In the secretive nation of North Korea, it’s hard to know exactly how many people are imprisoned. A 2014 report by the UN estimated that there were between 80,000 and 120,000 political prisoners being held in labour camps in North Korea, though there could be up to 200,000. Open Doors estimates that among these, there are between 50,000 and 70,000 Christians, imprisoned for daring to believe that Jesus is a higher authority than the nation’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
It can be hard to picture such a vast number of people or imagine what their lives must be like – but Hebrews 13:3 encourages us to ‘remember those in prison as if you were together with them’. There are a few prisoners in North Korea who we can pray for by name – we know their names because they actually come from outside of North Korea. And the stories of those who have escaped can help us imagine what life is like for the thousands of others who are in prison today, and stand with them in prayer.
Prisons in North Korea
There are three kinds of prisons in North Korea:
Detention centres. This is where most prisoners are first sent after being arrested. Prisoners are interrogated and tortured. Hannah* remembers her time in one of these centres: “They’d beat us so harshly. When there was no interrogation, we had to kneel in our cells from 5am to 12pm and not speak. We didn’t receive any food or water and were not able to sleep.”
Re-education camps. This is where prisoners are usually sent if they are not considered to be political prisoners. Conditions are poor, but prisoners will usually be sent to a camp close to where they are from, so their families can bring them food and clothes. The prisoners will be put to work in the day, and then forced to attend ‘re-education’ classes at night, learning about the Juche ideology and the teachings of Kim Il-sung. The work is exhausting and can be dangerous – if they are sent to work in a mine, for example, they may not survive. But the prisoners here are sentenced to a certain number of years in the camp, and if they survive, they will be allowed to leave, as they have been suitably ‘re-educated’.
Hea Woo* was sent to a camp like this. She recalls the daily routine:
5.am: Wake up.
5.30am: Roll call in the barracks. “We lined up with our heads bowed until we were all accounted for. Then there was some time to wash ourselves.”
6.am: Breakfast. “We queued up again and slowly moved through the barracks where the food was distributed. This took a lot of time. We got only a small cup full of rice. Maybe about two or three spoons in total.”
8am: “March to outside the camp, to the countryside, where we had to do agricultural work. Until lunch time there was no break. Prisoners have no right to rest.”
12 noon: “To the camp, lunch, walk back to the fields. About the same amount of food as during breakfast and dinner.”
2pm: Back to work.
6pm: Walk back to the camp for a criticism session. “We had to criticize each other and ourselves about the things that we did wrong that day. After that: dinner.”
8pm: Ideological training. “The hardest part of the day. We were hungry and weary. Our eyes fell closed. But we had to stay awake and pay attention or we would be punished.”
9.30pm: Counting of the prisoners.
10pm: Go to bed.
“Every day was like torture. People were dying and their corpses were burnt. The guards scattered the ashes over the road. We walked that road every day and each time I thought: one day the other prisoners will walk over me.” Thankfully, her premonition did not come true, and she was eventually able to escape from the prison, and from North Korea.
Political labour camps. These are reserved for those who have committed the most ‘serious’ crimes and are considered enemies of the state. This includes Christians, and anyone else who dares to question the authority of the ruling Kim family. There are no re-education classes here – these people are considered too far gone to re-educate. There is no escape from these camps. Prisoners are worked to the bone – when they can no longer work, they are executed. These prisoners are also sometimes used in experiments.
For reasons you can imagine, we have no stories of prisoners from these camps.
Western Prisoners
Not everyone who is imprisoned in North Korea sees the worst of the North Korean prison system. Western prisoners – usually visiting Americans, Canadians, and Australians who have been accused of espionage, state subversion, or anti-state activities – are seen as bargaining chips who will eventually be returned to their home countries. North Korea doesn’t want them to be able to report the true extent of the human rights abuses taking place, and so they usually get off more lightly, and are held in prisons that are specifically for foreigners.
But foreign prisoners can still be treated harshly. American college student Otto Frederick Warmbier is a recent example of a Western prisoner who met with tragedy. In December 2015, he travelled to North Korea as part of a tour group. He was arrested for stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel room and sentenced to 15 years in prison. But in June 2017 he was returned to America in a vegetative state and died soon afterwards. It is unclear what happened to him in North Korea that led to his death.
Others have experienced much more lenient treatment. Alek Sigley, an Australian student who was studying in Pyongyang, was arrested for spying, but spent just nine days in detention. He described being forced to admit his guilt and write apologies, but said he was not physically mistreated.
Most Western prisoners experience something less extreme than Otto Warmbier’s fate, but harsher than Alek Sigley’s treatment. Lim Hyeon-soon, a Canadian-South Korean missionary who had visited North Korea over 100 times to carry out humanitarian work, was arrested in January 2015, accused of attempting to overthrow the country’s regime. He was held for 920 days and forced to do hard labour, including breaking up frozen coal and digging holes in the frozen ground in winter – but he was allowed to read the Bible.
Another well-known example is Kenneth Bae, an American-Korean, who was leading a tour of North Korea as part of his travel business in 2012. A hard drive was discovered in his luggage that revealed that he was a missionary, and he was arrested. He describes being interrogated from 8am until 10pm every day for the first few weeks of his imprisonment, but was never beaten. “I worked from 8am to 6pm at night, working on the fields, carrying rocks, shovelling coal,” he says. However, he was allowed to read his Bible and have contact with his family. He was released after two years.
