kms) to get to the fields where they are expected to plough and work until midnight.

But it is the executions which stick in his mind, with whole generations of families “exterminated” using two main methods.

“One is getting the prisoner to dig their own grave,” he said.

“Afterwards, the prisoner is made to stand before the grave. The prisoner stands there, facing his grave, and is unable to see what’s behind him. The hammer is small. It’s a short metal hammer.”

But it gets worse.

“The second method is like this,” he reveals.

“The prisoner comes into the office and is told to take a seat. Behind the screen, there are two people on standby. Always. They are holding on to what looked to me like a rubber rope. It’s a metre long, just about. If you strike someone with it, it will wrap around their neck. Then you kill them by pulling the rope.”

Kim Young Soon knows all too well what life is like inside the notorious camps, having spent nine years in Yodok prison along with her parents and children who all died there, for gossiping about an affair her friend had with Kim Jong Il.

Kim said her family was simply guilty by association and was sent to the camp without ever knowing the charge.

“No words would help you to understand what this place is like,” she said.

“From sunrise to sunset, you work. There are no set working hours. You get up at 3:30am to report for work at 4:30am and then you work until dark.”

Her elderly parents, daughter and three sons all ended up there. They never got the chance to leave or learn about why they were there.

“When my parents starved to death, I didn’t have coffins for them,” she said.

“I wrapped their bodies with straw carried them on my back and went to bury them myself. And the children …. I lost all my family.”

Another former prison and trafficked sex worker Jihyum Park also revealed how women were used for sex with rape, abuse and forced terminations all occurring regularly.

Park Ji-hyun was sold to a Chinese farmer and was sent to a labour camp for trying to escape.

“They would force abortion after the pregnancy test. Pregnant women get sent to labour camps to carry loads up and down the hills which cause miscarriages.”

Park also detailed the starvation within the camps and how people were so hungry they would eat anything, including beans and maize kernels stuck in animal dung.

But it’s the testimony from former military captain Joo-Il Kim that provides the most shocking details, revealing how a shortage of food and starvation remains the biggest problem facing the army.

He goes on to tell in graphic detail how it feels to watch a starving person die, how they are so malnourished and swollen nothing can be done to save them and how the executions he witnessed haunt him the most.

“The first public execution I had to witness happened to be my classmate’s brother-in-law,” he said.

“The first bullet hits the head strap, and the brain and blood splatters. People scream in horror at this sight. The crowd roars. It is so gruesome, you instinctively close your eyes or turn your head away on subsequent gun shots. When all the gunshots have died down, you look and the body is heaped onto the ground.”

All four North Koreans, who have since escaped the country, said they hoped their stories would bring about change and that it was time the international community knew the reality of what took place.

The testimonies follow the release of satellite images showing the ongoing development of two of North Korea’s largest political prison camps — kwanliso 15 and 16 in December last year.

Amnesty International published the images and analysis was shared with the Commission of Inquiry, which will publish its final report in Geneva at midnight.