According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, North Korea is facing a severe food shortfall—a gap of at least 860,000 tons of food, which corresponds to two months’ supply.
[i] In ordinary times, more than 40 percent of North Korea’s population is food insecure, but conditions at present are said to be more dire. Damaging floods and the government’s Covid-19 restrictions have exacerbated the food shortage. International aid agencies have been prevented from operating and cross-border trading has been curtailed. State media openly speaks of a food crisis.
In such conditions, the most food-deprived persons in the country should be identified and prioritized. But in North Korea, the government has created a food-deprived group isolated from the rest of the population: political prisoners. They are undoubtedly the first to be denied food when commodities are scarce and the last to receive food when it is available. In July 2021, the UN Secretary-General warned the international community that “there are risks that the food situation for detainees has worsened, as the food situation has become more acute for the general population.”
[ii]The UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) on human rights in North Korea described the near starvation of prisoners in North Korea as a form of governmental “control and punishment” in its 2014 report.
[iii] The most in danger during times of crisis are those held in political prison camps (
kwan-li-so). A North Korean official told the former German Ambassador that “people are only being sent there to die.”
[iv] However, those held in long-term re-education through labor camps (
kyo-hwa-so) and short-term detention facilities are also at risk, especially now that Covid-19 restrictions prevent families and friends from bringing food packages.
A total of 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners are reported to be incarcerated in North Korea, with some sources estimating upwards of 200,000. In most cases, they are charged with ‘offenses’ that are not considered criminal in other countries: trying to leave the country without permission; trying to join relatives in South Korea or having a family member who does; listening to foreign news broadcasts; watching foreign movies and copying foreign speech and clothing; questioning or complaining about government policies, or having a family member who did; being caught up on the wrong side of a factional political dispute; possessing a Bible or organizing a Christian service; and more. During the pandemic, North Koreans who question or fail to adhere to official quarantine measures are reported to be placed in labor camps for challenging Party policy.
[v] In some cases, entire families of prisoners, including children, have been incarcerated on the basis of guilt-by-association (
yeon-jwa-je).
Deaths in detention are known to be high. The UN COI estimated in 2014 that hundreds of thousands of prisoners perished over the past five decades from a combination of deliberate starvation, illnesses, forced labor, torture, and other brutality. It defined their deaths as “extermination,” which “can be carried out by imprisoning a large number of people and withholding the necessities of life so that mass deaths ensue.”
[vi]With few exceptions, it has long been accepted practice for donors and aid agencies to refrain from requesting access to political prisoners, because of the political sensitivity of the issue and the fear of jeopardizing access to other vulnerable populations. Political prisoners, however, are undoubtedly the most vulnerable group in North Korea.
ON THE DENIAL OF ADEQUATE FOOD TO POLITICAL PRISONERS
In the case of political prison camps (
kwan-li-so) as well as long-term re-education through labor camps (
kyo-hwa-so), the UN COI presented extensive evidence of the denial of adequate food to those detained. The COI also found evidence of limited access to food at short-term detention facilities.
[vii] In recent years, additional corroborating information has emerged regarding these short-term facilities. This information, presented below, shows how adequate food has been consistently denied from the time of arrest through interrogation and then in early short-term detention. Typically, prisoners detained in such facilities are held up to two years, at which point they may be released or transferred to long-term detention facilities.
The following documentation attests to the inadequate food in short-term detention facilities:
- Interviews in 2019 and 2020 by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) with 25 former prisoners held in short-term facilities spanning a twenty-three year period (1996–2019) in the provinces of North Hamgyong, South Hamgyong, North Pyongan, South Pyongan, and Ryanggang.[viii] The short-term facilities include: a) police interrogation/detention centers (An-jeon-bu ku-ryu-jang or ku-ryu-so); b) police stations (An-jeon-bu bo-an-so and bun-ju-so); c) Ministry of State Security (hereafter MSS) interrogation/detention centers (Bo-wi-bu ku-ryu-jang); d) short-term labor detention facilities (jip-kyul-so); and e) mobile forced labor brigades (ro-dong-dan-ryeon-dae).
- Reports authored by David Hawk, a leading expert on North Korea’s prison camps and detention facilities, including The Hidden Gulag[ix] and The Parallel Gulag,[x] published by HRNK in 2012 and 2017 respectively.
- The 2020 report of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Human Rights Violations against Women Detained in the DPRK, based on 100 interviews of women detained between 2009 and 2019 (many in short-term detention facilities) after being forcibly repatriated from China.[xi]
- The 2017 White Paper on North Korean Human Rights of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB), which compiled more than 500 cases of violations of the right to food in short-term detention facilities and found these violations to be “prevalent” throughout the country. [xii]
- Information obtained over the past decade by the author from meetings with former North Korean prisoners, prison guards, and government officials, as well as officials and experts from other Asian countries, North America, and Europe.
