These accounts are not only powerfully moving at the human level but document practices that require more vigorous attention from human rights organizations, democratic governments, and international organizations worldwide. One thing that the North Korean regime seems to fear is exposure and censure by the international community. This is a point that the former political prisoners and prison guards from North Korea agree upon and stress repeatedly. They are convinced that international demands to open up these prisons and camps to international inspection and to terminate the abuses within them can save many lives and relieve much suffering. They emphasize that closing down the North Korean gulag is a precondition for any process of meaningful liberalization in North Korea.

The excerpts that follow, which are presented topically, are drawn from the testimony of two former prisoners and two former prison guards.

Mr. Chul Hwan Kang, whose grandfather had voluntarily returned to North Korea in 1963 following a successful business career in Japan, was [End Page 83] nine years old when he was sent with his family to North Korea's Yodok prison camp in 1977. He was released ten years later. Between 1987 and 1992 he worked as an inventory clerk and assistant researcher before defecting to South Korea in August 1992.

Mrs. Sun Ok Lee received a high-school degree in engineering and trained as an accountant before being appointed director of the Government District Supply Office for Cadres in Onsong-kun, North Korea, in 1977. She graduated from Economics College, Chongjin City, North Korea in 1983. Arrested and detained for 14 months between 1986 and 1987 for allegedly embezzling state property, Mrs. Lee went on to serve a five-year prison term at Kaechon Prison. She was released in December 1992 and defected to South Korea three years later. At present, Mrs. Lee is receiving medical treatment in South Korea, where she is a lecturer on the realities of North Korean life. She has recently published a book, Bright Eyes of Tailless Beasts, an account of the atrocities being committed in North Korean prison camps.

Mr. Dong Chul Choi, son of Mrs. Lee, served as a private in a security regiment of the state security guards in Pyongyang between 1983 and 1986, prior to his mother's arrest. During that period, he was also assigned to Camp Number 11 in Kyongsang district, in North Hamkyong Province. Mr. Choi escaped to South Korea with his mother in December 1995.

Mr. Myung Chul Ahn was born in North Korea in 1969. In July 1987, shortly after graduating from Agriculture College in his hometown of Hongwon-kun, he joined the North Korean army as a prison guard. Between 1987 and 1994, he was assigned to four different camps. In September 1994, he escaped to China, and arrived safely in South Korea the following month. At present, Ahn is an agriculture officer at the National Federation of Agriculture Cooperatives in Seoul, where he is also studying part-time toward a university degree in business management.

The testimonies excerpted below have been drawn from the following sources, as indicated by the numeral listed at the end of each excerpt: (1) material provided by the Seoul-based Citizens' Alliance to Help Political Prisoners in North Korea, ⁶ a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization whose quarterly newsletter, Life and Human Rights, features accounts by former prisoners and prison guards from North Korea; (2) a transcript supplied by the Washington-based Defense Forum Foundation, drawn from presentations by Kang and Mrs. Lee during their visit to Washington, D.C., in early 1998; and (3) personal interviews conducted by Journal of Democracy coeditor Larry Diamond in Seoul in May 1998. The annotated illustrations that accompany the testimonies have been excerpted from Myung Chul Ahn's book, They Are Crying for Help, an account of the brutal treatment of prisoners in North Korean concentration camps, published in Seoul in 1995. [End Page 84]

Arrest and Trial

Chul Hwan Kang: I was born in North Korea in 1968. . . . One day in early August 1977, seven security officers stormed our apartment by surprise. At that time, we lived in a Police and Transportation Ministry apartment, not far from the Taedong bridge in Pyongyang. . . . The officers took inventory of our property and forced my grandmother to sign a paper. The paper read: "The property of Tae-Hyu Kang [my grandfather], who committed treason, will be confiscated in accordance with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Criminal Code. Signed by: Jae-Kun Jun, Section Chief, National Security Ministry."

We heard a vehicle arriving outside at four o'clock the next morning. We were kicked by the officers to move to the car. My mother was stopped by one of the officers when she was about to board the truck and told: "You will be traveling separately." This was how I was separated from my mother. After more than ten hours, we arrived at a political-prisoner camp in Yodok, South Hamkyong Province, better known as the Korean People's Guard Unit Number 2915. There, we met my uncle who had been arrested the previous night. There were some 1,000 guards in the camp, under the command of the Seventh Bureau of the National Security Ministry. (1)

Sun Ok Lee: On 26 October 1986, I was arrested on the false charge of "government property embezzlement," and was subjected to all kinds of severe tortures and cruel treatment during the period of preliminary investigation for 14 months. I was so badly beaten, kicked, and suffocated that I could hardly walk from the cell to the interrogation office. They had to drag me all the way. My lip was torn half way to my ear. They frequently poured cold water on my body and left me outside in freezing winter nights for one hour each time. They called this "fish freezing." Once I was left on the floor unconscious for many hours and woke up to find worms in my wounds. . . .

