In March 2023, it will be a decade since a United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) was mandated to ensure full accountability for violations of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). As the international community prepares to mark this anniversary, there remains no serious prospect or strategy for implementing the COI’s recommendations to ensure accountability for human rights violations. This poses an acute challenge to the legacy of the commission, to international justice, and ultimately to the DPRK’s victims.

Korea Future's new report builds upon the COI’s findings and significantly advances documentation and understanding of widespread and systematic acts constituting torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment in the so-called ‘ordinary’ DPRK penal system. We find that reasonable grounds exist to believe that the DPRK is in breach of its obligation to refrain from torture and ill-treatment. The report highlights the cases of three victims from Korea Future’s North Korean Prison Database, a growing archive of violations that have transpired in the DPRK penal system, to illustrate patterns of torture. In doing so, we find that many detainees in the ‘ordinary’ penal system are, in effect, political prisoners who are detained based on the criminalisation of fundamental human rights and without a basis compatible with international law.

Prima facie, the incidents of torture and ill-treatment documented in our report and the North Korean Prison Database constitute serious breaches of international law and should be investigated and, where they amount to international crimes, prosecuted. Ensuring that the truth is established, and that justice and accountability can be delivered, remains an imperative a decade on from the COI, with implications for increased international and policy coordination and the deterrence of perpetrators.

We are also releasing a new digital reconstruction. Access to the DPRK and its penal system is forbidden. To better understand and situate the experiences of victims, we have used digital modelling, memory-based diagrams, survivor testimony, and satellite imagery to model the internal architectures of North Hamgyong Provincial MPS Holding Centre. Located in Chongjin, this is the first time anyone outside of the DPRK has seen inside this facility.