A NORTH Korean defector who fled tyrant Kim Jong-un’s clutches has told of the horror atrocities she witnessed inside the country’s hellish torture cells.
Escaped North Koreans who are brought back into the regime face a living hell of rape and torture, where babies are murdered in cold blood and the elderly are beaten to death.
GettyTyrant Kim Jing-un has set up many detention centres to torture North Korean defectors[/caption]
Credit: Pen NewsPhoto shows a satellite image of the regional detention centre in Chongjin[/caption]
Credit: Pen NewsPicture of the Baishan Detention Centre, a facility in China where North Korean defectors are held after capture[/caption]
Credit: Roman Harak via Pen NewsA North Korean border guard[/caption]
That’s the horrifying testimony of one defector who was sent back into the country six times before she made her seventh and final bid for freedom.
The woman, whose name has been changed to Mrs X to protect her identity, currently lives in China.
Mrs X said many of the women she was detained with had been deceived by brokers only to be brought back to the country.
She said there were countless examples targeted by guards for sexual violence.
She said: “There were countless instances of girls being used as sexual toys.
“One of the women was tormented by a 57-year-old military officer.
“She had extreme bite marks and her body was burnt with cigarettes.”
Mrs X said she felt helpless witnessing the horrific crimes, but there was nothing she could do to stop the vile acts.
“Despite the horrific injuries and her suffering, all I could do was clean her wounds with salt water,” she said.
“I couldn’t protest, knowing it would only lead to more harm. We just held back our tears and endured.”
She said most of the young women she was detained in North Korea were pregnant.
And many of them had to go through tragic miscarriages after the guards forced them to do intensive labour work.
She said: “Guards made women stay in a squatting position for prolonged periods and forced them to carry heavy buckets of water.
“Some women were captured when they were already in the final month of pregnancy, their bellies heavily swollen.”
“The worst was when North Korean security agents killed a newborn baby. It was a living hell.”
Over 70 per cent of defectors fleeing Kim Jong-un’s regime are female, according to a 2023 article by the Korea Times.
Some defectors are helped to escape by brokers, only to be sold as brides in China, where a gender imbalance has fuelled a black market trade.
But the Chinese state classifies North Korean defectors as illegal economic migrants rather than refugees and repatriates those it captures.
Last year, up to 600 defectors were sent in October alone, according to the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), an NGO in South Korea.
Credit: Pen NewsPhoto shows the Onsong Detention Centre near the Chinese border[/caption]
Credit: Pen NewsA reconstruction of a hellish prison as described by defectors[/caption]
Credit: Pen NewsPhoto shows a reconstruction of a cell monitored by CCTV[/caption]
The holding facility for defectors in Onsong is less than a mile from the Chinese border.
Using defector testimony, the facility has been virtually rebuilt.
Inside are 10 cells, each holding up to 20 people and sometimes more, according to the NGO, Korea Future.
The lice-ridden cells are accessed by a tiny door, which prisoners must crawl through on their hands and knees, the human rights group said.
Inside, the prisoners are forced to sit cross-legged and motionless for more than 12 hours per day – and cannot use their cell’s open toilet without permission from a guard.
NO MERCY
While women faced to most horrific atrocities inside the torture cells, old age brought no special treatment.
At a facility for captured defectors in Onsong, Mrs X met an elderly woman from South Korea who had first come to the North looking for her husband during the Korean War.
She said: “The terrifying atmosphere of the detention centre caused her to keep slipping back into her South Korean dialect, which enraged the chief officer.
“He yelled at her, ‘you filthy old hag, are you still speaking that southern dialect because you’re from the south?’
“He then cursed at her viciously and stomped on her with his boots repeatedly. Finally, he grabbed a chair and beat her until he was exhausted.”
With her dying breath, the woman pleaded that her daughter be told of her fate – a promise Mrs X has never been able to fulfil.
POOR LIVING CONDITIONS
Mrs X added: “We were given a ration of roughly 100 kernels of mouldy corn a day, and even that felt like a blessing.
“The food was insufficient, and the hygiene was indescribably poor.
“In six months, more than 130 detainees died from abdominal diseases.”
She was also held at a facility in Chongjin, on North Korea’s east coast.
The TJWG identified it as a site roughly five miles south-west of the city centre.
Mrs X recalled how its director greeted the prisoners.
She said: “I remember the centre chief laughing and saying, ‘our centre’s dog must not die, but it doesn’t matter if you do,’ while looking at the corpses that piled up every day.
“We were treated as less than the stones on the ground.”