Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs written question – answered at on 15 November 2011.
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment his Department has made of the (a) size, (b) extent of use and (c) conditions of prison camps in North Korea.
I recently met Shin Dong-Hyuk, a North Korean defector who spent the first 23 years of his life in a labour camp. His account and those of other defectors show that torture and beatings are still widely practised in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea's (DPRK) prison camps. Most inmates endure hard labour, poor access to food, and lack of medical care. Some 150,000 to 200,000 political prisoners are reported to be serving terms in DPRK camps. A lack of transparency and independent verification mean that we are unable to assess the situation directly. This is why we regularly urge the North Korean regime to allow access to the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea to verity the situation independently.
Yes0 people think so
No0 people think not
Would you like to ask a question like this yourself? Use our Freedom of Information site.