- North Koreans fleeing the country told CNN about the conditions they faced while in detention.
- Those I spoke with said they saw and experienced rape, beatings and torture.
- An expert told CNN that many released prisoners were unaware that they had been tortured.
In the North Korean penal system, prisoners face violent rape, starvation, and forced labor, some of whom are not even aware they are being tortured.
North Korean defector detained multiple times over 17 years told CNN Despite the inhumane conditions in the country’s detention center, he felt better than he had experienced in the past.
his testimony is A report released on Friday from the NGO Korea Futuredetailed the torture and ill-treatment faced by detained North Koreans. Many of those targeted in this torture were political prisoners, the report found.
The man, who remained anonymous, told CNN that one of the ways the prison he was held in has improved is that he is now allowed to walk on his feet as long as he keeps his head down instead of crawling on all fours. Told.
“Before, I had to crawl on my hands and knees to get around, but in 2017 I was able to stand and walk,” he told CNN. “All I had to do was bend my back 90 degrees forward as I moved.”
The man also told CNN that up to five people in custody will stay in one room without heating, but at least the last time they went to prison in 2017 they gave them blankets. said that unlike before, he was fed three meals a day instead of a vegetable diet ration.
However, the man said he saw multiple guards rape a female prisoner. When he complained, the two guards beat him so badly that he later felt, “I couldn’t live like this.”
“I thought I couldn’t live like this, so I broke the window in my room and grabbed a piece of glass,” he said. “A security guard came into my room and stabbed me in the stomach in front of me.”
Korea Future researcher Kim Ji-won told CNN that many of the North Korean prisoners interviewed for the project “didn’t have a concept of torture,” adding that their treatment was “unprecedented.” I didn’t realize how inhumane it really was.
Kim told CNN, “They were always told by prisons and corrections officers that they had done something wrong. So they just thought they were bad people. They got punished for it. I was there,” he said. “This was so ingrained in their mindset that they didn’t even realize they were being tortured.”
Another woman who told CNN said she was fed and held like an animal in prison after being detained for complaining about her housing conditions.
“I didn’t feel like I was human,” the woman told CNN.
The Future of South Korea report, released a decade after the United Nations Human Rights Council created a commission of inquiry to hold the North Korean government accountable for human rights abuses, said North Korea continues to abuse and torture prisoners. said that while saying otherwise.
The report focuses on the stories of three prisoners arrested in China, including a pregnant woman in her 30s, who was forced to have an abortion while in pretrial detention.
Another man who helped escape North Koreans was forced to work and, he explained, was regularly undernourished. They captured rodents and ate them to supplement their diet.”
In February, the UN HRC released a human rights report that corroborated many of Korea Future’s findings.According to a United Nations report, women in particular Vulnerable to domestic violence and violence in that country