North Korea: Thousands held in prison camps while authorities maintain control over speech and clothing

North Korea is one of the world’s most repressive states, where civic space is rated ‘closed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor. The government restricts all civil and political liberties for its citizens, including freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association and religion. It prohibits all organised political opposition, independent media, civil society and trade unions.

In March 2024, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed Joe Colombano as the UN Resident Coordinator in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). He is the first representative of the international organisation to enter the country since the coronavirus pandemic. Colombano will “support the country’s commitment to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and lead the U.N. team’s efforts” – including in the areas of food and nutrition security, social development services, resilience and sustainability, and data and development management.

In an oral update to the Human Rights Council on 20th March 2024, Deputy High Commissioner Nada Al-Nashif said that North Korea was showing no signs of addressing impunity and that it is imperative that accountability is pursued outside the country. She added: “This should be achieved first and foremost through referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC), or national level prosecutions in accordance with international standards under accepted principles of extraterritorial and universal jurisdiction.”

On 4th April 2024, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution ensuring continued scrutiny of North Korea’s human rights record. The resolution renews the mandate of the UN special rapporteur on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and asks the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare its first comprehensive report on the North Korean human rights situation since the Commission of Inquiry (COI) published its landmark report in 2014. The new resolution also increases resources for the high commissioner’s office to focus on criminal accountability for North Korea’s rights violations.

In recent months, there have been reports of the ongoing detention of individuals in prison camps as a means of suppressing dissent, while defectors were subjected to serious human rights abuses including torture. New laws have been introduced since 2020 to criminalise expression and patriotic songs have been banned, while the authorities intensify the crackdown on young people’s speech and clothing.

Association

Arbitrary arrests and detentions in political prison camps

In April 2024, Amnesty International published their annual report which highlighted that there was a pervasive fear of falling foul of the authorities and of being denounced by fellow citizens, and the government frequently used arbitrary arrest and detention as a means of suppressing opposition or perceived dissent.

Political prison camps (kwanliso) were believed to remain in operation, although the authorities continued to deny their existence. Those detained in the camps included thousands of people who had expressed dissenting views or otherwise criticised the government. Prisoners in the camps were subjected to forced labour and inhumane conditions.

There are also serious concerns about the fate of hundreds of people, mainly women, who the Chinese authorities reportedly returned to North Korea forcibly in October 2023. North Korean authorities regard anyone who escapes the country as “criminals” or “traitors” for “illegally” crossing the border. In the past, returnees have been arbitrarily detained and subjected to torture and other ill-treatment.

Defectors repatriated are still in re-education camps

According to Daily NK in April 2024, about 200 North Korean defectors who were forcibly repatriated after spending time in Chinese prisons in Liaoning and Jilin provinces were placed in Ministry of State Security detention centres in Sinuiju, North Pyongan Province, and Onsong, North Hamgyong Province, where they underwent three-month investigations into the circumstances of their defection and their activities and crimes in China.

Local agents of the Ministry of State Security conducted high-intensity interrogations of the defectors, comparing the returnees’ testimony with materials obtained from the Chinese police. During interrogation, agents subjected detainees to serious human rights abuses, including assault, torture, forced labor, sexual harassment and rape.

Most defectors were taken into police custody in their places of residence before defecting, where they underwent preliminary investigations and trials before being sent to re-education camps. Some of the defectors forcibly repatriated have been sent to notorious political prison camps from which few ever emerge alive.

Expression

Laws to control expression

In March 2024, Human Rights Watch published a report on the devasting consequences for the North Korean people of the government’s intensifying repression and worsening isolation from 2019 until late 2023.

The report highlighted that since 2019, the authorities have acted out of apparent concern for possible unrest by a population suffering from the government’s Covid-19 related measures and the impact of new UN economic sanctions on top of existing restrictions. They ramped-up ideological campaigns and imposed new laws to restrict access to unsanctioned information and media content and devices, and in the way people speak and express themselves within North Korea.

The government enacted the Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Law in December 2020, which bans people from smuggling, viewing, and distributing “reactionary” and “anti-socialist ideology and culture”; the Youth Education Guarantee Law in September 2021, which bans young people from copying foreign culture and reorients them to a “socialist lifestyle”; and the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Law in January 2023, which permits the authorities to punish people for using South Korean intonations or slang. Public executions of offenders are permitted, evidently to increase a sense of fear and alarm among the population.

Some of the punishments in these new laws are more severe than those the government has previously stipulated for the most serious “crimes against the nation,” including conspiracy to overthrow the government, terrorism, or treason.

Patriotic songs that refer to reunification banned

In February 2024, North Korea banned more than 100 patriotic songs because they refer to reunification with the South – the latest step making it clear that unifying the divided peninsula is no longer a priority for Pyongyang, generating confusion among residents.

According to Radio Free Asia (RFA), since the start of 2024 supreme leader Kim Jong Un has ordered the government to take several steps to distance the North from the South. They include removing language from state media indicating that Koreans on both sides of the demilitarised zone (DMZ) are “one people,” ending all economic cooperation with the South, and even tearing down a major Pyongyang landmark symbolising a future reunion. Kim has also publicly threatened to “annihilate” Seoul.

Additionally, the authoritarian state has dropped a phrase symbolising a unified Korea from the lyrics of its national anthem, while erasing an image of the Korean Peninsula, viewed as a unification reference, from its major websites.

Pedicab driver arrested in Pyongyang after protesting fine

A pedicab driver in Pyongyang’s Hyongjesan district was arrested in March 2024 after he protested against being fined by police. According to Daily NK, then man who complained about the fine was sentenced to six months of disciplinary labour.

Pedicab drivers have recently become a common sight on the outskirts of Pyongyang, where they provide transportation for the capital city’s residents going to or from work or doing business elsewhere. Pedicab drivers ride bicycles retrofitted with a seat for passengers on the back and transport passengers between Pyongyang’s districts or from the city centre to surrounding counties.

Pyongyang police are fining pedicab drivers, saying that making money by pushing people around on retrofitted bicycles is an uncultured and non-socialist behavior that does not fit the mood of the capital.

Authorities intensify crackdown on young people’s speech and clothing styles

Authorities in Sinuiju are once again intensifying crackdowns on young people who use the South Korean language or wear South Korean-style clothing.

According to Daily NK, the city’s authorities have recently stepped-up crackdowns on young people who wear clothes that don’t fit the socialist lifestyle. Universities have formed enforcement teams and are cracking down on students’ clothing and South Korean speech as they leave school.

North Korean enforcement teams use scissors to cut up the clothes of young people caught wearing “capitalist-style” fashions and shame people caught in crackdowns in struggle sessions. The authorities also inform the workplaces of parents whose children have been caught up in the crackdowns.

North Korea considers inappropriate clothing or hairstyles or the use of the South Korean language to be anti-socialist or non-socialist behavior, and students who flagrantly break the rules are severely punished.