The heart-breaking pain of interrogation began early in the morning and lasted till midnight. Often they denied me water and food for days and made me stand next to officers eating good food. Some prisoners died under torture, including Young Hwan Choi, former supply management director; Ms. Sun Nyo Kim, a former bank clerk; and some others I can name. The interrogators demanded that I should confess and admit the charge. I continued to resist and plead innocent. One day they offered me a proposal that, if I admitted the charge, they would not let my son and husband be harmed. They further added that I would have a chance to prove my innocence at trial. I signed the paper, and I was brought to a trial on 9 November 1987. [End Page 85]

My trial began at ten o'clock in the morning. I requested to see my husband. I wanted to tell my husband how brutally I had been treated. The interrogators replied to me: "Who? Your husband? He is not here. You'd better be careful with your tongue today. Otherwise, you will be in serious trouble. Remember that!" A preliminary trial took place in the office of the Director of Commercial Management. There, for the first time, I met a judge and a lawyer. They asked me if I admitted the charge against me. I had been told repeatedly and forced by the interrogators to promise that I would admit the charge during the trial. But I could not control myself and pleaded innocent and asked for a fair investigation. At this surprise protest, the guards next to me shouted at me and kicked me in the knee. The judge declared the preliminary trial closed at that moment. While I was waiting for my formal trial at five o'clock in the afternoon, I was starving without lunch and had a hard time composing myself. The interrogators came to me and told me to admit the charge and save my son and husband. During the trial, the judge asked me if I admitted the charge. I said yes. He committed me to a prison term of 13 years. The lawyer didn't say a word during the trial, which was immediately closed. I realized that the trial was only a process to imprison people. Later, I discovered that my son was dismissed from his school and my husband from his post in connection with the charge against me. The police interrogators had cheated me. (1)

Prison Life

Chul Hwan Kang: My elementary-school days proceeded with fear and hard labor. There were three hours for study in the morning. Children who asked a question, talked to another child during the class, or giggled over a teacher's mistake would be severely beaten. From the fourth hour on, it was labor work such as collecting grass for rabbits, distributing human excrement to plants, collecting stones to make a wall, land-leveling, etc.

Coarsely polished corn was the only grain that was rationed. Most new prisoners suffer from dysentery as a result of eating the coarsely broken hard corn. Some prisoners suffer from diarrhea for as long as six months before they finally die. I was able to survive dysentery as a result of my grandmother's efforts to save my life. The most common diseases among the prisoners include pellagra, tuberculosis, stomach disorder, dysentery, hemorrhoids, pleurisy, frostbite, and mental disease. Mental-disease patients are sequestered in an iron cell and subject to simple farm work such as digging and weeding. Most patients are separated and left to die. [End Page 86]

In the camp, you cannot commit suicide. If a member of a family kills himself, the offender as well as the other family members are condemned as traitors, and the prison term of the family is extended by five more years. However, I observed several cases of suicide each month. Those who commit suicide are buried at an unknown place without the knowledge of the family. There is no mark of the burial so that nobody in the family can find the burial site. . . .

It is very cold in the mountains in winter. Many prisoners lost their fingers and toes from frostbite. The prisoners usually find out how long a prisoner has been detained in the camp simply by counting the number of fingers and toes still left.

Once we were engaged in land-leveling work outside the camp farm. A few bulldozers were removing bushes and stones. Suddenly, a change of wind brought us a nasty smell of dead bodies. The bulldozers began to unearth fresh corpses here and there. Obviously, it was a hidden burial place. We children were used to watching dead bodies, yet it was indeed shocking to see so many dead bodies unearthed by bulldozers. We were shocked and ran away. Soon, a group of prisoners arrived to handle the dead bodies. They dug a big hole and buried the corpses, some 50 of them. Strangely, the spot produced corn most richly that year.

