A female inmate in her 40s recently died at Hamhung Correctional Labor Camp in South Hamgyong Province. However, the camp reportedly provided her bereaved family members no basic information regarding her death, including when she died, the cause of death or what happened to the body.
A source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Friday that a resident of Hoeryong went to the camp late last month to meet his wife, who was incarcerated at the facility for human trafficking, only to learn that she had died.
“However, the camp did not tell him the cause of death, and it did not return the body,” said the source.
In North Korea, prisoners sentenced to time in correctional labor camps are stripped of their civil rights. If they die in the camps, their bodies are not returned to the families, but rather processed inside the camps as “criminals who have yet to cleanse themselves of their crimes.”
According to the source, the woman who died had worked as a so-called “human trafficking broker” who smuggled people to China from 2012 to September of 2015 before being busted by the Ministry of State Security. She was exposed when one of the people she smuggled to China was repatriated to North Korea after being caught by Chinese security agents.
She was sentenced to correctional labor on June 10, 2016, following an eight month investigation, and sent to Hamhung Correctional Labor Camp. She had been an inmate there for several years prior to her death.
Her husband, who lives in Hoeryong, had been unable to see his wife for a year due to COVID-19, so in mid-June, he visited the camp with some cornmeal mixed with sugar and innerwear he prepared to give her.
However, his wife was already dead, and so he simply returned home with nothing other than the news of her passing.
Her husband asked the camp authorities when she died, what she died from, and if he could retrieve her body. But camp officials scolded him for asking so many questions, telling him he “should be grateful that they even told him she was dead.”
“Since COVID-19, even ordinary people have been having a hellish time trying to make ends meet, let alone people in prison for crimes,” said the source. “Many prisoners surely must have died unnatural deaths, unable to eat or dress properly and under surveillance from guards.
“Prison [in North Korea] is literally no different from hell,” he continued, adding, “If the family is well off, they can frequently meet [incarcerated relatives] and take care of their health, but for prisoners with families that cannot often meet, they are simply dying.”
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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