Prisoners were forced to survive on rats under North Korea's regime
Former prisoners from the hermit state’s dictatorship took part in a mock trial arranged by human rights groups to raise awareness of inhumane conditions in North Korea's prisons.
At the event, hosted by John Hopkins University in Baltimore on Thursday, former prisoners described the human rights abuses they were forced to endure before a panel of judges.
One of the speakers was King Chol-hwan, a defector who escaped from North Korea in 1992, after spending ten years in the Yodok concentration camp, where he was incarcerated as a child with his family.
The ex-prisoner-turned-activist spoke out about the terrible conditions inside the camp, where it is believed thousands of people are still being kept captive and worked to death.
Defectors of North Korea had to hide their identity
Mr Chol-hwan described how he and his family were forced to survive on vermin and were made to carry out slave labour, building underground tunnels.
Recalling his time in a North Korean camp, Mr Chol-hwan said: “Daily life in the work camps is very mundane. We wake up at 5 am and are forced to work until sunset. We are given lessons on Kim il-sung and Juche. We are forced to watch public executions.
He added: “We are physically abused - hit and tortured. I think of it as another form of Auschwitz. These work camps are like products of Nazism, and an abusive government needs elements such as Nazi concentration camps. They just have different ways of killing people.”
Mr Chol-hwan said escapees of the camp usually got out with the help of the South Korean government or missionaries.
He said: “Missionaries came and prayed for us. The heavens helped me and i was able to board a ship that took me from China to South Korea.”
In 2014, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea (COI) published a report outlining the “unspeakable atrocities” being committed in North Korea.
It claims Pyongyang’s regime is responsible for “deliberate starvation, forced labor, executions, torture, rape and the denial of reproductive rights enforced through punishment, forced abortion, and infanticide.”
Eerie propaganda music heard from North Korean border
Former prisoner King Chol-hwan is now an activist committed to raising awareness of North Korea
About 10 organisations, including such think tanks as SAIS, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and human rights groups like the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, co-hosted Thursday's event in an effort to raise awareness of the North's human rights abuses.
Three judges also attended, including Navanethem Pillay, former U.N. high commissioner for human rights; Mark Harmon, former co-investigating judge of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia; and Thomas Buergenthal, former judge of the International Court of Justice.