Beyond the mountains encompassing the Yodok camp is a place called Chung Pong, a most dreaded life-imprisonment camp. This is a camp to detain prisoners for life. So-called wicked reactionaries and their families who do not deserve to live in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea are detained there. They cannot return to the society and must end their lives there. In North Korea, they call this exercise an "extermination operation." In other words, this is a camp to detain prisoners to kill. Some of the children in my class were dragged to the life-imprisonment sector with their parents. The Christian woman and her two daughters in our camp were also dragged to this sector. They had been detected praying at night. . . .

When I was a middle-school boy, I was forced to watch the public execution of two prisoners who attempted to escape. One of them died immediately. The body of the other prisoner showed some movement and I saw his urination under his body. The scene was so shocking that I vomited and fell to the ground. The security officers ordered prisoners to throw stones at them. I saw the Koreans who were repatriated from Japan intentionally missing the target. (1)

Sun Ok Lee: In the North Korean prison, the rights to speak, laugh, sing, and look in a mirror are denied to prisoners. When you are called, you must go down on your knees, bow your head, and answer questions only. The North Korean prison is a place where pregnant women are denied the right to deliver a baby, and prisoners are subjected to 18 hours of hard labor, during which time the prisoner must meet the day's work quota. A [End Page 87] repeated failure to do so will find the prisoner in a punishment cell, a prison within a prison. No prisoner can survive the prison without being degraded to the status of a beast. The prison was, indeed, a place for beasts with no tails. I cannot understand how a human being can treat another human being so cruelly.

My days in North Korea's Kaechon Prison began in November 1987, 14 months after my arrest. The prison uniform was almost a rag, and the dirt on it made it stiff, almost like a plank, causing painful friction with my skin. I was constantly kicked from one location to another. I was no longer a human but a beast. Eighty percent of the prisoners were ordinary housewives who had committed a minor offense, such as attempting to buy a blanket in the market for her daughter's wedding.

Work begins at 5:30 a.m. and ends at 11 p.m. You can go to the toilet only twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, at fixed times. There is only one toilet for every 300 prisoners. Eighty to ninety prisoners share a floor space that measures five by six meters. Sleeping there is a torture in itself. Therefore, prisoners normally prefer sleeping at the work site. Failure to meet the quota will result in a reduced ration the next day, one of the most dreaded punishments. Many prisoners refused to go to the toilet in an effort to meet the work quota.

A 52-year-old housewife failed to detect a small needle in a huge pile of used cotton for army winter uniforms. She was sent to the punishment cell, a small space with a ceiling so low that the prisoner cannot stand. The walls have sharp spikes so that the prisoner cannot lean against them and a toilet hole at the bottom so that the prisoner cannot sit. A prisoner must stay there for a week. When she was released after a week, she could not walk and had to crawl on her hands and knees. However, she tried to work hard to accomplish her work quota and get a full ration. The guards kicked her many times when she could not move fast. One day she died on a cold floor. The senior guard in charge complained: "Are we going to waste another straw mat to get rid of this corpse?" Thus a dear housewife perished without the knowledge of her family. This was only the beginning, and I was to see many similar incidents in the years to come. (1)

Torture Techniques

Sun Ok Lee: I spent a year and two months inside a detention house before I had a trial and was sent to the camp. During this detention before trial, I was subjected to various kinds of tortures. The first one was a situation where they took all my clothes off and tied me to a chair. Using [End Page 88] a whip they began whipping me. During the whipping, the physical pain was, of course, tremendous, but what was harder for me to bear was this tremendous sense of humiliation, being naked in front of strangers.

Still, I would not accept my charges, so they hit me many times in the face. During that process, I lost six of my teeth, and because of this hitting I also suffered from partial paralysis of my face. I still have trouble moving my facial muscles.

I believe that they have special training programs to produce experts in torture techniques. I witnessed different rooms in this detention house for electric torture and water torture, and some of the rooms had bars so that you could hang people with their arms and legs tied to beat them.

Let me tell you about the water torture I experienced. They used a special kind of kettle that could be inserted into your mouth. Once it is inserted, you cannot resist it or pull it out of your mouth because you are all tied up. They poured water in my body, and I found my abdomen swelling because of all this water. When my abdomen got enlarged, they put a board on top of my abdomen, and people stepped on it so that the water would come back out. The pain that happens in that process is just beyond anything that anyone can describe. Because of that water torture, I sustained a lung injury and later suffered from tuberculosis. Because of all the water that got into my body, I also suffered from pleurisy. And they also tortured my fingers, twisting them with a wooden stick. Because of that torture I still have lingering finger-joint problems.

