© GRAPHIC NEWS
© GRAPHIC NEWS
NORTH KOREA
Political prison camps
May 2, 2017 - An estimated 180,000 people suspected of political wrong-doing or wrong-thinking -- including family members “guilty by association” -- are incarcerated in North Korea’s kwanliso penal camp system.
On April 22, Kim Sang-duk became the third U.S. citizen to be held in North Korea after police arrested him as he prepared to board a flight at Pyongyang International Airport.
Kim Sang-Duk, also known as Tony Kim, 58, had been teaching at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.
Those accused of serious political offences are sent to political prison camps, known as kwanliso, operated by North Korea’s National Security Agency.
Link to Amnesty International video of former prisoners and their captors exposing the horror of life inside North Korea’s kwanliso camps
In March 2016, University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years hard labour in North Korea for crimes against the state. He was arrested in January after attempting to steal a political sign from a hotel wall as a prank.
Kim Dong Chul, a naturalised U.S. citizen, born in South Korea, was arrested in October 2015. Kim, 64, who once lived in Virginia, was convicted of espionage in 2016 and sentenced to 10 years of forced labour.