As of 2014. The inmate estimate rests on the 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry and subsequent satellite analysis; no independent access has been permitted since, so the figure is not currently verifiable.
North Korea operates a network of kwanliso, closed political penal colonies administered by the state security apparatus, in which people are held without trial for perceived political offences, attempted flight abroad, religious practice or association with someone accused. Prisoners in the "total control zones" are held for life and, under the guilt-by-association principle applied for much of the system's history, entire families including children were imprisoned for the acts of one member. The UN Commission of Inquiry, reporting in February 2014 on the basis of some 80 public hearings and more than 240 confidential interviews conducted outside the country, estimated 80,000-120,000 prisoners, documented deliberate starvation used as a means of control and punishment, and concluded that crimes against humanity including extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape and forced abortion were being committed pursuant to policies set at the highest level of the state; it wrote that the atrocities resembled those of twentieth-century totalitarian camp systems and recommended referral to the International Criminal Court. North Korea did not cooperate with the Commission, denies that political prison camps exist and describes the inquiry as a fabrication by hostile states. The camps cannot be independently visited, so estimates rest on defector testimony and satellite imagery; several camps appear from imagery to have been closed or reconfigured since 2014, and the total held is thought to have fallen, though the system as a whole remains in operation.
The Ministry of State Security of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea holding political prisoners, historically together with their families, in closed penal colonies outside the ordinary criminal justice system
North Korea's 2008 census counted 24.05 million and UN Population Division estimates put the country at about 26 million in the mid-2020s; when the kwanliso system began in the late 1950s the population was around 10 million. The camp population itself is estimated rather than counted: the 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry put it at 80,000-120,000 on the basis of defector testimony and satellite imagery, and later analyses suggest some camps have closed or consolidated.
The 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry stated that hundreds of thousands of political prisoners have perished in these camps over roughly five decades, without producing a verifiable count; NGO estimates (the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, Amnesty International) put the current camp population at 80,000-120,000 and infer cumulative mortality from testimony and satellite imagery. The DPRK denies that the camps exist at all, so no figure is agreed.
The UN Commission of Inquiry's 2014 report and detailed findings, corroborated by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and Amnesty International, documented indefinite imprisonment without trial including of whole families, compulsory labour, deliberate starvation rations, torture, public and secret executions, rape and forced abortion, and disappearance without notification to relatives.
North Korea