By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter
An estimated 200,000 North Koreans are in six prison camps in the communist country and those inmates are under constant threat of public execution, rape and torture, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) reported Wednesday.
The commission recommended that the government address the appalling human rights conditions in the prison camps as a policy priority.
It also proposed that the administration chart a roadmap, along with concrete action plans, to improve the situations there.
The report by the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights at the request of NHRC was based on accounts of 322 North Korean refugees who defected to South Korea after 2006.
Of them, 17 had experienced the concentration camps as either inmates or guards, and another 32 went through repatriation to the North after failed attempts to flee the Stalinist state.
The report said the North Korean authorities imposed harsher punishments on people who were unsuccessful in crossing the border as an increasing number of people seek to escape the impoverished country.
According to the Ministry of Unification, about 1,000 North Koreans defected to the South in 2001 ― the figure rose to 2,018 in 2006.
About 2,800 North Korean defectors settled in South Korea in 2008.
Of six prison camps in the North, four are for inmates who have been given life sentences, the report said.
Interviewees who had been in the camps said the authorities arrested them without warrants and put them there without trials, it said.
Inmates were reportedly comprised of those who criticized North Korean leader Kim Jong-il or had unsuccessfully attempted to leave the country.
But witnesses said many inmates didn't know why they were arrested as the authorities offered no explanation.
To control inmates, according to the report, guards and heads at the prison camps tactically choose several inmates who were obedient and followed the rules faithfully to spy on their fellow inmates.
Some of the chosen were even allowed to torture other inmates, it said.
``Concentration camps highlight the appalling human rights conditions in the North. The government should address this problem in its policy toward North Korea,'' the report said.
The commission plans to do additional research on human rights conditions in the North and then propose specific measures.