LACK OF SUFFICIENT FOOD IN SHORT-TERM DETENTION FACILITIES
Witness after witness described the below-subsistence food rations provided at the short-term detention facilities run by the Ministry of Social Security (the police),
[xiii] the Ministry of State Security (responsible for political crimes), or both in collaboration. Indeed, the diet provided over a period of two decades across different facilities constitutes a dangerously small fraction of minimal dietary requirements for average adults.
[xiv]
Of course, during the great famine of the mid-1990s and subsequent periods of food scarcity, the state had little to provide prisoners. But even during periods when food was available, the authorities distributed substandard amounts to persons in detention centers, especially to those being punished on political grounds.
The following quotes from the testimonies of former prisoners describe their daily diets in short-term facilities, spanning a nineteen-year period:
a) 2000: “small amounts of boiled mashed corn and salty radish leaf soup” (labor detention facility in Chongjin)
[xv]b) 2001: “corn soup made of whole grain unpeeled corn, amounting to three or four spoonfuls” (MSS facility in Onsong)
[xvi]c) 2002–3:“raw corn which had no nutritional value...not even peeled off or cleansed” (MSS facility in Onsong)
[xvii]d) 2005: “about 20 pieces [kernels] of corn” (labor detention facility in Chongjin)
[xviii]e) 2008: “only corn noodles about 2 kilograms for 200 people” (MSS facility in Hyesan)
[xix]f) 2009: “we really could only eat mice and corn pieces” (mobile labor brigade in Sinuiju)
[xx]g) 2010: “a small cup of boiled rice, about 150 grams per meal. Soup was made of dried cabbage and salt” (short-term detention facility in North Pyongan Province)
[xxi]h) 2011:“50 grains [of corn] at each meal...I counted the grains”(unnamed MSS short-term labor facility)
[xxii]i) 2012: “200 to 300 grains of corn three times a day” (unnamed MSS interrogation center)
[xxiii]j) 2012/13: primarily “corn that they couldn’t throw away that even the dogs did not want” (labor detention facility in Hyesan)
[xxiv]k) 2014: “five tiny rotten potatoes per meal” (unnamed police interrogation center)
[xxv]l) 2015: “five spoonfuls...boiled leftovers...three times a day” (MSS detention facility in North Hamgyong Province)
[xxvi]m) 2016: “a handful of corn per meal” three times a day (unnamed MSS detention center)
[xxvii]n) 2017: “50 grains of corn per meal” (unnamed police interrogation center)
[xxviii]o) 2019 (solitary confinement): “about 150 grams of food every day. I did not receive water” (held for one month and ten days at police facility in Onsong)
[xxix]p) 2019: 150 grams three times a day (MSS and police facilities in Onsong)
[xxx]
“I think they willfully made people starve in detention,” said one former prisoner to HRNK about his time at a mobile labor brigade in Hoeryong, North Hamgyong Province in 2001.
[xxxi] Others echoed the same sentiment: “I have...witnessed many people in the detention centers [Musan, Chongjin, Hyesan, Onsong, Pyeongsong] die of starvation even though the state has food that could be distributed”(2004–5).
[xxxii] Another former prisoner said that insufficient food “led to cases of starvation among the detainees” at a mobile labor brigade in Hoeryong in 2011.
[xxxiii] The UN OHCHR’S 2020 report described a “consistent pattern” of “grossly inadequate” food for women prisoners in both short-term and long-term facilities.
[xxxiv]Because constant and severe hunger was the daily predicament of many prisoners in these facilities, prisoners ate grass and other plants to survive, according to a former prisoner at a labor detention center in South Sinuiju in 2000.
[xxxv] Prisoners caught and ate mice at other facilities, but in many short-term detention facilities, especially overcrowded buildings, prisoners lacked access to the outside and could not even forage for grass, insects, or rodents.
[xxxvi]
Role of Families in Preventing Prisoner Starvation: One of the reasons prisoners incarcerated in long-term re-education through labor camps and short-term facilities have been able to survive is because their families and friends are able to bring food packages. (This is not the case in the political prison camps, which are operated by the MSS.) However, the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 and 2021 has barred families and friends from visiting these facilities, and the food situation for prisoners has become even more precarious.
Prior to the pandemic, there were difficulties in providing food packages to prisoners. Families could remain uninformed for months about the whereabouts of their loved ones, especially while they were in interrogation. Once family members found out the location of the detention facility, they often had to bribe guards to ensure that the food package was safely delivered. Sometimes, the guards stole or ate part of the food or sold it in the market. Visits could also be denied on an arbitrary basis.
[xxxvii] The UN OHCHR’s 2020 report points out that not all detainees received packages from their families, since not all were close by or had the capacity to do so. Prisoners who did not receive packages remained “vulnerable to malnutrition.”
