CAMP 14: KAECHON INTERNMENT CAMP

            As it is the tenth anniversary of Shin Dong Hyuk’s escape from Camp 14, I will post information about the Concentration Camp, Kaechon Internment Camp, AKA Camp 14 from Wikipedia.

The Kaechon political prison camp (개천 제14호 관리소), also known as Camp 14, is located in the center of the country, approximately 40 miles north of Pyongyang, in South Pyongan Province. Situated on the north bank of the Taedong River, the camp is directly across the river from the Pukchang political prison camp (Camp 18) and near Mount Purok. The Kaechon political prison camp is located 12 miles to the southeast of Kaechon reeducation labor camps (개천 제1호교화소). The DPRK government maintains different systems of labor camps – the kwan-li-so, or political prison camps, and the kwo-hwa-so, or reeduction labor camps – among other types of detention facilities.

Kaechon is approximately 60 square miles in area and is said to hold 15,000 prisoners, all serving life sentences. The camp appears to have been operating since at least the 1960s.

Like all political prison camps in North Korea, Kaechon is designed to segregate from the general prison population those “enemies of the State” that have committed political crimes and to punish them for those crimes through unending hard labor. However, some Kaechon prisoners are victims of the regime’s “three generations of punishment,” in which two subsequent generations within the family of a “politically unreliable” person might be sent to the camps or born there, and might subsequently die in the camp without necessarily having committed a crime themselves.

Kaechon is essentially one large total control zone from which there is no release. Economic activities that employ prisoners as slave labor have included mining, textiles, farming, and livestock raising. Induced starvation is common among prisoners, who are driven to catch and eat rodents, frogs, and snakes.

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.humanrights.gov/features/prison-camps-of-north-korea/camp-14-kaechon/]

Kaechon internment camp
Chosŏn'gŭl	개천 제14호 관리소
Hancha	价川第十四號管理所
Revised Romanization	Gaecheon Je14ho Gwalliso
McCune–Reischauer	Kaechŏn Che14ho Kwalliso
Chosŏn'gŭl	개천 정치범수용소
Hancha	价川政治犯收容所
Revised Romanization	Gaecheon Jeongchibeom Suyongso
McCune–Reischauer	Kaechŏn Chŏngch'ibŏm Suyongso

Kaechon internment camp (Hangeul: 개천 제14호 관리소, also spelled Kae'chŏn or Gaecheon) is a forced labor camp in North Korea for political prisoners. The official name is Kwan-li-so (Penal-labor colony) No. 14. It is not to be confused with Kaechon concentration camp (Kyo-hwa-so No. 1), which is located 20 km (12 mi) to the northwest. This place is commonly known as Camp 14.

Kaechon internment camp (Hangeul: 개천 제14호 관리소, also spelled Kae'chŏn or Gaecheon) is a slave labor camp in North Korea for political prisoners. The official name is Kwan-li-so (Penal-labor colony) No. 14. Shin Dong-hyuk gave testimony of human rights abuses inflicted on him or witnessed by him as prisoner in Camp 14.

Location

The camp was established around 1959, in central North Korea near Kae'chŏn county, South Pyongan Province. It is situated along the middle reaches of Taedong river, which forms the southern boundary of the camp, and includes the mountains north of the river, including Purok-san. Bukchang, a concentration camp (Kwan-li-so No. 18) adjoins the southern banks of the Taedong River. The camp is about 155 km² (60 sq mi) in area, with farms, mines and factories threaded through steep mountain valleys.

Kaechon internment camp (Kwan-li-so No. 14)

Description

Imprisonment at Kaechon internment camp is for life with no chance of release. Prisoners are forced to do hard labour and have to work until they die. So called "politically unreliable" people and their families are deported, without any trial, to the camp, where prisoners live completely isolated from the outside.

The camp is approximately 155 km² (60 sq mi) in area. The camp includes overcrowded barracks that house males, females, and older children separately, and a headquarters with administration and guards housing. Altogether around 15,000 prisoners live in Kaechon internment camp.

According to Blaine Harden, Shin Dong-hyuk went to primary and secondary school inside the camp. The secondary school was "little more than slave quarters from which he was sent out as a rock picker, weed puller and dam labourer." This education did not include even basic information about North Korea since all outside information was cut off to inmates of the camp. The personality cult around Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il was also absent; for example there were no portraits of the Kim leaders on display. The camp was self-contained and self-sufficient. The camp was near a hydro-electric dam and mines in which the prisoners were forced to labour. In one of Shin's prison cells, where he was held during an interrogation, he said he had electricity and running water. Shin's mother lived in a house with multiple rooms in a "model village" within the camp, given to women who had children.

