Two survivors of a North Korean concentration camp have spoken out about the grim conditions in the gulag where inmates are left to die in tiny cells, in the latest accounts to shed light on the human rights atrocities carried out in the world's most isolated country.
A 27-year-old North Korean, Kim Eun Chul, was one of a group of seven fleeing their country in 1999 who were intercepted in Russia after they scrambled through barbed wire on the border with China.
The Russians sent them back to China despite a UN decision to grant them refugee status. China, which remains North Korea's staunchest ally, allowed the seven to be handed back to North Korea which subsequently informed the UN that the majority had been returned to their homes and factory jobs.
But it was a lie. Instead, they faced torture and imprisonment for "betraying their homeland" by trying to flee the famine-hit North Korean "socialist paradise" in search of food. least five of the seven were dispatched to North Korea's Camp Number 15, known as Yodok in the West, where inmates labour 15 hours or more a day on meagre rations for such deeds as criticising the government or trying to escape because of famine, Mr Kim told the International Herald Tribune.
The only woman among the seven - Pang Young Sil - "shrivelled to the size of a dog" by the time she arrived in Yodok in July 2000 after months of torture by North Korea's notorious National Security Agency and died in the camp two months later, Mr Kim said.
Ms Pang fled North Korea because her parents would not allow her to marry her boyfriend Heo Young Il, according to another Yodok survivor, Kim Gwang Soo, 44, who spent three years in the camp located 70 miles north-east of Pyongyang. Mr Heo had been dishonourably discharged from the military and could not join the ruling Workers Party.
"Pang arrived in Yodok on a stretcher. The day she died, we buried her together. Heo cried a lot. He blamed himself for her death," said Kim Gwang Soo. "After his woman died, he got strange and tried to escape," Mr Kim went on. "I had to report him to the guards for my own safety, since I was in charge of looking over him and his escape would mean trouble for me.
"For a month, they locked him in a cell so small he had to stand or sit upright 24 hours a day, eating little food. Usually that meant death, but he came out alive."
Kim Eun Chul, who now sports a crewcut and has pierced ears, said he spent three years at Yodok, and escaped to South Korea last year. His scalp, knees and arms still bear the scars of his prison experience.
Mr Kim said he was transferred in June 2000 to Yodok, where he learnt that he had been sentenced to three years for treason.
Before being sent to Yodok, he said he was tortured at the National Security Agency, the government's intelligence and secret police organ. He was forced to kneel on a hot steel plate, and when he twitched, he was punished by kicks and punches. "After giving me nothing to eat for three days, they had my family bring some food," he said. "While I was watching, they fed it to another inmate. I wanted to tear the man apart and eat him."
Because of the nature of the totalitarian regime in North Korea, the only information about conditions inside the nuclear power's labour camps come from the rare defectors who manage to escape.
According to survivors from Camp 22, horrific chemical experiments have been conducted on inmates in gas chambers where entire families have been placed to die while scientists take notes.
Despite promising in 2004 to allow the UN access, the prison network where an estimated 200,000 North Koreans are incarcerated has remained out of bounds.
"It's a terrible human tragedy," said Evans Revere, president of the New York-based Korea Society, referring to the camps where generations of the same family can be punished for a single crime.
The penal camps, known as kwan-li-so, contain political prisoners who work as slaves in mining, logging and farming. At Yodok, there is a "special-control" zone, which survivors describe as a place of no return.
Kim Gwang Soo said his work unit usually contained 240 inmates, including people such as Kim Eun Chul. He said that in the three years he was there, about 200 people died, mostly of malnutrition, and were replaced with new arrivals.
Out of the seven refugees, who first met up at a Christian church in Yanji, China, after fleeing North Korea, at least three others of the group including Mr Heo are believed to have left Yodok.
North Korea: a brief history
* 1945: Japanese occupation of Korea ends with Soviet troops occupying the north, and US troops the south
* 1946: North Korean Communist Party (Korean Workers' Party) inaugurated. Soviet-backed leadership installed, including Kim Il-sung
* 1948: Democratic People's Republic of Korea proclaimed. Soviet troops withdraw
* 1950-1953: South declares independence, sparking North Korean invasion and Korean war
* 1994: Death of Kim Il-sung. Kim Jong-il succeeds him
* 2006: North Korea claims to test nuclear weapon for the first time
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