Ambassador Confirms Existence of Labour Camps in North Korea  

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - An official report released by the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) stated that as much as 120,000 North Koreans are imprisoned by the state in four of North Korea's largest political prison facilities.

The report has since been denied by officials from one of the world's most reclusive nations, but a North Korean official has since admitted the use of labor camps to house criminal offenders.

"We do not have political prisons, but we do have labor camps where we sanction people for subversive actions such as murder and rape of women and/or children. We re-educate these criminals in our labor camp system," said the North Korean Ambassador to Indonesia, Ri Jong-ryul, at the North Korean Embassy in Jakarta on Thursday, October 16, 2014.

Jong-ryul explained that those who housed in labor camps had undergone legal trials for their crimes. The prosecution takes the defendant to court, where judges will sentence the defendant for his or her crimes. According to the ambassador, offenders are subject to "re-education" in the morning and work in the evenings, in accordance with camp regulations.

A number of North Korean defectors have testified about the human rights violations that they suffered when placed within the labor camp system, which includes torture and the deliberate starving of prisoners within the camps. Some of the defectors chose to immortalize their experiences by publishing books that chronicles their ordeal.

However, the ambassador insists that the testimonies of the North Korean defectors that fled to the United States (US) as well as South Korea need to be taken with a grain of salt.

According to Jong-ryul, many of the defectors have run out of money in exile and can no longer fund their lifestyles due to the high costs of living in the US and South Korea, as such, they chose to run to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for financial assistance in exchange for their "testimonies".

"The US is using the plight of the defectors to their advantage," said Jong-ryul.

MARIA RITA