New reports issued by Amnesty International and the United Nations are telling of the unconscionable brutality taking place within the prison camps of North Korea and causing outrage and consternation around the world.

According to the Daily Mail, the Amnesty International report tells the story of one woman, Kim Young Soon, who spent nine years in the Yodok prison camp along with her parents and four children. Their crime? She was caught gossiping about an affair her friend had with former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

Because the country employs a “guilt-by-association” strategy, not only Kim, but her parents and four children – all of whom died of starvation and hard labor in the gulag – were arrested as well.

“It is a place that would make your hair stand on end,” Kim told Amnesty International. “When my parents starved to death, I didn’t have coffins for them. I wrapped their bodies in straw, carried them on my back and went to bury them myself. And the children…I lost all my family,” she said.

A former prison guard whose identity is being kept secret, told of how officials would rape women from the camp, and then kill them.

Another survivor, Park Ji-hyun, told of her experience in a prison camp after she attempted to escape from a Chinese farmer to whom she had been sold.

Women were treated horrifically in the camp, she said, and had to take pregnancy tests upon their arrival.

“They would force abortion after the pregnancy test,” Park said. “Pregnant women get sent to labor camps to carry loads up and down the hills which cause miscarriages.”

Women were forced to function as livestock, pulling carts laden with up to a ton of soil.

“We couldn’t do this at a walking pace either,” she said. “We had to run.”

Many died as a result.

Those who did survive lived through days of hard labor that began at 4:30 a.m. and ended at sunset. Prisoners were then expected to attend meetings until midnight.

Starvation was so rampant in the camps that prisoners would eat anything they could find, including animal feed.

An estimated 200,000 people are thought to be incarcerated in North Korean prison camps. Because Christianity is illegal in that country, an estimated 70,000 Christians are believed to be among the prison population.

Persecution.org, recently published the story of a Christian woman name Hea Woo, who was imprisoned for years.

“I could not tell you what the worst thing was I experienced. Every day in the camp was like torture. I often had to think about God’s plagues for Egypt. Being in this concentration camp felt like undergoing all those 10 plagues at the same time. People were dying and their corpses were burnt. The guards scattered the ashes over the road. We walked that road every day and each time I thought: ‘one day the other prisoners will walk over me’.”

She continued: “But despite everything, I remained faithful to God. I remained faithful and God helped me survive. Not only that, He gave me a heart to evangelize other prisoners. Frankly, I was too scared to do it. I wanted to live. How could God ask me to tell the other prisoners about Jesus? II would die if they caught me. God persisted. He showed me which prisoners I should approach. He gave me a feeling: ‘That person. Tell him.’ So I went to the person and told him or her  . . . that people have to believe in Jesus and that they and their households will be saved.”

“It was an encouraging message for those prisoners who walked on the edge of death every day. They were easily converted. . . ”

A United National Commission of Inquiry on human rights in North Korea also released their report on the results of a year-long investigation into the abuse authorities are inflicting on their people, including food deprivation, torture, public executions and religious persecution. Testimony included reports of a woman who was forced to drown a baby in a bucket and children who were clubbed to death for stealing a few grains of rice.

Michael Kirby, the chairman of the inquiry, described what North Korean prisoners experienced as “unspeakable atrocities” comparable only to what the Nazis did to the Jews during the Second World War.

It is the committee’s hope that after speaking to North Korean survivors in Seoul, Tokyo, London and Washington, DC, they will collect enough evidence to pursue criminal prosecution.

Sadly, survivors don’t believe the committee’s efforts will have any effect on the regime.

A former North Korean military captain named Mr Joo says the greatest hope for the country now is that stories of these atrocities be told.

“People in the UK and the international community should know the reality of North Korea,” he said. “Once you know what the reality is, the voice to improve the situation in North Korea can follow.”

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