IV 111th CONGRESS 1st Session H. RES. 705 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES July 31, 2009 Mr. Minnick (for himself and Mr. Wolf) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs RESOLUTION Condemning hard-labor prison camps in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as an egregious violation of human rights.

Whereas the U.S. Department of State estimates that 150,000–200,000 prisoners are detained in labor camps, comprising roughly 1 percent of North Korea’s 22,000,000 people; Whereas satellite photographs corroborate survivors' stories and reveal vast labor camps in the mountains of North Korea; Whereas guilt by association is legal under North Korean law and up to three generations of a convicted prisoner’s family may be imprisoned in labor camps; Whereas, according to a recently published report by the nongovernmental United States Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, thousands of prisoners are forced to work to their deaths in mining, logging, farming, and industrial enterprises; Whereas prisoners are sent to prison camps without any judicial process, denied contact with the outside world, and forced to work up to 15 hours a day and up to 29 days a month until they die of malnutrition-related illnesses; Whereas one camp contains as many as 50,000 prisoners in an area that is 31 miles long and 25 miles wide, an area larger than the city of Los Angeles; Whereas many prisoners are allowed just one set of clothes, and denied soap, socks, or underclothes, and must subsist on corn and salt and are under constant threat of being executed; Whereas the Government of North Korea does not acknowledge the existence of these prison camps and the issue has not been discussed in meetings between United States diplomats and North Korean officials; and Whereas the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea sentenced United States reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee to 12 years of hard labor and should release them on humanitarian grounds: Now, therefore, be it

That the House of Representatives— (1)condemns hard-labor prison camps in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as an egregious violation of human rights; (2)urges the United States Government to demand that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea immediately shut down these camps and end all persecution of political prisoners; and (3)demands the Government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea immediately release United States reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who were sentenced in June 2009 to 12 years in a North Korean labor camp.