N. Korean prisoners forced to labor on farms, construction sites

SEOUL, July 21 (Yonhap) -- North Korean prisoners are forced to work on farms and construction sites to fill the gap in labor supply, a private organization on North Korean human rights said Thursday. The Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB) said the inmates are sent to a range of facilities, including those attached to their detention centers, nearby farms, power plants and apartment construction sites. The work involves such hard labor as mixing cement and sand without the use of instruments. "North Korea stresses that prison life is a conversion process (to make convicts) communist human beings through labor and refinement," the NKDB said in a report based on interviews of some 13,000 North Korean defectors. The inmates, who work without pay, produce goods for consumption within the detention centers as well as for exports to countries such as Russia and China. Their products include brassieres, tablecloths, curtain lace and sweaters, the report said. North Korea is notorious for its alleged abuses of human rights, despite constant denials by its communist regime. The NKDB said earlier that the country holds more than 138,000 people in its detention facilities across the country.