They also used a brick kiln where they bake bricks. As soon as they finished baking the bricks, they took the bricks out and pushed me into the brick kiln. It was filled with heat and dust. I was resisting when they were pushing me into the kiln and I pushed the doorway into the kiln. It was so hot that I suffered from burns on both palms. I still have scars on my palms from that experience. Also, I was subjected to a torture involving extremely cold temperature outside during the winter. They would make me stand on ice for hours, as a result of which I suffered from frostbite and lost all ten of my toe nails. (2)

The Economics of Prison Labor

Chul Hwan Kang: Yodok comprises many villages, but it is a prison and concentration camp all around, in that it is all enclosed by barbed wire and walls. Once you get in, you can never get out. The number of prisoners in Yodok keeps changing, from 25,000 to 35,000 or so. With several villages in the area, it can accommodate these huge numbers of people. There are land mines all around. The government may have wanted to kill all the [End Page 89] prisoners, but might have realized that by spending a little money, it could get something from their labor. Then if they die in the process, so be it. I was given the understanding that the income from our products and our labor was enough to maintain the security apparatus of North Korea. For example, there is a gold mine that the Japanese closed a long time ago, and the North Koreans used primitive means to try to get some gold out of it--more than ten kilograms of gold per year. (3)

Sun Ok Lee: Investigators know that the people they are picking up are innocent, but they have to supply a certain number of people each year to meet a target that is provided by party headquarters, a target that they have to meet for the regime, in order to get free labor.

I was a statistician and an accountant. I oversaw all the people coming and getting food and so on at Kaechon Prison. I was in charge of making distribution lists and assigning work quotas and tasks, and in doing so, I had to make sure that there were enough people to do things. Then I would be notified that a certain number of people would be arriving each year. There is a branch in the central government called "Seventh Bureau," which is in charge of operating the concentration camps. This bureau gets instructions from the National Planning Bureau. They get a plan. They then work out their plan to supply free labor in fulfilment of the National Planning Bureau's requirements. [End Page 90]

Whereas ordinary workers in North Korea only work 8 hours and have to be given clothes and food, prisoners typically get one pair of clothes in ten years, and are given only very little food. This must be very appealing to the prison masters and to the regime. At the beginning of each year, I would receive a preliminary national plan for the first quarter. The official national plan would arrive some months later. The preliminary plan gives full information for the entire country. It contains information about other prisons and concentration camps.

Each year when we were working together, the prison authorities would say something like: "This is so important. It constitutes 40 percent of the national production." It was just part of common conversation. In the beginning of each year, these huge records would arrive, followed by someone from the National Planning Bureau. And conversations would take place among high-ranking officials, people with badges and uniforms. I would be the only prisoner. Based on the National Planning Bureau figures, I would have to work out a plan for the prison. . . .

Though I would work out a monthly or quarterly work plan, the materials sometimes arrived late. But prisoners would nonetheless have no excuse. They would have to accomplish the quota by the end of the quarter. I would say: "It is difficult enough for each prisoner to produce a hundred of these items, but now they have to produce 150. How can they do this?" And I would be told: "Look, what you are doing in these prisons accounts for 40 percent of the national production, so you had better shut up and do it." This figure was almost common knowledge among us. It was not a secret.

Once the work plan arrives for the prison, there is no excuse for not meeting the work quota. Even if some prisoners die and the number of workers decreases, you are still expected to meet the annual target. So if you lose prisoners, you must recruit fresh prisoners, or you will not meet your quota.

I never heard a prison official request more prisoners. It wasn't necessary. At the beginning of each year, the Bureau knew the number of prisoners at each prison and concentration camp, and they had a predetermined plan for supplying new prisoners. The work quota had to be met under any circumstance. If prisoners could not meet the quota, they would have to work until midnight or 1 a.m. . . .

If a prisoner couldn't fulfil it by a given deadline, then he would get a reduced meal the next day--a severe punishment for already undernourished individuals. If someone failed to fulfil a quota five times, he would be sent to the prison's punishment cell. There are two slogans on the walls of the rather big prison: The first reads: "Collective Action is the Only Action." The other reads: "Ideological Reform Through Strengthened Labor." (3)

Dong Chul Choi: In Camp Number 11, where I served as a guard, the [End Page 91] major item for production was potatoes. We made starch out of it for supply to public feeding stations. Also, there was timber and corn production. . . . The average total output of corn from each concentration camp reaches 20,000 tons a year. The size of cultivable land in each camp is about 2,000 hectares. In the case of Yodok, it was about 2,000. I was in a security regiment of the state security guards (1983-1986), at the headquarters in Pyongyang, and also at Camp Number 11, in Kyongsang district, in North Hamkyong Province, and was thus in a position to get reports. There were many battalions for each camp. I didn't read all the reports. Once a month or a quarter, the battalion leaders of the guards' units would come to headquarters and talk to one another. I would be there with the officers and would hear all kinds of things: information about the size of cultivable land, the total output, etc.

