Hundreds of slave laborers missing ?
North Korea announced on May 12 that it will invite journalists from South Korea, the United States, China, England and Russia to witness the shutdown of its Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Hamgyong Province between May 23 and 25. Major North Korean media, including Korean Central News Agency and Korean Central Broadcasting, report that the closure will be accomplished by collapsing all of the tunnels in a controlled explosion to seal their entrances. Six nuclear detonation tests were carried out by North Korea between 2006 and 2017.
Public work projects in North Korea are heavily labor intensive, so a great number of people are involved in any construction projects. Naturally, information on any large scale construction work leaks out to the rest of the world. However, in the case of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site construction, there have been no leaks. Once political detainees have been sent to work on construction at the nuclear test site, none of them has ever been known to return to their prison camps; they have all literally disappeared. At each step of construction, a new group of political detainees were transferred in, and when the previous workers were replaced, it is believed that the old group were simply executed to maintain secrecy. Some are suggesting that this turnover system may have been carried out repeatedly until the nuclear test site was completed.
A few North Korean defectors have reported brutal acts of mass murder. One of them is Mr. Ahn Myong-chol, who defected from North Korea in 1995. He said “Political detainees were mobilized from Kwan-li-so (political prison camps) Nos. 16 and 22 to work on construction of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, but none of them returned, apparently for security reasons, that is, to maintain a tight lid of secrecy. When I was working as a prison guard at Kwan-li-so No. 22 from 1992 to 1994, I actually escorted 200 detainees to Punggye-ri every year. I have seen absolutely none of them returned. One of my colleague prison guards, who worked at Kwan-li-so No. 22 from 1992 to 1997, also said that he escorted 200 to 300 detainees at a time to Punggye-ri every year, he had not seen any of them come back.”
Were all those missing detainees executed to ensure their silence? Some observers are suggesting that their bodies may lie stacked and buried somewhere in the tunnels of that nuclear test site. So the question is, should we let this matter pass in silence?
LFNKR believes that allowing all tunnels to be closed by collapsing them in controlled explosions to seal the entrances before the world investigates the possible executions and where their bodies were buried is equivalent to “a crime against humanity.” We must not look the other way, as it may be one of the most grievous crimes against humanity of our time.
For more details of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, refer to the BBC news article here.