It has come to light that political camp prisoners in North Korea

were mobilized for the tunnel excavation and other construction of a nuclear

test site in Punggye-ri, Kilju County, North Hamgyong Province, where

Pyongyang recently carried out its fourth nuclear test.

“My understanding is that the state had mobilized

prisoners from kwanliso [political prison camp] 16 to the Punggye-ri site

for digging purposes,” a source from North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Tuesday.

“Before they carry out the test, everything needs to be done secretly, which is

why they mobilized political prisoners, who are easy to control rather than

members of the general public.”

Daily NK crosschecked this information with

two additional sources in North Hamgyong Province.

He continued, “The state is further abusing those already languishing in dire conditions, subjected to forced labor among a host of other unspeakable human rights violations; on top of all this they’ve been forced to do the debris clean-up following the test without any protective gear, and are like to have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation.”

North Korea also mobilized political

prisoners for construction work during the past three nuclear tests at the

Punggye-ri site. Camp 16’s close proximity to the test site, roughly 2.5 km

away, and its isolated position amid rugged terrain makes it an ideal location

to work quickly while keeping a lid on the operations.

“Camp 16 prisoners were mobilized from the

very beginning when the test site was created,” according to the source. Much of

the work the prisoners carry out for the state involved digging for coal and gold, so “boring shafts [at the site] wasn’t much of a

leap for the authorities.”

“These prisoners are forced to endure relentless, excruciatingly arduous labor only to eventually die from exposure to

radiation, their bodies dumped in a restricted area as part of nuclear waste

disposal,” he said, lamenting the North’s egregious use of political

prisoners as non-human “production tools and nothing more.”

“The state feels no sense of guilt as it

herds out these prisoners, labeled ‘anti-republic forces,’ to force them to do fulfill is dangerous pursuits,” said the source. “They’re taught that it’s okay to just kill them, and the guards on watch treat them accordingly; they don’t care in the least if and when these helpless souls become paralyzed or worse due to the radiation

exposure [and/or overall deplorable conditions].

In December 2015, concerns that Camp 16

prisoners may be working at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site were first raised

by The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea [HRNK], which works to

document and expose rights violations in the North, based on analysis of

satellite photos of the area.