Two reporters who had been in detention in a political prisoners’ camp on allegations of criticizing the Kim Jong Il regime died in custody earlier this decade, according to a report released yesterday by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), an international press watchdog.
Based upon an interview with North Korean defector and former Yoduk prison camp detainee Jung Gwang Il, the RSF report states that Kim Kyung Cheon, a cameraman working for Chosun Central TV (KCTV), and Cha Gwang Ho, a journalist with Chosun Central News Agency (KCNA), both died in prison during 2001.
According to Jung, Kim Kyung Cheon was interned for making critical remarks about the lack of images of the starving on North Korean TV, and for saying that North Korea’s constitution offers press freedom but that nothing is respected in practice.
Imprisoned in March 2000, Kim allegedly had his leg broken by one of the guards in the camp, and died in the camp infirmary from complications arising from the injury.
Jung testified, “We were forced to dig his grave with our bare hands, and his family was not told he had died.”
Meanwhile, Cha, who died the same year at the age of 65, had been imprisoned since 1999, also on charges of slandering the regime. He was injured while engaged in forced labor, and eventually died of malnutrition after being deemed unfit to work and having his daily rations reduced.”
Jung also stated that he was “convinced that many journalists are still being held in harsh conditions in North Korea’s camps,” and added that “intellectuals with access to information from the outside world” are “the first to criticize the regime.”
RSF also demanded more information on the “tens of thousands of North Korean prisoners of conscience” in North Korea, and added, “The revelation that two journalists died at the start of the last decade, as so many others have done, should stimulate the United Nations to press harder for the closure of North Korea’s concentration camps.”
There are said to be at least 200,000 people interned in political prison camps in North Korea.