[xxxviii] When families were allowed to bring food, former prisoners acknowledged that the health of detainees typically improved. “Most of us survived only because of families and friends bringing food for us and if not, prisoners died from severe malnutrition and ultimately starvation, combined with constant hard work,” according to a former prisoner at a mobile labor brigade in 2011.
[xxxix] When family members were allowed to bring food “twice a week,” as was the case at a police detention facility in Onsong in 2019, conditions “got better,” said a former prisoner. However, from April 2019 until the prisoner’s escape in July, prison authorities stopped these visits without providing a reason, and prisoners began to become malnourished.
[xl]For those who were subject to hard labor for up to 10 or more hours a day, food was essential but not often provided. “Even when we were forced to do very hard labor,” the guards “barely provided food” (mobile labor brigade in Hoeryong, 2011).
[xli] The combination of inadequate food with forced labor added to the likelihood that prisoners would fall ill. “I was hungry all the time,” said a former prisoner at an MSS facility in Hyesan, Ryanggang Province in 2012–13. “[W]e received only very limited food...[while] we were made to do hard labor, including working on cleaning the railroads.”
[xlii]Nor was clean water made regularly available. The UN OHCHR’s 2020 report recommended that North Korea make “drinking water available to every prisoner whenever she needs it.”
[xliii]THE USE OF FOOD TO SICKEN AND PUNISH PRISONERS
Many detainees testified that the food provided by the state sickened them. At one MSS interrogation facility in 2017, a former prisoner testified: “Meals were carried in a bucket and the bucket was never cleaned and smelled terrible...I was unable to eat it.”
[xliv] At many other detention facilities and over many years, different detainees repeatedly called the food provided by the state “rotten,” “inedible,” and causing “bad side effects.” “The only food that we were given was essentially waste...animal feed,” which caused many prisoners to suffer from diarrhea and other sicknesses such as enteritis, an inflammation of the small intestine commonly caused by food or drink contaminated with microbes (e.g., Chongjin MSS facility in 2001, Hyesan MSS facility in 2008).
[xlv]At an MSS facility in Hyesan in 2008, a former prisoner spoke of “at least two people in my cell who died from diarrhea or enteritis...I witnessed their deaths, and the prison authorities did nothing to help them.”
[xlvi] At an MSS facility in Onsong, “a number of the detainees suffered from enteritis and starved to death” (2002–3).
[xlvii] This was also the case at multiple detention centers in North Hamgyong and Ryanggang provinces in 2004–5, where a former prisoner witnessed “many” detainees becoming ill. “I witnessed a large number of people die as a result.”
[xlviii] Another former prisoner who suffered from an inflamed gall bladder received no medical help (police detention center in Hoeryong, 2009).
[xlix]Food was regularly used as a weapon of punishment and control. Some former detainees reported “having to drink dirty, contaminated water as collective punishment” (2004).
[l] Others reported “not being allowed to receive the dinner meal” as a form of punishment (mobile labor brigade in Chongjin, 2008).
[li] At a police interrogation/detention center in 2014, one former detainee stated, “I was starved on a few occasions...the MSS wanted to punish and pressure me, and therefore they did not allow me to get the meals [brought by family members].”
[lii] During interrogation, especially for cases concerning political crimes, “starvation” was “deliberately imposed on suspects to increase the pressure on them to confess and to incriminate other persons.”
[liii]Sometimes, food was withheld from certain categories of prisoners as punishment. For example, pregnant women, especially those impregnated by Chinese ‘husbands,’ were reportedly denied food and water at a labor detention facility in Nongpo (Chongjin) in 1999.
[liv] At a mobile labor brigade in Hoeryong, “some young male detainees” were singled out and “treated so badly when it [came] to food” (2001)
[lv], while at an MSS facility in Chongjin, Christian prisoners “were treated very badly, with many beatings and little food” (2001).
[lvi] The teenage daughter of Christian missionaries at a police station in Hyesan was “not given food for almost two weeks” during interrogation (2004).
[lvii] According to another former prisoner, “The authorities aimed to hurt those who did not support the regime and/or belonged to the ‘wrong’ social class” (mobile labor brigade in Chongjin, 2003).
[lviii] In 2010, female prisoners who had been forcibly repatriated from China were told by prison guards that they were “traitors who deserved to die,” so they received little food and did not have access to medical treatment (police detention facility in South Hamgyong Province).
[lix]Detainees who stole food to survive, especially while working on farms, were punished severely. Guards at an MSS facility in Onsong were reported to have executed “dozens” for eating oxen (beef) in 2000,
[lx] while at a short-term labor detention facility in Chongjin in 2002, a former detainee said that “I have…seen individuals executed for stealing a pig.”
