Hoeryong concentration camp (or Haengyong concentration camp) was a death camp in North Korea that was reported to have been closed in 2012. The official name was Kwalliso (penal labour colony) No. 22. The camp was a maximum security area, completely isolated from the outside world.
In 2012, satellite image analysis and reports indicated major changes including its reported closure.
Location
Camp 22 was located in Hoeryong County, North Hamgyong province, in northeast North Korea, near the border with China. It was situated in a large valley with many side valleys, surrounded by high mountains. The southwest gate of the camp was located around northeast of downtown Hoeryong, while the main gate was located around southeast of Kaishantun in China's Jilin province. The western boundary of the camp runs parallel to, and at a distance of from, the Tumen River, which forms the border with China. The camp was not included in maps until recently and the North Korean government has always denied its existence.
History
The camp was founded around 1965 in Haengyong-ri and expanded into the areas of Chungbong-ri and Sawul-ri in the 1980s and 1990s. The number of prisoners increased sharply in the 1990s when three other prison camps in North Hamgyong province were closed and the prisoners were transferred to Camp 22. Kwan-li-so No. 11 (Kyongsong) was closed in 1989, Kwan-li-so No. 12 (Onsong) was closed in 1992 and Kwan-li-so No. 13 (Changpyong) in 1992.
Description
Camp 22 was around in area. It was surrounded by an inner 3300 volt electric fence and an outer barbed wire fence, with traps and hidden nails between the two fences. The camp was controlled by roughly 1,000 guards and 500–600 administrative agents. The guards were equipped with automatic rifles, machine guns, hand grenades, clubs, whips, and trained dogs.
In the 1990s, there were an estimated 50,000 prisoners in the camp. Prisoners were mostly people who criticized the government, people deemed politically unreliable (such as South Korean prisoners of war, Christians, returnees from Japan) or purged senior party members. Based on the guilt-by-association principle (Korean: 연좌제, yeonjwaje) they are often imprisoned together with the whole family including children and the elderly, and including any children born in the camp. All prisoners were detained until they died; they were never released.
The camp was divided into several prison labour colonies: Haengyong-ri was the camp headquarters with administration offices, a food factory, a garment factory, detention center, guards' quarters, and prisoner family quarters. Chungbong-ri was a mining section with a coal mine, loading depot, railway station, hospital, guards' quarters, and single prisoners' quarters. Naksaeng-ri, Sawul-ri, Kulsan-ri, and Namsok-ri were farming sections with prisoner family quarters. There was an execution site in Sugol Valley, at the edge of the camp.
Conditions in the camp
Former guard Ahn Myong-chol describes the conditions in the camp as harsh and life-threatening. He recalls the shock he felt upon his first arrival at the camp, where he likened the prisoners to walking skeletons, dwarfs, and cripples in rags. Ahn estimates that about 30% of the prisoners had deformities, such as torn off ears, smashed eyes, crooked noses, and faces covered with cuts and scars resulting from beatings and other mistreatment. Around 2,000 prisoners, he says, had missing limbs, but even prisoners who needed crutches to walk were still forced to work.
Prisoners received of corn per meal (two times a day), with almost no vegetables and no meat. The only meat in their diets was from rats, snakes, frogs, or even insects that they caught. Ahn estimated that 1,500–2,000 people died of malnutrition there every year, mostly children. Despite these deaths, the inmate population remained constant, suggesting that similar numbers of new inmates arrived each year.
Children received only very basic education. From the age of 6 onward they were work assigned, such as picking vegetables, peeling corn, or drying rice, but received very little food — only in all per day. Consequently, many children died before the age of ten years. Elderly prisoners had the same work requirements as other adults. Seriously ill prisoners were quarantined, abandoned, and left to die.