Mick Hartley

There's no way of getting independent verification of the situation in North Korea's prison camps. Human Rights groups aren't invited in to wander around and monitor possible abuses. The North Korean regime denies such camps even exist. So the outside world has to rely on eye-witness testimonies from former inmates – which are rare, given the number who ever make it out alive. Kang Chol-Hwan's The Aquariums of Pyongyang is probably the best-known account. Now another survivor who escaped to South Korea, Kim Hye Sook, has been talking about her experience:

A North Korean prison camp survivor on Wednesday gave a rare testimony exposing public executions and starvation at the detention centre where she was held for 28 years.

Kim Hye Sook was aged 13 when she was sent to join her parents at the Gwalliso No 18 political prisoners camp where detainees were treated "worse than dogs" while carrying out enforced labour and being abused by guards.

Kim, who was released in 2001 and now lives in South Korea, sobbed as she told a conference in Geneva how she was forced to watch public shootings and went without food to feed her brothers and sisters, who remain in detention.

An estimated 200,000 political prisoners are languishing in North Korea's six camps, which the government denies even exist, said co-hosts the Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights.

Kim said that many prisoners, like herself, do not know why they have been detained and face death simply for asking.

"There was always not enough food to eat, and many people starved to death. Soon I didn't feel anything seeing dead bodies after seeing so many of them," she said in a 10-page testimony.

"The prisoners there did not know the meaning of 'human rights'. They were living lives worse than dogs' lives."

Kim claimed that more than 100 public executions were carried out every year for all sorts of offences "ranging from stealing corn powder to being superstitious."

"I saw my first public execution when I was 13, a mere child," she told the conference. "Everyone in the camp had to come and watch."