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| North Korean defector Jung Gwang-il answers reporters' questions at a news conference held at the Korea Press Center, Friday. Jung, who spent years at the Yodok gulag, disclosed a list of 180 inmates at the camp. / Yonhap |
By Kim Bo-eun
A North Korean defector disclosed Friday the names of 180 inmates at a notorious prison camp northwest of Pyongyang.
Jung Gwang-il, who was imprisoned in the Yodok gulag from 2000 to 2003, submitted the list and other details of his life there to the recently opened U.N. North Korean Human Rights office in Seoul.
The office, opened here Tuesday, is the first field office to monitor state-perpetrated human rights violations.
In a news conference, Jung claimed that the camp was moved since he left on the basis of analysis of satellite images taken in October.
He said that he was with some 400 inmates and called on the Kim Jong-un regime to reveal their whereabouts.
About 80,000 to 120,000 people are estimated to be imprisoned in four political prison camps in the North, although officials there deny their existence and claim they are correctional facilities for ordinary criminals.
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department said in its annual report, "North Korea's human rights record remains among the worst in the world" with public executions, political prison camps and torture.
