Interviews with Ahn Myeong Chul

Political prison camps are built in mountainous areas. The peaks of the mountains are blasted off and a barbed wire fence is erected around the area. Prisoners are given living quarters according to their labor assignment.

[Prisoners] either work on farms, in coal mines, or in factories. One house is assigned to five families of farm laborers. If you are working in the factory or coal mines, then collective housing is provided, like a dormitory.

Two thousand guards monitor each prison camp, with an additional 1,000 people as [administrative] staff, so a prison camp that has 50,000 prisoners has somewhere between 2,500 to 3,000 staff monitoring it.

The thing about prison camps is that – if satellite photos are taken of these places, they are camouflaged to look like an ordinary North Korean village. So unless someone from the prison camp itself tells you their own story, you can’t really tell from the photos whether it is a prison or not.

Of course, there is barbed wire around the area, but you cannot really tell that it is not a village.

Political prison camps or districts are much larger than one would think. There are two separate compounds: one for the families of security guards and another for the families of the prisoners.

They have separate schools – I would say around 10 schools – and hospitals as well. The camp also has a train station and a mining area so it is very large.

In terms of of food, clothing, and heating… First, in regards to food, if you are a miner or factory worker, you receive food in a canteen.

If you have not completed your work properly, then the amount of food in your bowl will be reduced. If you’re working on a farm, then you receive food based on a monthly ration. These people have to cook for themselves in their home. Once again if you have not completed your monthly duties, then the next month’s ration will be reduced.

[Those in the camps] mainly consume corn, potatoes, and vegetables. These are mixed together, and cooked into a type of porridge. You are also given salted radishes and cabbage. This is all the food you are given.

With regards to clothing, once every two years uniforms are distributed to factory and mining workers. Farmers receive used clothing that soldiers used to wear.

They are all dyed black. Male farmers are required to wear a hat all times. Female farmers are required to wear a white scarf or handkerchief around their head.

With regards to heating, factory and mining workers use the coal from the coal mines. Farm workers pull out roots and grass from the fields; dry and burn them for heating.

Ahn Myeong Chul was born in North Hamgyong Province in North Korea. As a teenager, he was the only person from his province selected to serve as a political prison camp guard. Ahn worked in several camps for a period of eight years where he was brainwashed into believing that political prisoners were enemies of the state unworthy of sympathy. As many as 130,000 men, women and children are imprisoned in North Korea’s vast system of gulags.

Although Ahn witnessed executions, starving children, and extreme torture, it was not until he became a prison truck driver that he questioned the system. Ahn would converse with prisoners he transported and was astonished to learn they knew nothing about the reasons for their imprisonment. It was his introduction to the country’s system of “guilt-by-association” punishment; in North Korea, whole families are incarcerated for the offenses of a single family member.

While on leave in 1994, Ahn learned that his father, a member of the ruling Workers’ Party, had committed suicide after questioning the regime’s rationing system. Ahn’s mother and siblings were imprisoned for his father’s offenses. Fearing that authorities would come for him, he fled to China and eventually reached safety in South Korea.

Since his escape, Ahn has become a North Korean human rights activist. He has provided testimony at the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and is now the secretary general of the organization Free NK Gulag.

North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is a country of 23 million people in northeast Asia, ruled by Communist dictator Kim Jong-Un. His deceased predecessors—father, Kim Jong-Il, and grandfather, Kim Il-Sung – respectively retain the titles of “Eternal President” and “The Great Leader.”

The Korean War began in 1950, when Kim Il-Sung, backed by the Soviet Union and China, attacked South Korea. The conflict ended in a cease-fire rather than a peace treaty, and the border between the two Koreas remains tense and heavily militarized.

Kim Il-Sung employed harsh tactics to consolidate his power and propagated an extreme personality cult that has been continued by his successors. A blend of communist doctrine, state terror, xenophobia and hyper-nationalism has given North Korea its unique ideology. Despite some recent openings, North Korea remains largely isolated from the rest of the world.

With the end of Soviet communism and withdrawal of economic support, North Korea’s economy collapsed in the 1990s. A massive famine, aggravated by the regime’s indifference, killed as many as 2 million people between 1994 and 1998. While conditions have improved, even today, North Korea faces problems of malnutrition and insufficient access to food.

Tensions between North and South Korea remain high. In 2010, North Korea sank a South Korean naval vessel, killing 46 sailors and attacked a South Korean island, killing four civilians. North Korea has developed and tested nuclear weapons in contravention of several international agreements. The country withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 in order to test ballistic missiles and eventually a nuclear device. Multilateral negotiations have so far failed to constrain North Korea’s arms buildup and nuclear program.

North Korea is among the world’s most repressive states, engaging in widespread and systematic human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions, torture, forced abortion, arbitrary detention, and denial of the rights of expression, association, assembly, and religion. The government pervasively regulates all aspects of the lives of its citizens, each of whom is categorized as “core,” “wavering,” or “hostile,” according to the history of his or her family’s relationship with the regime. Access to housing, employment, education, and other social and economic goods depend heavily on these security classifications. The government determines where each citizen will live, and travel within the country is strictly limited.

Emigration is prohibited. Refugees who have escaped to China have frequently been forcibly returned to North Korea where they are imprisoned, subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, and sometimes executed. The government operates a network of forced labor camps for an estimated 120,000 political prisoners. While persons convicted of ordinary crimes serve fixed sentences, those convicted of political crimes are confined indefinitely. Punishment is extended to three generations – the offender’s parents, siblings, and children are also incarcerated, as a way to pressure North Koreans to conform. Political offenders are often denied food, clothing, and medical care, and many die in prison.

Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report classifies North Korea as “not free” and as one of nine nations whose lack of political rights and civil liberties are considered the “worst of the worst.”