Hitler had his concentration camps.
Stalin had his gulags.
And North Korea has its dreaded labor camps.
Every evil dictatorship has historically had a place to send any dissidents or perceived
enemies of the state, and while many horror stories have circulated about the cruelty
and brutality of North Korea's prison camps, exact details have been hard to confirm due
to the secretive nature of the hermit kingdom.
Yet as more North Koreans escape the brutal regime, never before heard details paint a
grim picture of life inside one of the most hellish places on earth.
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Infographics Show, today we're going to remind
you to be grateful you live a comfortable first world life as we answer the question,
what do we know about North Korean labor camps?
For most of our viewers, watching our show is nothing but an after thought, but did you
know that in North Korea watching The Infographics Show can get you sent straight to a labor
camp for ten years?
Not just our show of course, but anything on the public internet.
In fact just owning a computer can be offense enough to warrant a trip to a labor camp,
as computer ownership requires explicit permission from the government itself.
And if you want to cruise the internet you'll have to make do with a state-operated intranet,
with internet access afforded only to government personnel- anyone caught circumventing this
ban is going to earn themselves a one-way trip to the modern gulag.
But don't worry, because you won't be lonely in your new prison home, and that's thanks
to North Korean founder Kim Il Sun's belief that evil could only be expunged from a family
if you punished three generations of that family.
So if your dad gets sent to a prison camp, then you're going right along with him, along
with your sister, mom, and any immediate family- even if you're the model North Korean citizen.
Then if you have a child in prison, that child will live out his or her days in that prison
as well.
But what is life like inside the prison camps, and what do they do exactly?
Well, as many dictators have found throughout history, locking up dissidents is a pretty
ok solution, and executing them outright is even better.
However, why just lock them up or kill them when you can capitalize on the free labor
that a prison population affords?
Stalin most famously put tens of thousands of gulag prisoners to work in the Soviet Union
in a bid to modernize his nation.
In fact Soviet political prisoners built much of modern Russia's infrastructure, to include
the famous Moscow Canal which was built by 200,000 prisoners, may of which died from
the extreme conditions.
Today you can even take a romantic cruise down the Moscow canal, literally sailing over
the buried remains of slaves and on waters tamed by pure human misery, just the thing
to really set the mood.
For North Korea free labor is a very appealing prospect, specially since the nation is so
economically impoverished.
Prison laborers are often used in North Korea's mining industry, working without power tools
and usually just pickaxes and shovels, and with absolutely zero safety regulations.
Prisoners also farm food which is sent to Pyongyang, though of course they are not allowed
to eat any of it, and if caught they can be shot.
Many camps produce consumer goods such as furniture which goes on sale in Pyongyang
department stores, while others create building materials to be used around the country.
While this free labor pool must seem like a pretty convenient system for North Korea's
dictators, the reality is that study after study shows that slave labor is far more inefficient
than paid labor, and in actuality often costs more both in direct cost of security and in
lost revenue due to inefficiency.
Russia's famous Moscow canal is estimated to have actually cost Russia millions of rubles
due to the poor workmanship and slow progress of slave labor.
So what are conditions actually like inside the camp?
Thankfully the flood of North Korean defectors have revealed the secrets of these literal
hells on earth.
First, the camps resemble villages more than actual camps, with guards and their families
living next to the camp itself.
While some are fenced, many are not, and the extreme remoteness and hostile terrain, coupled
with the terrible nutrition of its prisoners, is often enough to keep people from trying
to flee.
Then there's also the fact that guards will shoot on sight if anyone even appears to be
running away, and if they can't catch you then they'll kill your family members which
are left behind- though guards are extremely motivated to catch prisoners because often
if a runaway succeeds in escaping, the guards themselves will be executed, all in the name
of preventing the secrets of forced labor camps from escaping the country.
The guards themselves routinely physically and sexually abuse prisoners.
Rape is rampant and much like in the Soviet gulag, female prisoners may trade sexual favors
for a few bits more to eat- or simply be forced into the act by a guard.
Prisoners are routinely beaten for even the most minor infractions, though the abuse isn't
limited just to the guards.
Because the families of guards often live at the camps themselves as well, family members
happily get in on the abuse.
One prisoner at a mining camp explained how the family members of prison guards would
order miners to kneel before them with their mouths open, and then they would spit phlegm
directly into their mouths.
If a prisoner spit it out, they would be beaten, but this prisoner said that you would gag
immediately upon receiving a big wad of mucus into your mouth, which would be excuse enough
for the tormentor to beat you.
Sometimes though the beatings come from your fellow prisoners- one prisoner recounts how
she and several other prisoners were forced to sit in the lotus position and not allowed
to move or stretch their limbs.
After several hours of this someone would inevitably move, which prompted the guards
to order the other prisoners to beat this person.