In general, the treatment of Western prisoners is much more humane in comparison with the treatment of regular North Korean prisoners, if still harsh by Western standards.
South Korean Prisoners
Not all foreign prisoners are treated the same. North Korea considers itself the only legitimate government of Korea, and sees South Koreans as its own citizens. If someone with South Korean citizenship is arrested, they are very rarely released.
There are six South Korean prisoners currently being held in North Korea that we know of:
- Kim Jong-Wook, a Baptist missionary who ran underground churches and shelters for North Koreans in China, and also helped North Koreans get to South Korea. According to a friend in Seoul, he went into North Korea looking for information about a group of North Korean women who had been taken back to North Korea from China, and to learn about the food shortages. He was arrested in 2013 and sentenced to a life of hard labour in 2014, accused of spying and ‘malignantly hurting the dignity’ of the ruling Kim family. Mid-2020 reports emerged that Kim Jong-Wook’s health situation has deteriorated because of hard work, malnutrition and possibly torture.
- Kim Kook-Kie, a Christian missionary who ran a shelter in China for North Korean defectors, and Choi Chun-Kil, another Christian missionary, were both arrested in Dandong, a border city between China and North Korea. They were accused of ‘conducting religious propaganda’ against North Korea and sentenced to a life of hard labour in 2015. Mid-2020 reports emerged that Kim Kook Kie’s health situation has deteriorated because of hard work, malnutrition and possibly torture.
- Ko Hyon-Chol, a North Korean defector who had gained South Korean citizenship and become a missionary, was accused of plotting to kidnap North Korean children who would be sold for adoption in other countries. He was sentenced to a life of hard labour in 2016.
- Kim Won-Ho, another North Korean defector who had become a South Korean citizen and a missionary, was abducted in China in March 2016.
- Ham Jin-Woo, also a North Korean defector with South Korean citizenship, was a journalist for the website Daily NK, which specialises in news on North Korea. He was gathering information in China close to the border with North Korea when he was abducted and taken back to North Korea.
While these prisoners have been accused of various crimes, the true reason for their arrest (and sometimes abduction from China) is likely to be that they were known to be helping North Korean defectors. They may have been taken in the hopes of getting information out of them about their networks, or as a warning to others.
It is hard to know exactly how these prisoners might be treated. Given that they are unlikely to ever leave North Korea, they may face the same horrific treatments that imprisoned North Koreans face, including torture, labour camps, and possible execution. On the other hand, they may have knowledge that North Korea would wish to make use of when training their spies. If they are willing to cooperate with the North Korean authorities, they may be treated less harshly.
Chinese Prisoners
It’s much less known that North Korea also holds a number of Chinese Korean and Han Chinese prisoners as well. (Chinese Koreans are Koreans who have a Chinese passport, they form a large minority mainly in North East China, close to the North Korean border. Han Chinese form the majority of Chinese people.)
These are often Christians who secretly worked with North Korean refugees in China and were targeted by North Korean spies. After their abduction they are usually sentenced to 15 years hard labour.
There are hundreds of spies in the border region. In April 2016, a Chinese Korean pastor named Han was murdered in the town Changbai. Secret agents lured him in a trap and stabbed him to death. More common is that North Korea kidnaps Christian evangelists and missionaries, even if they have the Chinese nationality.
“I was held for several months”, one Chinese Korean Christian told Open Doors. “The State Security officers wanted to know about my network in North Korea. They didn’t beat me, but they forced me to stand for four days without allowing me to sit or lie down. I was desperate, but suddenly I heard a song in my heart and the Holy Spirit gave me strength. I wasn’t allowed to sing or hum, but I rocked back and forth on my toes. The guards looked at me on a CCTV camera and were amazed that I could stand for so long and stay in good spirits.”
Eventually, the Christian worker was released. “The agents called my family and demanded money. My family members raised a lot of funds and my parents took out a mortgage on their house. They paid tens of thousands of dollars to secure my release, after three months imprisonment.”
Not all Chinese Korean prisoners will see their family again. Many have gone missing to this day. Will they be released after 15 years? Maybe…
Pray
When those from outside North Korea are arrested, we sometimes know their names. This means we can pray for them by name.
But there are tens of thousands – perhaps of hundreds of thousands – more North Korean people who are imprisoned in the most horrific conditions, including at least 50,000 of our brothers and sisters. We don’t know their names – but God does. And we can pray for them and ask God to be with them, and to bring them justice.
Please pray:
- Pray for the six South Korean prisoners, and the thousands and thousands of North Korean prisoners as well as the small number of Chinese prisoners. Ask God to give them strength and comfort.
- Pray for our imprisoned brothers and sisters. Pray that somehow, even in the darkest places on earth, they would know God’s love and presence with them. Pray that God would shine as a light through them.
- Pray for the international efforts to negotiate between Pyongyang and Seoul, and that the South Korean prisoners would be able to go back to their families soon.
- Pray that God would bring change to North Korea, and that one day soon the people of the nation will have freedom and justice.
- Pray for protection for those working with Korean defectors in China. Ask God to give them wisdom, and to blind the eyes of those who might seek to find them.