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In a testimony in Seoul on Wednesday, Shin Dong-hyuk said the political prisoners are suffering lifetime incarceration, starvation, torture, rape and executions, all outside the scope of global awareness.
Shin was the first escapee from the notorious "Total Control Zone" that houses "enemies of the people" deemed incorrigible. North Korea's political prison camps are divided into two zones.
The "Revolutionizing Zone" houses those of less threat to the totalitarian regime. After a period of forced labor and "re-education," they may eventually be allowed to rejoin society. Being sent to the Total Control Zone, however, is a life sentence. Nothing has been known previously in the outside world about this zone.
Shin had been an inmate all his life since he was born in 1982 at Camp No. 14 in Kaechon, north of Pyongyang, one of the Total Control Zones, until his dramatic escape in January 2005. He arrived in South Korea in August last year after fleeing to China.
Shin's father had been sent to Camp No. 14 in 1965 after his two brothers had defected to South Korea. As a reward for good work, the father was allowed to marry a female inmate who gave birth to Shin and his older brother.
At the age of 14, Shin and his father were forced to sit in the first row to watch the public execution of his mother and brother. His mother was killed by hanging and his brother was shot after a failed escape attempt. Shin and his father were also beaten severely and burned for the family's "anti-nation crime," referring to the escape attempt.
"I was unable to shed any tears watching the deaths of my mother and older brother," Shin said in the testimony. "Rather, I was furious with them because I was subject to torture due to their crimes," he said. Since he was born, he had been taught that his parents committed crimes and had to work hard to wash off their sins as children of criminals, according to Shin's testimony.
"We accepted hardships as a fact of life. We had no complaints about the hardships," he said. "The camp is totally isolated from the outside. I didn't know about (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Il and (his late father and national founder) Kim Il Sung."
During five years of elementary school in the camp, Shin was just taught to read, write, add and subtract, while being mobilized for work. After the primary course, he was forced to work from 5 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. every day, with no further education.
"Anyone who failed to achieve work quotas could be executed because it was considered as an expression of discontent," Shin said.
Inmates of the camp should, he said, monitor each other and report any "strange" behaviors. No more than three people were allowed to get together, and they could not move outside the work sites. "Anyone who violated the rules was subject to execution," he said.
Speaking to a group of journalists, researchers and human rights activists, Shin said he hoped his testimony would embarrass those who turn their eyes away from the humanitarian plight facing political prisoners. South Korea estimates that 150,000 to 200,000 people are held in political prisoners' camps in the North.
"Some 60 percent of the inmates are 'innocent' people, mostly relatives of criminals," said Kim Su-am, a researcher at the government-run Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. "But we don't have enough information on political prisoners' camps in North Korea," he said, calling for concerted international efforts to improve the human rights situation in the country.
"I know the South's government is providing economic assistance to North Korea. But I hope the government will pay more attention to the human rights issue in the North," Shin said. "I would ask whether the South's government values the lives of inmates of prison camps in the North. If it does, I hope it does more for them," he said.
Shin's testimony came after the Seoul government, despite public outcry, abstained from a U.N. vote condemning North Korea for its human rights violations. A U.N. General Assembly panel on Tuesday passed a resolution expressing "very serious concern" at continuing reports of serious rights abuses in North Korea.
The South Korean government has maintained a low-key stance toward human rights abuse in North Korea for fear of creating friction with Pyongyang, which could upset the fragile inter-Korean reconciliation process.