Kaechon internment camp (Hangeul: 개천 제14호 관리소, also spelled Kae'chŏn or Gaecheon) is a slave labor camp in North Korea for political prisoners. The official name is Kwan-li-so (Penal-labor colony) No. 14. Shin Dong-hyuk gave testimony of human rights abuses inflicted on him or witnessed by him as prisoner in Camp 14.

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.northkoreanow.org/film-photo/photographs-north-koreas-gulags/]

Kaechon internment camp (Hangeul: 개천 제14호 관리소, also spelled Kae'chŏn or Gaecheon) is a slave labor camp in North Korea for political prisoners. The official name is Kwan-li-so (Penal-labor colony) No. 14. Shin Dong-hyuk gave testimony of human rights abuses inflicted on him or witnessed by him as prisoner in Camp 14.

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.northkoreanow.org/film-photo/photographs-north-koreas-gulags/]

Purpose

The main purpose of the Kaechon internment camp is to keep politically unreliable persons classed "unredeemable" isolated from society, and exploit them with hard labour. The term "unredeemable" is applied to people who want to escape North Korea's deeply repressive government, or people who have spoken harshly about the government or other non-criminal elements. Actual criminals may also be sent to the camp. The labor at the camp is performed in mines and farms with primitive means.

A still from the documentary film Camp 14 

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.chroness.com/project/inside-the-worlds-worst-prison/]

Human rights situation

Many prisoners of the camp were born there under North Korea's "three generations of punishment". This means anyone found guilty of committing a crime, which could be as simple as trying to escape North Korea, would be sent to the camp along with that person's entire family. The subsequent two generations of family members would be born in the camp and must also live their entire lives and die there. As reported by witnesses, the prisoners have to do very hard and dangerous work in mines and other workplaces from 5:30 in the morning until midnight. Even 11-year-old children have to work after school and may see their parents rarely. People are forced to work like slaves and are tortured in case of minor offences. The punishment for violating camp rules ranges from such punishments of having the tip of one's finger cut off, to being tortured for months, to death.

Food rations are very small, consisting of salted cabbage and corn, so that the prisoners are very skinny and weak. Many die of undernourishment, illness, work accidents, and the aftereffects of torture. Many prisoners resort to eating frogs, insects, rats, and snakes to try to survive. Eating rat flesh helps to prevent pellagra, a common disease in the camp which results from the absence of protein and niacin in the diet. In order to eat anything outside of the prison-sanctioned meal, including these animals, prisoners must first get permission from the guards.

Imprisoned witnesses

Shin Dong-hyuk

Shin Dong-hyuk (born in Kaechon in 1982 as Shin In Geun; escaped 2005) was born in the camp. His father was imprisoned because two of the father's brothers defected to South Korea during the Korean War. Shin gave testimony of human rights abuses inflicted on him and witnessed by him as prisoner in Kaechon camp:

• When he told the guards his mother and brother attempted to escape (in hopes of acquiring an extra ration of food). Shin was thrown into a small underground cell, where it is impossible to either stand or lie down, and was kept there and tortured for eight months at only 13 years of age.
• Later Shin was forced to watch the execution of his mother Chang Hye-kyong by hanging and his brother Shin Ha-kun by firing squad. Shin had reported his mother and brother's planned defection to the guards. He was tortured for eight months before he and his father were forced to witness the two would-be escapees' executions.
• When Shin worked in a garment factory at the gulag and accidentally dropped a sewing machine, the foreman hacked off his right middle finger just above the first knuckle, as punishment.
• Shin witnessed dozens of public executions each year.
• Shin saw a six-year-old girl in his school being beaten to death for hoarding 5 kernels of corn.
• When Shin was 12 years old, he was separated from his mother and was rarely allowed to see her. Instead of attending school, the children had to do all kinds of physical work including weeding, harvesting, and carrying dung.
• Between the ages of 13 and 16, Shin was forced to do dangerous construction work and saw many children killed at work; sometimes, four to five children were killed in a day. On one occasion, he saw eight people killed by an accident.
• Shin described how, at the age of 14, he was arrested, completely stripped, his legs cuffed and hands tied, and was suspended from the ceiling of his cell. His torturers then lit up a charcoal fire under his back and forced a hook into his skin so that he could not struggle. He still has a number of large scars from the burned flesh and from many other abuses.
• Shin's cousin was raped by prison guards and died later; when his cousin’s mother wailed, she disappeared and was never seen again.
• Shin saw how 12 fellow prisoners given toxic water for washing by the guards got seriously ill within a week; then they disappeared.
• When Shin escaped through the high-voltage electric fence surrounding the camp, his friend Park Yong-chul reached the fence first, and was fatally electrocuted. He escaped by climbing over his friend's body.

Kim Yong

Kim Yong (1995–1996 in Kaechon, then in Bukchang) was imprisoned when his relationship (which he covered up) to his father and brother, who both were executed as alleged US spies, was identified. He witnessed approximately 25 executions in his section of the camp within less than two years.