New satellite imagery of North Korea's network of prison camps shows abuse is taking place "on an industrial scale".

Campaign group Amnesty International has documented what it believes to be an upgrade to a crematorium at one of the sites, along with new guard posts and enhanced security.

Images appear to show prisoners labouring on agricultural land within the camp.

North Korea refuses to admit the existence of the political prison camps, also known as "kwanliso" - where an estimated 120,000 people are believed to be held and hundreds of thousands are thought to have died over the past five decades, according to a UN report in 2014.

Image: The network is so vast, it is visible from space, the UN says. Pic: Google Earth

Image: The images appear to show prisoners working on farming land

The UN Commission of Inquiry report said the gravity, scale, and nature of human rights violations in North Korea were without parallel in the contemporary world.


"The North Korean government is still denying the existence of these hellish camps," Kerry Moscogiuri, Amnesty UK's Director of Campaigns, said of the latest images.

"But year after year we've documented and photographed a vast network so massive that it's visible from space."

"The tens of thousands of people held in the camps face unimaginable suffering - excruciating forced labour, rampant malnutrition, violent punishments, rape, and even execution."

"These images chronicle abuse on an industrial scale.

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Satellite imagery from August shows a facility known as Camp 25 with six new guard posts, and maintenance work taking place on 41 existing posts, as well as indications of a roof upgrade at what appears to be a crematorium.

Amnesty said images from May showed people harvesting crops from a field within the camp, the construction of a mill and what is thought to be a mine.

Analysis of Camp 15 showed 29 buildings had been burned down, and 14 prisoner housing units dismantled, but maintenance work to guard towers and perimeter fences, as well as agricultural activities led them to conclude the detention facility was still active.

The United Nations inquiry heard accounts of deliberate starvation, torture, forced abortion and infanticide at the camps, where it said unspeakable atrocities were being carried out, that "resemble the horrors of camps that totalitarian states established during the twentieth century".

Image: The UN says people accused of serious political crimes were 'disappeared'

Image: The complex looks to have been expanded. Pic: Google Earth

It said people accused of serious political crimes were "disappeared" without trial or judicial order and incarcerated incommunicado, with families not even informed of the prisoner's fate after their death.

In some cases, entire families were sent to the camps, including older and younger generations, for crimes allegedly committed by their relatives, on the principle of guilt by association.

The UN panel said the Kim regime's claim that the camps do not exist was disproved by testimony by former guards, inmates and neighbours.

These latest images appear to show that network of camps is not only still active, but being upgraded.