Hwasŏng Detention Center

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Korean spelling
Korean alphabet : 화성 제 16 호 관리소
Hanja : 化 城 第十六 號 管理所
Revised Romanization : Hwaseong Je16ho Gwalliso
McCune-Reischauer : Hwasŏng Che16ho Kwalliso

The internment camp Hwasŏng (also Hwasong ) is an internment camp in North Korea mainly for political prisoners . The official name is Kwan-li-so (prison camp) No. 16 .

location

The camp is located in Hwasŏng County, Hamgyŏng-pukto Province in North Korea . It is located about 10 km west of the town of Hwasong in a remote mountain valley on the upper reaches of the Hwasongchon River. The western limit is the mountain Mantap-san (2205 m). In the north and east, the camp extends to the valley of the Orangchon River.

description

The Hwasŏng camp is designed as a lifelong penal colony from which there is no release. The entrance gate on the street of Hwasŏng and the fence with some watchtowers can be seen on satellite images. The warehouse is around 549 km² in size, making it the largest warehouse in North Korea in terms of area. A total of around 10,000 prisoners live in the Hwasŏng camp, many of them internal party opponents of Kim Jong-il and their families.

function

The camp serves to exclude political opponents from society for life. In addition, as much as possible, these people are exploited for hard and dangerous work. The North Korean nuclear test site P'unggye-ri on Mount Mantap-san is only about 24 km west of the camp. Several dissidents had heard that political prisoners were being forced to build the tunnels and underground facilities, as well as work that exposed them to radiation .

Human rights situation

So far, no prisoner has managed to flee abroad, so there are no eyewitness reports on the human rights situation in the camp. There have been reports of a mass exodus, after which most of the refugees were caught again.

However, a guard who had escaped reported the conditions in the camp.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article / aerial photo “North Korea's Secrets: Prison Camp 16”, Der Spiegel, May 25, 2009
  2. ↑ Google Maps: Entrance gate with fence and watchtowers, as of August 5, 2009
  3. ↑ Article "North Korea's Hard Labor Camps" with Interactive Map, Washington Post, July 20, 2009
  4. ↑ The Hidden Gulag: Kwan-li-so Political Panel Labor Colonies (section: Other Kwan-li-so) (pp. 78-79). (PDF; 5.5 MB) The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, accessed on September 21, 2012 .
  5. ↑ Google Maps: Tunnel entrance with utilities south of the summit, as of August 5, 2009
  6. ↑ Article “The Terrible Secrets of N. Korea's Mount Mantap,” Chosun Ilbo, June 3, 2009
  7. ↑ article "120 Prisoners Escape a North Korean Political Concentration Camp" , Daily NK , 6th February, 2007.

Web links

Coordinates: 41 ° 16 ′ 6.6 "  N , 129 ° 23 ′ 28.4"  E