All prison camps raise livestock, pigs, goats, and so on. One of the camps produces the most popular brand of bicycles made in North Korea, Kalmaegi. Its quality is so good that in the beginning it was even exported to China. Then the lack of supply of raw materials led to a decline in the quality of production, and recently it lost its popularity in the Chinese market. (3)

Chul Hwan Kang: On my very first day--at the age of nine--I received a quota. The first work I had to carry out was to walk to the mountain and collect firewood and bring back a large load to the school. I was told to repeat it ten times. It took two to three hours for a round trip from the mountain to the school with a load of wood. Unless you finish it you can't go home. I worked through the night and by the time I had finished it was after midnight, and I fell to the ground. Of course, other children who had been there longer could do it faster.

The assignment was given to a group of five children. If any child failed to accomplish the quota, the rest of the children were also responsible and could not go home. No child could help the others, as they all had too much to do themselves. So if a child failed, the others would be very hard on him because then they would have to do his work.

Other types of work included collecting gold from sand, using a net in the river (shaking and washing it in the river). This was much easier; sometimes you would be lucky and meet the quota earlier, and then you could just play a little, rather than tell the teacher that you had already met your quota.

Collecting firewood was very difficult. Other types of difficult work included such farm work as planting corn. Newly arrived children can never meet the quota. For a skilled child, it is an all-day task. Because people have to work so hard, the prison camps always yield a "bumper crop," and never a bad crop. Today North Korea is experiencing food shortages, because no one has his own land to work on. But in the camp, prisoners have to work hard, or they won't survive. . . .

Besides food production, three major prisoner-camp activities include gold mining, limestone mining, and logging (to earn foreign exchange). [End Page 92] Gold is 100 percent for export. As for the timber, whenever we cut down trees, we would be told by the guards: "Look, you have to be careful, this is for export to Japan." We would put ropes around the trees to make sure that they fell softly and did not break. The guards would tell us that the logs could not be exported to Japan if they were broken. It is a certain variety of tree that the Japanese favor: the Korean name for it is Tarup tree. . . . To pass inspection, the diameter would have to be over 30 centimeters, the length over 5 meters, and it would have to be straight. This is winter work, because trees are driest in winter, and the wood is of best quality when it is cut dry. We were even told that that particular species of wood made the best-quality furniture and also columns for Buddhist temples in Japan. . . .

So many people were crippled and killed while handling these trees. They would fall off the trees as they were trimming them. We would bring the logs down to the foot of the mountain for inspection. If there was the slightest damage, they wouldn't pass; then we would have to do the work all over again. So even on cold winter days, we would cover the logs with our clothes to make sure that they arrived at the inspection point unharmed. But these were very heavy logs we were carrying, and some undernourished prisoners would drop the logs, fall down with them, break their arms and legs, or be killed. So many prisoners were killed in this way. (3)

Sun Ok Lee: In Kaechon Prison, there is a separate building for production for overseas export. From March 1988 until January 1989 (I can remember the dates), we produced women's brassieres for export to Russia. For the whole of 1989 we produced all kinds of table mats, [End Page 93] ashtrays, and vases to be sent to Poland. In 1989, for export to France, we produced artificial roses, one stem with twelve flowers put in a box. In the autumn of 1989 and during all of 1990 we produced hand-knitted sweaters for Japan, for both men and women. Between 1988 and 1991 we produced all kinds of garments, including summer shirts and white and blue casual clothes which I understand went to various countries in Europe. For most of these items [mats, brassieres, artificial roses], the raw materials came from the country involved, and we processed it and shipped it back. But the cotton clothes were made from North Korean fabrics. These clothes went to Hong Kong for export to different countries in Europe.

Of course [the use of prison labor to produce items for export] is still going on. They were doing it still when I left prison in 1992. And the economy has kept deteriorating since then. North Korea is in need of income from outside to sustain itself. The work we engaged in at the prison required a high degree of skill. It had to be meticulous, right in every detail, which can only be possible in prison. People developed expertise in doing very specific tasks. Outside prison, no one in North Korea could perform this work that efficiently, to that standard. In prison, the slightest mistake or fault could be cause for severe punishment, possibly even death. What they do in these meticulous jobs is a matter of life and death. So they are very, very efficient and careful to do it correctly.

