Amnesty International has a disturbing dose of news from North
Korea — complete with visual aid. Prison camps in the wilderness
of South Pyongan, South Hamkyung and North Hamkyung provinces,
which have apparently been around since the 1950s, now appear to
be growing in size, according to the global human rights
watchdog. Recent satellite images show four camps, where Amnesty
says at least 200,000 political prisoners are being kept in
conditions that resemble slavery. A comparison with satellite
pictures from 2001 indicates a significant increase in the scale
of the camps, according to Reuters. “These are places out of
sight of the rest of the world, where almost the entire range of
human rights protections that international law has tried to set
up for last 60 years are ignored,” said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty
International Asia Pacific Director. Check out the images at
Amnesty. Amnesty took the testimony of 15 former inmates and
prison guards from the camps, who all said they were subjected
to inhumane conditions