[lxi] In 2010, at a short-term detention facility in Ryanggang Province, a prisoner secretly ate uncooked rice while doing farm work, and “they put pebbles in my mouth and sealed it with adhesive tape, and they made me work” without food.
[lxii]When prisoners became so sick that they were in need of hospitalization, the authorities sometimes sent prisoners home. In some cases, families had to bribe the authorities or doctors to allow the sick prisoner to return home.
[lxiii] Clearly, prison authorities had neither the willingness nor the capacity to treat prisoners who became extremely sick, even though the insufficient food they provided—combined with the “lack of health care” and hard labor—had caused prisoners’ health to deteriorate.
[lxiv] In many instances, the bodies of detainees who died from starvation (and other causes) were thrown into unmarked graves.
THE TOLL ON PRISONERS’ HEALTH
Inadequate food regularly jeopardized prisoners’ health, in many cases causing inflammation of body organs, as described above. The UN OHCHR also found that the “grossly inadequate quantity and poor quality of food,” fed to women prisoners “led to high levels of malnutrition…and the interruption of their menstrual cycles” (2009–19).
[lxv] Both male and female detainees who were held in short-term detention facilities for months lost considerable weight, making them weak and vulnerable to malnutrition and disease, including enteritis and tuberculosis.
[lxvi]Some prisoners described themselves as being reduced to “skin and bones.” Whether at an MSS facility in Hyesan (2008), an MSS facility in Musan (2003), or a labor detention facility in Chongjin (2002), prisoners spoke of how the denial of adequate food reduced their bodies to skeletons. “I weighed only 32 kilograms [70.5 pounds],” recalled one former prisoner.
[lxvii] Another individual, who “lost half his body weight” after three months in detention at an MSS facility in Sinuiju, collapsed from malnutrition and beatings and was sent home to die (2003).
[lxviii]
Impact of Food Deprivation on Children: It is well known that detained children are subjected to acute suffering, in part because they “ha[ve] no funds with them” with which to secure additional food by bribing guards. For example, at a mobile labor brigade in Chongjin, there were “many deaths of children from malnutrition or starvation” (2003).
[lxix] At an MSS facility in Musan in that same year, “almost all of the children were suffering from malnutrition, with a number of them dying from starvation.”
[lxx]In 2003–4, at a labor detention facility in Hyesan, “more than 10 children died of starvation.... Other children survived but were suffering from extreme hunger and malnutrition.”
[lxxi] At an MSS facility in Sinuiju in 2008–9, “hunger and starvation were rampant, particularly for children. Many children and young people were emaciated.”
[lxxii] Considering that one in five non-incarcerated North Korean children suffer from stunted growth, one can only imagine the impact on incarcerated children when deliberately denied food in detention facilities. Further, it is almost certain that this deprivation also causes lasting emotional harm and irreversible intellectual deficits, in addition to the long-term physical impact on these children.
DEATHS IN DETENTION
There is no question that inadequate food—either alone or in combination with forced labor, beatings, and lack of medicine and adequate healthcare—have resulted in deaths over the past twenty years. Thousands of North Korean detainees are estimated to die
each year from the combination of starvation, beatings, labor exhaustion, lack of medicine, and disease.
The UN COI’s report found that in short-term detention facilities, “many die from starvation, disease or injuries sustained during beatings and work accidents.”
[lxxiii] The UN OHCHR’s report on women prisoners (2009–19) found that “The deprivation of food was at times so severe that detainees reportedly starved to death.”
[lxxiv]
Testimony regarding deaths in specific short-term facilities can be found in the following:
a) The UN COI’s report: for example, “After a month or two of imprisonment,” where prisoners were given starvation rations, “a lot of inmates died” (labor training facility in Hamheung).
[lxxv]b) Witness testimonies quoted in HRNK reports (2000–2009):
[lxxvi]- “I witnessed many deaths due to starvation and unlivable conditions, around 35 individuals died in the Bo-wi-bu [MSS] that I know of due to starvation” (MSS facility in Onsong, 2000).
- “There was at least one person dying every day from malnutrition - it was like an epidemic” (labor detention facility in Chongjin, 2003).
- “Approximately 2,000 die...each year...We were told to keep track of how many prisoners died.... Of the 2,000 deaths each year, I knew a number of these individuals.... Some of the inmates died of starvation or malnutrition” (former prisoner-turned-prison administrator at mobile labor brigade in Chungsan, 2003–5).
- “I saw a number of people die of starvation.... Starvation and extreme hunger were rampant in the facility” (mobile labor brigade in Pyeongsong, 2005).
- Detainees “often suffer from starvation. I witnessed many detainees die” (at detention centers in Onsong, Chongjin, and Orang, 2004–5).
- “I saw people die continuously. These deaths often resulted from malnutrition and untreated diseases” (mobile labor brigade in Musan, 1997, 2004, 2009).
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