North Korea's forced labour camps

North Korean defectors describe brutal conditions when they were forced into North Korea's forced labour camps.

Defector Kim Yong-soon described, in her book I Was Sung Hye Rim's Friend, how merely being friends with the secret mistress of Kim Jong-il triggered not just her arrest, but the arrest of her parents, husband and children. She described that, while she survived nine years in Camp Yoduk, mortality was very high, and most of her family died.

Shin Dong-hyuk, a young man who defected, bore the physical scars of torture. After he offered a horrific account, where he described being tortured, while still a child, described seeing his father die, was the target of a North Korean broadcast that rebuted elements of his story. His father was not dead, and, in the North Korean broadcast, his father called on him to quit lying. After watching his father he acknowledged he had exagerrated his account. He acknowledged he claimed he was tortured while he was still a child, when it occurred after he turned 18. He acknowledged he claimed to have been held in extremely brutal Camp 14, when he was held in slightly less brutal Camp 18.