North Korean labor camps a ghastly prospect for U.S. journalists

If their sentence is carried out, Laura Ling and Euna Lee face possible torture and even death in North Korea's notorious gulag system, experts say.

By John M. Glionna

8:04 AM PDT, June 8, 2009

Reporting from Seoul — If North Korea carries out its controversial court verdict, two American TV journalists sentenced to 12 years of hard labor Monday face a grim future in a notorious gulag system, said the author of a study on the regime's prisons.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for San Francisco-based Current TV, were convicted by the nation's top Central Court of an undefined "grave crime" against the hard-line regime after they were reportedly arrested in North Korean territory in March.

In a typically terse statement issued Monday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported that the women were sentenced to 12 years of "reform through labor."

While Pyongyang has not said where the women will serve their time, their future likely includes the possibility of hard labor, starvation and torture in a penal system many consider among the world's most repressive, said David Hawk, author of the 2004 study "The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea's Prison Camps."

Ling and Lee may be sent to a "kyo-hwa-so" or re-education reformatory "that is the equivalent of a felony penitentiary in the U.S., as opposed to a county jail or misdemeanor facility," he said.

"It's extremely hard labor under extremely brutal conditions," said Hawk. "These places have very high rates of deaths in detention. The casualties from forced labor and inadequate food supplies are very high."

Because the pair was tried by the nation's highest court, there can be no appeal, analysts say.

Obama administration officials said Monday that the White House is working "through all possible channels" to secure the release of the women.

In a nationally-televised interview Monday, former U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson called the verdict part of "a high-stakes poker game," adding that the atmosphere might be right for a deal between Washington and Pyongyang.

"It is harsher than expected," the New Mexico governor said of the verdict during an interview on NBC's "Today" show, saying that he would try to seek a sort of "political pardon."

Ling, 32, and Lee, 36, were arrested March 17 along the China-North Korean border while reporting a story on human trafficking by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's regime.

The group Reporters Without Borders said in a statement Monday that the harsh verdict was "clearly designed to scare journalists trying to do investigative reporting in the border area between China and North Korea"

North Korea experts with knowledge of the nation's penitentiary system worried over the women's fate.

"The first thing that passed through my mind when I heard about the verdict was that, from an American perspective, this is tantamount to a death sentence," said Scott Snyder, director of the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy for the Asia Foundation, a Washington-based think tank.

"There aren't a lot of guarantees in that type of environment. It's different from any prison that exists in the modern-day United States. This is a very sobering challenge for a new administration."

North Korean defector Kim Hyuck, who spent a total of seven months between 1998 and 2000 in a "kyo-hwa-so," said that the percentage of prisoners who die from the harsh conditions would be unimaginable in the west.

"It is not an easy place," he said of the camps. "Centers for men and women are separate. But even [the] women's place is not comfortable at all. . . . When I was in the center, roughly 600-700 out of a total 1,500 died."

Hawk said many of the re-education camps are affiliated with mines or textile factories where inmates labor for long hours, shifts that are often followed by work criticism sessions and the forced memorization of dry North Korean policy doctrine.

The literal meaning of a "kyo-hwa-so" in Korean is "a place to make a good person through education," said Hawk, who interviewed a dozen gulag survivors for his study for a group known as the U.S. Committee for Humans Rights in North Korea.

Kim, 28, who now studies math at a South Korean university, said that escape from the camps is nearly impossible.

"If someone is missing, the rest of us would be put in jail. Nobody can go out. No one can work. If a missing person gets caught, without question they will be shot dead," he said.

"Nobody was successful in escaping. Three tried when I was there, but they all got caught as they couldn't cross the border into China. I was among 23 people put into the center -- and 21 of them died there."

Kim and Hawk described long days at the camps that began before dawn. Workers are fed "watery corn gruel" for breakfast and then sent off to their assignments, Hawk said.

To become sick, Kim said, is often to die.

Most people died from malnutrition and related diseases such as diarrhea and fever, he said. "There is no medication. Officers gave us a powder made of pine tree leaves. That's what they gave us for every disease. It was just to give some sort of comfort."

A harsher form of death was being sent to the solitary cell.

"If someone gets sent into that cell, they wouldn't endure even a week," Kim said. It's hard to sit there or stand there. Officers don't beat them in the solitary cell, because they are going to die anyway just by being left there."

The political prisoners fare worst of all, he said.

"They're taken care of separately by the spy agency of North Korea," he said. "They are beaten so harshly. There is no responsibility for their death."

Hawk said torture and punishment was often used as a tool to maintain control. "People are punished for violating labor camp regulations," he said. The most common violation is trying to steal food of one sort or another.

"If people eat food that's supposed to be for livestock, it's a violation. Failing to meet your work production quota is another violation. Punishment is severe beatings and forms of torture."

According to a recent study by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea in Seoul, public executions are still conducted in North Korea. Nearly 80% of those polled witnessed public executions. In addition, 78% said they had heard of torture and maltreatment taking place in detention centers.

But Hawk said people often survive sentences to the North Korean re-education camps.

"If these women do get sent to the camps, they're probably going to make sure that they don't die in detention," he said. "They're probably going to be treated better."