More on the Jeung-San Prison Camp

You may recall that at the end of this October 2009 post, I called for your assistance in locating an alleged North Korean political prison camp near the coast, due west of Pyongyang, known as Jeung-San. The tip was provided by Kim Sang-Hun, co-founder of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights.

North Korea’s worst concentration camp is a reeducation center where women who escaped to China are subjected to the most brutal treatment, NGO Good Friends said Monday.

The Jeungsan Reeducation Center in South Pyongan Province has a reputation for cruelty and the saying goes that even healthy people leave as cripples. The facility was turned into a reeducation center after the regime revised the criminal law in 2004. [….]

Hundreds of female inmates reportedly suffer malnutrition there, and two or three die every day. Their bodies are wrapped in plastic and buried in mass graves. One former inmate who was detained there in 2004 said that other inmates who saw mass graves with piles of human bones and bodies came away with permanent psychological scars.

A former official of the Ministry of Public Security who defected said, “The Jeungsan Reeducation Center is notorious because many more inmates die there than at any other concentration camp due to the unbearably hard labor and malnutrition.”

Jeungsan consists of 10 divisions, each of which is made up of seven to 10 groups. Each group normally has 40 to 50 inmates. A relatively healthy inmate is chosen as a capo who controls other inmates under the supervision of security guards. Those caught attempting to escape or committing infractions there are not publicly executed as at other political prison camps but are tortured or killed out of sight. [Chosun Ilbo]

After much scouring of the area and many e-mails exchanged with Curtis, I’m confident that I found the town of Jeung-San, but not the camp. I found many enclosed compounds, but any of them could just has well have been a military installation. I did not find any compounds with the distinctive fence lines, guard posts, or guard towers you see in these prison camps. Mr. Kim’s description also suggested that Jeung-San would have not a distinctive, easily recognizable layout.

For now, all I can do is put this question out there for the readers: who knows any defectors from the area west of Pyongyang near the town of Jeung-San? If you know someone from that area, the odds are, he or she will know of a no-go, off-limits area that will be the topic of local rumor. That may lead me to focus my search in the right area, and eventually, to witness corroboration.