Investigating North Korea's Secret Labour Camps - full documentary

This is the North Korea that is paraded to the world. A spectacle of military might and national unity. But today, a world away in London's Westminster, a landmark UN inquiry will reveal a very different reality. I'm Michael Kirby and I am the chair of the commission of inquiry. Led by former High Court judge Michael Kirby, a distinguished team has assembled, and the media is out in force at this rare chance to peer inside the secret state. And I call forward the first such witness, Mr Kim Song Joon. Starvation forced Kim Song Joon to try to flee to China. He was caught and sent to a labor camp. Park Ji-yong fled the country after threats from the military. Kim Ju-il is a former soldier. Kirby has been inundated with requests from defectors to tell their stories about life in the labor camps and prisons. So secret are these camps, it's taken satellite imagery to reveal their location. An estimated 200,000 people have disappeared into this network. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, North Korea denies their existence. Kirby doesn't buy that. Even today I saw new images of a particular camp, Camp 16, which is in the northeastern corner of North Korea, which has not been fully described before. There is almost no footage from inside these camps. This extremely rare vision, allegedly smuggled out by a defector, is thought to be Camp 15, Yodok Labor Camp in the country's east. The prison camps are extremely cruel and of every five who enter, about two leave as a corpse or don't leave at all. Witnesses have described how whole families, including children, are committed to a life of hard labor. Few escape, but some who have recorded the horror. These drawings have been compiled over many years. Prisoners have to collect the bodies. They have to collect them on carts, drag them to a pot and set them on fire. And this is testimony which is believable in the context of the humiliating circumstances and particularly the lack of proper food, which is the daily life of a prisoner. I was a judge for 34 years in Australia and I saw plenty of harrowing stories. But all those years on the bench didn't prepare him for the horror of North Korea. I've felt on the verge of tears, if not felt tears, because these are human beings who have shared with you when they didn't have to. When Park Ji-yong told her story, it defied imagination. Not only did she escape leaving her dying father, she fell into the hands of people traffickers who sold her into marriage. Did they harass you sexually? Eventually you gave birth to a boy in this marriage? Today, Ji-yong lives with her second husband and children in the north of England. Inside, I meet the eldest of her three children, Chul-hee. When he was only four, his mother was arrested by the Chinese and sent back to North Korea. There she was sentenced to years of hard labor in a prison camp. Those she could barely walk, Ji-yong eventually escaped again. When she got to China, she was desperate to find her son. Together they joined a group of North Koreans crossing the border into Mongolia. The man who rescued Ji-yong and her son, another North Korean escapee, is her husband today. We can't reveal his identity as he fears for families still in North Korea. And now Ji-yong frequently speaks out about the situation in her homeland. Back at the commission, the former army officer Kim Ju-il continues his testimony. Ju-il says he fled North Korea after he began questioning the regime. Arriving in the UK, he started this newspaper. But the memories of his former life haunt him. He hopes his newspaper will counter the propaganda from Pyongyang and wants, one day, to have it smuggled into North Korea. Jong-il's newspaper office is above this supermarket. He comes here almost every day. It's a constant reminder of his homeland and its brutal rulers. Justice Kirby is preoccupied with the important task that lies ahead. When the committee's report is written, the judge doesn't want it to gather dust on a shelf somewhere. They've come to lobby the government. Lord David Alton chairs the all-party parliamentary group on North Korea. It's a special pleasure and an honour welcoming Justice Kirby to our proceedings today. We have a very distinguished judicial record in Australia. Kirby wastes no time making his point. It will simply be a shattered opportunity if having created the commission of inquiry and having raised so many hopes of people in so many countries, not only in Korea but around the world. If giving the report is deemed to be enough, it's not enough. It is simply the beginning. I promise you, for my own part anyway, I will leave no stone unturned in airing here in Parliament, but also the pressure is placed on our own government. But as the cult of a leader continues unabated in North Korea, it seems this most inward-looking of nations doesn't bend to world opinion. Kirby says the time has come to challenge that. There is a realisation that this has really gone beyond the pale and that there's a very serious problem here that needs to be addressed. And I hope and I believe that the United Nations and the countries who are members of the United Nations will answer the test. Those who poured out their hearts here today will be hoping he's right. Yes, that's my duty. It is my duty. Thank you very much.