Grateful for the opportunity to stretch their own limbs, the prisoners would beat the offending
prisoner mercilessly, knowing this was the only exercise they would get.
Letting prisoners punish themselves is a favorite tactic for prison guards, and often prisoners
would be punished as a group for the offenses of just one prisoner.
One former prisoner explained how guards would withhold food, or in winter would not provide
heating nor allow the prisoners to build a fire.
The stressed and angry prisoners would then vent their frustration on the offending prisoner,
often beating them to death.
Sanitation is all but nonexistent in the camps, and running water is not available at all-
even for the plumbing.
One prisoner explained how prisoners would collect their own urine, which they would
then use as water to soften their hardened stool which they rubbed and pressed by hand.
Then they would roll up their clothes and hammer the softened stool down the drain,
and after which would have to use the remaining urine to wash their stool off their hands.
This would inevitably lead to rashes and infections, and many died from the unsanitary conditions.
The lack of sanitation extended to field work as well, with one prisoner explaining how
they were forced to take their own diarrhea and use it to fertilize the corn they grew-
however the guards insisted that they do so with their rice bowls which they ate off of.
They would only have ditch water with which to rinse their bowls in, and then at lunch
time would have to eat off that same bowl.
Not that there's much food for prisoners to eat anyways.
Prisoners are served three meals a day, but meals typically consist of around 150 corn
kernels that are lightly salted.
Prisoners will then supplement their diets any way possible, and one prisoner recalled
how despite the unsanitary conditions, there were no rats or insects to be found inside
the prison because the prisoners ate them all.
Dragonflies, butterflies, and pretty much anything that flew into the camp was caught
and eaten, with pregnant rats being a delicacy because of the fetuses the rat carried inside
it.
Sometimes prisoners will light small fires with which to cook their caught rats or lizards,
but if caught they could be severely beaten by the guards, therefore most prisoners simply
ripped their meals apart with their own hands and let the meat dry, then ate it raw.
The forced labor in a camp typically consists of a 16 hour work day, matched by a quota
that each prisoner was expected to achieve.
This could be anything from pull X amount of weeds, or mine X amount of coal, and if
quotas were not met then prisoners would forego food.
Without food prisoners would grow weaker, and thus new quotas would be even harder to
achieve.
Eventually prisoners would simply starve to death.
For prisoners, labor starts as young as elementary school age, and children to send into mines
or to harvest lumber are in no short supply thanks to the three generations rule.
While on the job, injuries are common, and medical treatment completely nonexistent.
If you weren't cured by a folk remedy, then you would likely die- and injuries were no
excuse for slacking off.
Quotas would not change depending on your health, and thus starvation also adds to cause
of death for injured workers.
After sixteen or more hours of hard labor, prisoners can expect two hours of recreational
time- during which their recreation consists of memorizing and reciting the camp's rules
and regulations.
If a single prisoner makes a mistake or fails to memorize the rules, his or her's entire
section is forced to start from scratch and continue until everyone can recite the rules
perfectly.
This cuts into sleep time, and with labor starting as early as five am, sleep is a precious
commodity.
Yet one prisoner who fled to the south explained how night time was the worst time of all.
Prisoners were stuffed into small cells twenty a piece, and sometimes you didn't have enough
room to stretch your legs.
Men and women were separated, though mothers were allowed to nurse babies.
Prisoners would wail in pain as their bodies broke down from starvation, and women could
be heard screaming as night time was when guards would come to round up women to be
raped.
Not just women though, children would also be rounded up for rape and torture, all as
part of entertainment for the prison officials.
Pregnancies were sometimes brought to term, with the baby growing up a prisoner, but often
pregnant women or girls were simply beaten until they had a miscarriage.
If prisoners misbehave or dare to rebel, they are severely punished- not just with beatings,
which are routine, but with far worse punishments.
One prisoner recalls how his camp had a special area for those being punished by the guards,
this consisted of a specially tiny cell where a prisoner could hardly move.
The prisoner would be forced to sit in cold, muddy water for days or weeks at a time.
If they survived the ordeal prisoners would leave with their flesh rotting off their body.
North Korea's labor camps are a blight on the face of a humanity entering the 21st century.
Hell holes of human rights abuses, they are a reminder that despite the gleaming societies
of the growing list of first world nations, there still exists medieval dictatorships
built on foundations of pure evil.
The Kim family is but one of many of humanity's most vile dynasties, but these chubby, overweight
dictators are a true blight on a world that has worked hard to leave its barbaric roots
behind.
If you ask us, Kim Jong-un needs to choke on a cheeseburger and leave this world behind
already.
How would you survive in a North Korean labor camp?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video A Day in the Life of North Korean Dictator
Kim Jong Un- . Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and
subscribe.
See you next time.