Amnesty International has urged the North Korean government to close down two facilities it says are being used as political prisoner camps, saying torture and executions are a regular occurrence.
The group’s North Korea researcher Rajiv Narayan, said the camps were growing.
“The gruesome reality of North Korea’s continued investment in this vast network of repression has been exposed. We urge the authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all those prisoners of conscience held in political prison camps and close the camps immediately,
"Under its new leader Kim Jong-un, North Korea is violating every conceivable human right. People are sent to the political prison camps without charge, let alone a trial, many of them simply for knowing someone who has fallen out of favour."
A former security guard at the camp, only described as Mr Lee, told Amnesty International in an interview of the methods used to execute prisoners. He said that detainees were forced to dig their own graves and were then killed with hammer blows to their necks. He also witnessed prison officers strangling detainees and then beating them to death with wooden sticks.
According to Mr Lee, women were disappeared after being raped.
“After a night of ‘servicing’ the officials, the women had to die because the secret could not get out. This happens at most of the political prison camps.”
Amnesty says it has shared the latest evidence with the UN Commission of Inquiry investigating human rights abuses in North Korea.