Yodok concentration camp

Location

Yodok camp is about 110 km (68 mi) northeast of Pyongyang. It is located in Yodok county, South Hamgyong province, stretching into the valley of the Ipsok River, surrounded by mountains: Paek-san 1,742 m (5,715 ft) to the north, Modo-san 1,833 m (6,014 ft) to the northwest, Tok-san 1,250 m (4,100 ft) to the west, and Byeongpung-san 1,152 m (3,780 ft) to the south. The entrance to the valley is the 1,250 m (4,100 ft) Chaebong Pass to the east. The streams from the valleys of these mountains form the Ipsok River, which flows downstream into the Yonghung River and eventually into the sea near Wonsan city.

Description

Yodok camp has 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; recent satellite images, however, indicate a significant increase in the camp's scale. Most prisoners are deported to Yodok without trial, or following grossly unfair trials, on the basis of confessions obtained through torture. People are often imprisoned together with family members and close relatives, including small children and the elderly, based on guilt by association (Sippenhaft).

The camp is around 378 km² (146 sq mi) in area. It is surrounded by a barbed-wire fence 3–4 m (9.8–13.1 ft) tall and walls with electric wire and watchtowers at regular intervals. The camp is patrolled by 1,000 guards with automatic rifles and guard dogs.

In 2004, Fuji TV aired what it said was footage showing scenes from the camp.

Living conditions

The prisoners live 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 sleep on a bed made of a wooden board covered with a blanket. Most huts are not heated, even in winter, where temperatures are below −20 °C (−4 °F), and most prisoners get frostbite and have swollen limbs during the winter. Camp inmates also suffer from pneumonia, tuberculosis, pellagra, and other diseases, with no available medical treatment.

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

The camp guards make prisoners report on each other and designate specific ones as foremen to control a group. If one person does not work hard enough, the whole group is punished. This creates animosity among the detainees, destroys any solidarity, and forces them to create a system of self-surveillance.

Slave labour

Men, women, and children perform hard labour seven days a week and are treated as slaves. Labour operations include a gypsum quarry and a gold mine, textile plants, distilleries, a coppersmith workshop, agriculture, and logging. Serious work accidents often occur.

Work shifts in summer start at 4 a.m. and end at 8 p.m. Work shifts in other seasons start at 5:30 a.m., but are often extended past 8 p.m. when work quotas are not met, even when dark. After dinner, prisoners are required to attend ideological education and struggle sessions from 9 to 11 p.m., where inmates who do not meet the targets are severely criticized and beaten. If prisoners cannot memorize the instructions given by Kim Il-sung, they are not allowed to sleep, or their food rations are reduced.

Most of the primary school children attend school in the morning. The main subject is the history of revolution of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. In the afternoon they carry out hard labour with very high work quotas in terms of amount and intensity. Children are beaten with a stick for failure to meet the day's quota. Primary school children have 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. Other child works involve collecting 20 kg (44 lb) of plants in the mountains or cultivating 130–200 m² (1,400–2,200 sq ft) of field. Sometimes children die in work accidents. Older children have to work all day, and from age 16 are assigned the same work quotas as adults.

Malnutrition

Prisoners are constantly kept on the verge of starvation. The daily rations for prisoners are 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 can be less. If prisoners do not finish their daily work quota or violate minor rules, the daily rations are reduced or temporarily discontinued, no matter if they are sick, crippled, or disabled. Prisoners eat whatever wild animals they can catch, including rats, snakes, frogs, salamanders, worms, and insects, though they are severely punished if seen doing so by the guards. To avoid being detected, they mostly eat the meat raw, often without removing the skin. Wild animals are the only source of meat or fat, as the food rations lack both meat and plant oil. Some prisoners sneak into the pigsties and steal pig slops or pick undigested corn kernels out of animal feces 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.

Torture

The following torture methods are described in testimonies of former prisoners:

Prisoners are completely at the guards’ mercy; guards can abuse them without restraint. Former prisoners witnessed a man being tied by the neck to a vehicle and dragged for long distances and a primary school child being beaten and kicked hard on his head. In both cases, the prisoners died soon after.

Executions

Prisoners who violate camp rules (e.g. steal food or attempt to escape) are usually executed in public (barring those already shot). Summary executions take place in front of assembled prisoners several times each year; and every former prisoner testifies to having witnessed them. Before the execution, the prisoners are tortured and denied food. Those forced to watch the execution often cannot endure the scene without protest and are killed as well.

A more common method of killing singled-out prisoners is to assign them an impossible workload. When the work is not finished, the prisoner's food rations are reduced as punishment. Eventually, the combination of heavy work and less food leads to death by starvation.

Prisoners released from Yodok are forced to abide by a written oath with a hand stamp. The pledge reads: "I will face execution if I reveal the secrets of Yodok."

Abuse and forced abortions

Women in the camp are completely unprotected against sexual assaults by the guards. Prisoners are often ordered to strip naked to be beaten and harassed, and a former prisoner said that it is routine for guards to sexually abuse female prisoners. The women sometimes die after being raped. Pregnant women are usually given forced abortions.

Demand for closure

Amnesty International summarize the human rights situation in Yodok camp: "Men, women and children in the camp face forced hard labour, inadequate food, beatings, totally inadequate medical care and unhygienic living conditions. Many fall ill while in prison, and a large number die in custody or soon after release." The organization demands the immediate closure of Yodok and all other political prison camps in North Korea. The demand is supported by the International Coalition to Stop Crimes against Humanity in North Korea, a coalition of over 40 human rights organizations.

As of 2014, the camp has allegedly been emptied and overhauled, to create a model prison, as part of a campaign to whitewash North Korea's human rights record.

Prisoners (Witnesses)

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