The Hidden Gulag - US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea

The Hidden Gulag Second Editionexecutive SummaryThe second edition of Hidden Gulag utilizes the testimony of sixty former North Koreans who wereseverely and arbitrarily deprived of their liberty in a vast network of penal and forced labor institutionsin the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) for reasons not permittedby international law. This contradicts the formal December 2009 proclamation by North Koreato the United Nations Human Rights Council that the term ‘political prisoners’ is not in the DPRK’svocabulary, and that the so-called political prisoner camps do not exist.At the time of the research for the first edition of Hidden Gulag in 2003, there were some 3,000former North Koreans who recently had found asylum in the Republic of Korea (ROK or SouthKorea) among whom were several scores of former political prisoners in the DPRK. By the time ofthe research for the second edition in 2010 and 2011, there were some 23,000 former North Koreanswho recently arrived in South Korea. Included in this number are hundreds of persons formerlydetained in the variety of North Korea’s slave labor camps, penitentiaries, and detention facilities.Included in this number are several former prisoners who were arbitrarily imprisoned for twenty tothirty years before their escape or release from the labor camps, and their subsequent flight throughChina to South Korea. This newly available testimony dramatically increases our knowledge of theoperation of North Korea’s political prison and labor camp system.This second edition of Hidden Gulag also utilizes a recent international legal framework for theanalysis of North Korea’s human rights violations: the norms and standards established in the RomeStatute of the International Criminal Court for defining and determining crimes against humanity,which became operative in July 2002. This international legal framework enables a much moreaccurate and penetrating analysis of the various phenomena of repression associated with NorthKorea’s system of arbitrary detention, political imprisonment, and forced labor. This more recentframework for analysis facilitates a series of detailed recommendations that would, if implemented,effectively disable and dismantle the prison labor camp system. This legal framework also facilitatesa series of recommendations to other member states within the international community on how tobetter respond and take action against the massive and severe human rights violations in North Korea.In addition to the testimony and accounts from the former political prisoners in this report, thissecond edition of Hidden Gulag also includes satellite photographs of the prison camps. Thedramatically improved, higher resolution satellite imagery now available through Google Earthallows the former prisoners to identify their former barracks and houses, their former work sites,VII