North Koreans who escaped and returned to Kim’s clutches face a hell of rape and torture-induced abortions, where newborns are murdered and the elderly beaten to death.
That is the horrifying testimony of a defector, who escaped from North Korea and was sent back six times before making her seventh and final attempt at freedom.
The defector, who is still hiding in China and cannot be identified for fear of capture, has been assigned the alias Mrs X to protect her identity.
She said most of the young women she was detained with in North Korea were pregnant.
She said: ‘Guards attempted to induce miscarriages by making women squat for long periods or forcing them to carry heavy buckets of water.
Pictured above is a virtual replica of the Onsong detention camp in North Korea. It shows ten cells lined up side by side, as well as staff quarters and interrogation rooms.
Defector detention center in Onsong is less than a mile from the Chinese border
File image of a North Korean soldier guards the banks of the Yalu River in Sinuiju, North Korea, which borders Dandong, in China’s Liaoning province.
“They would drag them to the hospital if that didn’t work.”
He continued: ‘The worst was when North Korean security agents killed a newborn baby. Some women were captured when they were already in the last month of pregnancy, with their bellies very swollen.
‘The authorities tried every method to induce a miscarriage, but if they failed, the women were forced to give birth.
‘I heard that one of the mothers in the next room could hear her baby crying, but the cruel security officers wrapped the baby in plastic and placed it face down.
“The loud cries gradually became weaker and the mother continued to sob until the baby’s voice died away completely.”
She added: “As a mother, witnessing those girls in such agony was like living in hell.”
More than 70 percent of defectors fleeing Kim Jong-un’s regime are women, according to a 2023 Korea Times article.
Some defectors are helped by middlemen to escape, only to be sold as brides in China, where gender imbalance has fueled black market trade.
But the Chinese state classifies North Korean defectors as illegal economic immigrants rather than refugees, and repatriates those it captures.
Last year, up to 600 defectors were repatriated in October alone, according to the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), a South Korean NGO.
Mrs.
Based on testimonies from defectors, the facility has been virtually rebuilt
Inside there are 10 cells (a virtual replica in the photo above), each with capacity for 20 people and sometimes more, according to the NGO Korea Future. Inside, prisoners are forced to sit cross-legged and motionless for more than 12 hours a day, under penalty of torture, and cannot use the open bathroom in their cell without permission from a guard.
Defector Ms.
He described the case of a young woman, alias Yeong-yi, who had been a classmate of his daughter.
She said: ‘There were countless cases of girls, who could be considered daughters or younger sisters, being used as sex toys.
‘Yeong-yi, only 21 years old, was tormented by a 57-year-old military officer named Mr. Park.
“Her nipples had been bitten so badly that they were unrecognizable and her lower abdomen was burned in several places with a cigarette, oozing pus.
‘Despite the horrible injuries and his suffering, all I could do was clean his wounds with salt water.
‘I couldn’t protest, knowing it would only cause more damage. “We just held back the tears and held on.”
Old age did not bring any special treatment. At a center for captured deserters in Onsong, Mrs. X met an elderly South Korean woman who had first come to the North in search of her husband during the Korean War.
She said: ‘The terrifying atmosphere of the detention center caused her to speak in her South Korean dialect again, which angered the chief officer.
‘He yelled at her: “You filthy old lady, do you still speak that southern dialect because you’re from the south?”
He then cursed her viciously and stomped on her with his boots repeatedly. Finally, he grabbed a chair and beat it until he was exhausted.
“The old woman was left in tatters like a rag, with her pants soaked in urine and feces.”
The lice-infested cells are accessed through a small door, through which prisoners must crawl on their hands and knees, the human rights group said.
Ms.
With her dying breath, the woman begged for her daughter to be told of her fate, a promise Mrs. X has never been able to keep.
The deserter detention center in Onsong is less than a mile from the Chinese border.
Using testimonies from deserters, the facilities have been practically rebuilt. Inside there are 10 cells, each with capacity for 20 people and sometimes more, according to the NGO Korea Future.
The lice-infested cells are accessed through a tiny door, through which prisoners must crawl on their hands and knees, the human rights group said.
Inside, prisoners are forced to sit cross-legged and motionless for more than 12 hours a day, under penalty of torture, and cannot use the open bathroom in their cell without permission from a guard.
Mrs.
‘The food was insufficient and the hygiene was indescribably poor. In six months, more than 130 detainees died from abdominal diseases.’
She was also detained at a facility in Chongjin, on North Korea’s east coast. The TJWG identified it as a site approximately five miles southwest of the city center.
Mrs. She said: ‘I remember the head of the center laughed and said: “the dog in our center must not die, but it doesn’t matter if you die,” as he looked at the corpses that were piling up every day.
“They treated us like less than the stones on the ground.”
