Background Report: North Korean Prisons

According to the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, there exists a vast network of structured institutions for punishment in North Korea including forced-labor colonies, camps, prisons, and short term detention facilities along the North Korea-China border. Prisoners are brutally treated in these institutions with testimonies from North Korean defectors describing the application of torture techniques, hard labor, starvation, forced abortions, infanticide, families of up to three generations imprisoned, detention without judicial process, public executions, chemical and medical experimentation on prisoners, and gas chambers, resulting in thousands of deaths. Comparisons have been frequently made to the Nazi concentration camps. China Confidential

THE LETTER TO CHINA: An Open Letter to China's Paramount Leader: Please Persuade North Korea to Let Our People Go