Inside North Korean detention camp where captured defectors face a ‘living hell’ of rape, torture-induced miscarriages and cruel guards murder newborn babies

Escaped North Koreans returned to Kim’s clutches face a living hell of rape and torture-induced miscarriages, where newborns are murdered and the elderly beaten to death.

That’s the horrifying testimony of one defector, who escaped North Korea and was sent back six times, before she made her seventh and final bid for freedom.

The defector, who is still hiding out in China and cannot be named for fear of capture, has been given the alias Mrs X in order to protect her identity.

She said most of the young women she was detained with in North Korea were pregnant.

She said: ‘The guards would attempt to induce miscarriages by making the women stay in a squatting position for prolonged periods or forcing them to carry heavy buckets of water.

The holding facility for defectors in Onsong is less than a mile from the Chinese border

File image of a North Korean soldier keeps watch on the banks of the Yalu River in Sinuiju, North Korea, which borders Dandong in China’s Liaoning province

‘They would drag them to the hospital if that didn’t work.’

She continued: ‘The worst was when North Korean security agents killed a newborn baby. Some women were captured when they were already in the final month of pregnancy, their bellies heavily swollen.

‘The authorities tried every method to induce a miscarriage, but if these failed, the women were forced to give birth.

‘I heard that one of the mothers in the next room could hear her baby crying, but the cruel security agents wrapped the infant in plastic and placed it face down.

‘The strong cries gradually weakened, and the mother sobbed along until the baby’s voice faded completely.’

She added: ‘As a mother myself, witnessing those girls in such agony was like living in hell.’

Over 70 per cent of defectors fleeing Kim Jong-un’s regime are female, according to a 2023 article by the Korea Times.

Some defectors are helped to escape by brokers, only to be sold as brides in China, where a gender imbalance has fuelled a black market trade.

But the Chinese state classifies North Korean defectors as illegal economic migrants rather than refugees, and repatriates those it captures.

Last year, up to 600 defectors were repatriated in October alone, according to the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), an NGO in South Korea.

Mrs X said many of the women she was detained with had been deceived by brokers, and were targeted by guards for sexual violence.

Using defector testimony, the facility has been virtually rebuilt

Inside are 10 cells (one virtual replica pictured above), each holding up to 20 people and sometimes more, according to the NGO Korea Future. Inside, the prisoners are forced to sit cross-legged and motionless for more than 12 hours per day, on pain of torture, and cannot use their cell’s open toilet without permission from a guard

Defector Mrs X said: ‘The guards would attempt to induce miscarriages by making the women stay in a squatting position for prolonged periods or forcing them to carry heavy buckets of water’ (file image of a North Korean soldier)

She described the case of a young woman, alias Yeong-yi, who had been a classmate of her daughter.

She said: ‘There were countless instances of girls, who could be considered daughters or younger sisters, being used as sexual toys.

‘Yeong-yi, only 21 years old, was tormented by a 57-year-old military officer named Mr Park.

‘Her nipples had been bitten so badly that they were unrecognizable, and her lower abdomen was burnt in several places from a cigarette, oozing pus.

‘Despite the horrific injuries and her suffering, all I could do was clean her wounds with salt water.

‘I couldn’t protest, knowing it would only lead to more harm. We just held back our tears and endured.’

Old age brought no special treatment. At a facility for captured defectors in Onsong, Mrs X met an elderly woman from South Korea who had first come to the North looking for her husband during the Korean war.

She said: ‘The terrifying atmosphere of the detention centre caused her to keep slipping back into her South Korean dialect, which enraged the chief officer.

‘He yelled at her, “you filthy old hag, are you still speaking that southern dialect because you’re from the south?”

‘He then cursed at her viciously and stomped on her with his boots repeatedly. Finally, he grabbed a chair and beat her until he was exhausted.

‘The elderly woman was left tattered like a rag, her pants soaked in urine and faeces.’

The lice-ridden cells are accessed by a tiny door, which prisoners must crawl through on their hands and knees, the human rights group said

Mrs X said: ‘There were countless instances of girls, who could be considered daughters or younger sisters, being used as sexual toys [in the detention camps]’ (file image of a North Korean soldier looking through binoculars)

With her dying breath, the woman pleaded that her daughter be told of her fate – a promise Mrs X has never been able to fulfil.

The holding facility for defectors in Onsong is less than a mile from the Chinese border.

Using defector testimony, the facility has been virtually rebuilt. Inside are 10 cells, each holding up to 20 people and sometimes more, according to the NGO Korea Future.

The lice-ridden cells are accessed by a tiny door, which prisoners must crawl through on their hands and knees, the human rights group said.

Inside, the prisoners are forced to sit cross-legged and motionless for more than 12 hours per day, on pain of torture, and cannot use their cell’s open toilet without permission from a guard.

Mrs X said: ‘We were given a ration of roughly 100 kernels of mouldy corn a day, and even that felt like a blessing.

‘The food was insufficient, and the hygiene was indescribably poor. In six months, more than 130 detainees died from abdominal diseases.’

She was also held at a facility in Chongjin, on North Korea’s east coast. The TJWG identified it as a site roughly five miles south-west of the city centre.

Mrs X recalled how its director greeted the prisoners. She said: ‘I remember the centre chief laughing and saying, “our centre’s dog must not die, but it doesn’t matter if you do,” while looking at the corpses that piled up every day.

‘We were treated as less than the stones on the ground.’