Archive on NK rights marks first 100 days

By Park Si-soo

Kim Kwang-il portrays his two-year life at a gulag-style labor camp in North Korea as “hell” and his release alive as a “miracle.”

The 43-year-old defected from the poverty-stricken state in 2009. He now lives in Seoul, running international campaigns about human rights abuses in the communist state.

“More than 500 people died in one year from extreme hunger, labor and torture,” Kim said in an interview in Seoul, recounting his two-year-and-five-month life at Jeongeori labor camp in North Hamgyeong Province. “Their bodies were cremated at a mountain behind the camp and then used as fertilizer.”

Kim was taken to the camp for what he called “groundless” allegation that he smuggled in copper from China.

“I had to endure extreme torture while being questioned over the allegation. I was once on the brink of death due to an infectious disease that swept the camp,” he said.

According to a report based on North Korean defectors’ testimony, including Kim, detainees at the camp were forced into farming, logging and mining for more than 12 hours a day with 300 grams or less of food — a stew mixed with corn and flour and salted cabbage as a side dish — rationed for each meal.

“Female detainees were frequently raped by soldiers. Pregnant women were forced to have an abortion. It also came as no surprise to see infants abandoned,” the report revealed. It said some troublesome detainees were used in human experiments or shot dead.

The report was submitted to the North Korean Human Rights Documentation Center and Archive, Tuesday.

It was the latest in a series of cases of this kind reported to the center. The center — the first state-run archive of human rights abuses in the North — was established 100 days ago by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).

The establishment was inspired by West Germany’s Salzgitter Center that was opened in 1961 and recorded cases of human rights abuses in East Germany during the Cold War. Salzgitter collected information on more than 41,000 cases, putting public pressure on the East German government and serving as a reference to develop human rights policies after the reunification of East and West Germany.

A total of 718 people have reported their nightmarish experiences at labor camps, prisons and other detention facilities to the center.

Among them are survivors of North Korean gulags and relatives of South Koreans killed by the North’s bombing of a Korean Air flight in the 1980s.

“The collected cases will be helpful in crafting policies and seeking international cooperation to improve human rights conditions in North Korea,” NHRC said in a statement. “The center will keep collecting relevant cases in an effort to change the North.”