A couple of grim reports today from the Daily NK, on forced labour in North Korean political prison camps.
Inmates at Pyongsan Political Prison Camp in North Hwanghae Province are being forced to work in uranium mines, Daily NK has learned.
“Pyongsan Political Prison Camp is basically a uranium mining camp,” a source in North Korea told Daily NK on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “The prisoners usually take part in primary physical labor only, including expanding the mine tunnels, putting up mine posts, extracting the uranium and transporting it to storage places. They do not participate in technical activities such as refining or concentrating the ore.”
According to the source, Pyongsan Political Prison Camp — run by the Ministry of Social Security — is home to about 11,000 people. Daily NK reported in 2021 that the authorities were building a new political prison camp in Pyongsan, North Hwanghae Province, and inmates would be mobilized to produce uranium concentrate.
Inmates in Pyongsan reportedly suffer from long periods of intense forced labor in unsafe conditions….
Pyongsan Political Prison Camp inmates perform intense labor for up to 20 hours daily in terrible conditions. Most of all, prisoners could be exposed to radiation while extracting the uranium ore, but the North Korean authorities reportedly provide no proper explanations or even minimum safety equipment.
“As for safety equipment, the camp simply hands out work uniforms twice a year in summer and winter,” the source said. “These fall apart after just a week, so you have to patch them up and patch them up again.”
“They think safety equipment is something you give to ordinary people, not inmates,” he said.
Managers of political prison camps have no duty to protect prisoners stripped of their civil rights as citizens. Because they treat them as animals or things rather than humans, they even use the Korean counting words for animals or things — mari or gae — rather than the one for people, myeong, the source said.
“Prisoners have no right to refuse work, and a refusal amounts to a declaration of death,” he said. “You can’t refuse to work because managers beat and punish prisoners for failing to work quickly or just for displaying a poor work attitude.”
Pyongsan Political Prisoner Camp also reportedly fails to provide sufficient rest or food.
And child labour:
Children imprisoned at North Korea’s political prison camps face serious human rights abuses, including forced labor, beatings and other punishments, Daily NK has learned.
Speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, a source in North Korea familiar with the country’s prison system told Daily NK on Tuesday that “the political prison camps’ internal regulations set inmates to work from age 5, though actual conditions differ from camp to camp.”
“They set children to work from around ages 4 to 6, when they can understand orders and signal with their bodies and hands. Children under the age of 10 may do different work from adults, but past age 10, they do the same work as adults, though their workload differs. As no separate regulations call for children to be given safe work apart from adults, it’s common for children to be tasked with work where they can get injured or killed.”
According to the source, the camps’ regulations prescribe nine to 15 hours of work daily for inmates, while some managers force inmates to do more than 15 hours. Children are no exception….
“In the camps, making socially commonsensical and ordinary distinctions between children and adults, men and women and young and old violates the rules and is treated as a counterrevolutionary act of sympathy with forces hostile to the revolution,” the source said. “No distinction between children and adults is made in the camps. Both are equally subject to beatings.”
Why are there children in political prison camps anyway? Presumably a member of the family – father, mother, brother, sister – was found guilty of political "counterrevolutionary" crimes, and the whole family is condemned. That is, they're all marked for life as impure.
Mick Hartley 
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