od at 160,000 as of Mar. 2020. What this means is that the country’s prisoner population has grown by around 30,000 during Kim’s eight years in power.
The number of prisoners held in specific facilities is believed to be 43,000 at Camp No. 14 (in Kaechon, South Pyongan Province); 55,000 at Camp No. 15 (in Yodok, South Hamgyong Province); 24,000 at Camp No. 16 (in Hwasong, North Hamgyong Province); and, 25,000 at Camp No. 25 (in Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province).
While the number of prisoners held at the Chongjin facility was fairly low in the beginning, that figure is believed to have skyrocketed in October of last year.
“The number suddenly jumped, with 150 prisoners crammed into rooms designed for 50,” a source in the country told Daily NK recently. “Most of them were arrested while conducting foreign currency-earning activities in Pyongyang.”
Many of the new prisoners appear to be those involved in corrupt activities, including embezzlement, while working to earn foreign currency for the regime. […]
The Kim regime appears to be operating the camps under the same principle that led to their establishment: namely, the idea that prison camps must remain in place to punish anyone who opposes the party’s ideology and the doctrines of Kimilsungism and Kimjongilism – at least until such ideas have been “fully adopted” by society.
Prison camps in the country are still divided into “total control zones” – camps set up for those who can never be released back into society, and “revolutionary zones” – camps where inmates receive “ideological education” while engaging in forced labor. Prisoners are stripped of all rights and prohibited from making contact with the outside world. Indeed, Kim Jong Un has carried on the country’s brutal tradition of treating imprisoned citizens as nothing more than tools of production.
Under Kim’s rule, it is now an official rule for all prisoners to be shot to death in the event of war breaking out or in other “extraordinary political circumstances,” according to the source. Prison camps are the embodiment of the regime’s brutality, which is why North Korea maintains the official position that such facilities do not exist.
When the young Supreme Leader first took command in 2011, it was widely expected that he'd start modernising and liberalising North Korea, using post-Mao China as an example. What seems to have happened instead is that China has taken North Korea as an example, and now they're vying with each other for that coveted "most repressive" title. For sheer scale and genocidal intent, though, the North Koreans simply can't compete with Xinjiang. No one can.
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