When we were making brassieres, for example, the thread in the sewing machine would sometimes run out and get cut off. However, a brassiere has to be sewn in such a way that there is no break in the internal stitching. If it was not right, they would have to do it again. The women would cry, brokenhearted at the thought that they would have to take such care not to have the inside needling with cut thread. And all so that women abroad would be treated so well. But what about us? Are we not human beings? Or are we only beasts? For not doing the work right, many people would be sent to a punishment cell, or shot to death. Or they would be crippled, in which case they would not be able to work much longer. (3)

Appeals for International Assistance

Chul Hwan Kang: I believe that the North Korean regime is one of the very few remaining regimes on earth that is still carrying out these serious human rights violations. And I find it very frustrating that there is so little information, understanding, attention, or interest in this issue.

With regard to North Korea, I understand that there is a lot of talk and [End Page 94] interest about the nuclear issue and the food situation, but I would like to emphasize that there is a tremendous amount of human suffering going on inside North Korea right now. I find it fundamentally wrong and unacceptable that there should be human beings dying there every day. What I would like to suggest is that the international community ask to inspect these detention camps before talking about the food situation or nuclear issues.

You see, the food situation that a lot of people are talking about can only be resolved when there is a reform of the North Korean system. And that can only be carried out through liberalization of the system. Before there can be liberalization, there has to be an improvement in the human rights situation. To improve the human rights situation, we need to get people outside of North Korea to ask North Korea to open up these prison camps. These human beings inside North Korean detention camps ought never to have to suffer all this pain. I really hope that the United States and other countries can do something about this human suffering that is going on inside North Korea. (2)

Sun Ok Lee: Given my limited time, I just cannot recount all the experiences that I had inside these camps, but I can tell you this: I understand that many Americans are concerned about the human rights conditions inside China, but they do not seem to have any idea about what is going on inside North Korea. . . .

I know that a lot of food aid is going to North Korea. I think that the U.S. should condition this food aid on North Korea's opening up its prison camps to show the outside world what is going on inside. (2)

Assistance [from the West] must be provided, but not unconditionally. Make sure that what you provide reaches the final beneficiaries. Mention that you are aware of the conditions in the camps, and that many of these people are in prison simply because they are Christians. Demand to inspect all the prisons and concentration camps. When they open up model facilities, don't be tricked or cheated. Visit the ones that they try to hide. The North Korean leadership is very sensitive to outside opinion. At one point in the 1980s they became frightened by growing international attention and reduced the number of camps, probably concentrating the prisoners in a smaller number of camps. They will respond to international exposure and pressure. . . .

Since 1990, expressions of outside concern have resulted in a reduction in concentration camps, if not in a reduction in the total number of prisoners. . . . On Song Detention Center, which was very big, [End Page 95] accommodating up to 50,000 prisoners at one time, was closed simply because it was on the border with China and had more potential to be exposed to the outside world. And some detention centers near Pyongyang were closed because they were more likely to be visited. As a result, the number of prisoners in Kaechon Prison increased while I was there. . . .

When I was in North Korea, I did not have the slightest idea of freedom and what it means, or of what human rights are. North Korea's people have been confined to their small territory and have been regimented for such a long time that they are completely ignorant of a free society outside their country's borders. International pressure must break through these barriers and inform the North Korean population of how important democracy is, and give them the knowledge to compare their present situation with what is going on in the rest of the world. (3)

Notes

1. Richard Kagan, Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) (Minneapolis, Minn.: Minnesota Lawyers International Human Rights Committee, 1988). See also Amnesty International's Amnesty International Report entry for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, 1990, 1993, 1994, and 1995.

2. See U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1997 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998), 813-22.

3. United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. "Situation of Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea," Sub-Commission Resolution 1997/3, 21 August 1997.

4. Sung-Chul Choi, ed., International Community and Human Rights in North Korea (Seoul, Korea: Center for the Advancement of North Korean Human Rights, 1996), 11.

5. Sung-Chul Choi, ed., International Community, 11.

6. For more information on the Citizens' Alliance to Help Political Prisoners in North Korea and its activities, send an e-mail to nkhuman@NKhumanrights.or.kr, or visit its website at www.NKhumanrights.or.kr.

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