[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 131 (Thursday, August 1, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5315-S5316]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         SUBMITTED RESOLUTIONS

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SENATE RESOLUTION 303--CALLING UPON THE LEADERSHIP OF THE GOVERNMENT OF 
 THE DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF KOREA TO DISMANTLE ITS KWAN-LI-SO 
       POLITICAL PRISON LABOR CAMP SYSTEM, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES

  Mr. HAWLEY (for himself, Ms. Cortez Masto, Mr. Gardner, Mr. Van 
Hollen, Mr. Rubio, Mr. Markey, Mr. Cornyn, and Mrs. Blackburn) 
submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee 
on Foreign Relations.:

                              S. Res. 303

       Whereas the public has long been aware of the labor camp 
     system in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea through 
     continuous eye-witness and survivor accounts, and now 
     publicly available satellite technology;
       Whereas, according to the Hidden Gulag IV report, the 
     Government of North Korea runs 2 kinds of prison camps, the 
     kwan-li-so and the kyo-hwa-so, as well as ``various types of 
     short-term forced labour detention facilities'';
       Whereas the most heinous camps, the kwan-li-so, are known 
     as Prison Camp 14, 15, 16, and 25, which contain roughly 
     80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners;
       Whereas the Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity in North 
     Korea Political Prisons Report of 2017, prepared by the War 
     Crimes Committee of the International Bar Association, states 
     that ``hundreds of thousands of inmates are estimated to have 
     died'' in the kwan-li-so camps;
       Whereas, from 1981 to 2013, an estimated 400,000 people out 
     of 500,000 imprisoned were killed in these labor camps;
       Whereas persons who are sent to these labor camps are 
     forcibly disappeared and intended to die, and the United 
     Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the 
     Democratic People's Republic of Korea wrote in 2014 that 
     ``the unspeakable atrocities'' committed in the kwan-li-so 
     camps ``resemble the horrors of camps that totalitarian 
     states established during the twentieth century'';
       Whereas the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human 
     Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea found 
     that ``the inmate population has been gradually eliminated 
     through deliberate starvation, forced labour, executions, 
     torture, rape and the denial of reproductive rights enforced 
     through punishment, forced abortion and infanticide'';
       Whereas up to 3 generations of a ``violator's'' family will 
     be sent to the labor camps even if no ``wrongdoing'' is 
     found;
       Whereas, according to the Inquiry on Crimes Against 
     Humanity in North Korea Political Prisons Report of 2017, the 
     Government of North Korea regularly and routinely commits 
     crimes against humanity, including murder, extermination, 
     enslavement, forcible transfer, imprisonment, torture, sexual 
     violence, persecution, enforced disappearances, and other 
     inhumane acts;
       Whereas, according to the best available evidence, some of 
     the specific crimes identified by the Inquiry are as follows:
       (1) ``Christians are heavily persecuted and receive 
     especially harsh treatment in prison camps, with one former 
     prison guard testifying that `Christians were reactionaries 
     and there were lots of instructions. . .to wipe out the seed 
     of reactionaries' ''.
       (2) Multiple witnesses watched prisoners tortured and 
     killed on account of their religious affiliation.
       (3) A prisoner was raped by a security officer, after which 
     the officer stuck a wooden stick inside her vagina and beat 
     her lower body, resulting in her death within a week of the 
     rape.
       (4) An abortion was induced by 3 men standing on a wooden 
     plank placed on a pregnant prisoner's stomach.
       (5) Another witness lost consciousness after enduring a 
     beating designed to trigger premature labor, with prison 
     officials killing her baby before she could regain 
     consciousness.
       (6) Rape victims who feared being killed after becoming 
     pregnant engaged in self-induced abortions by eating dirt and 
     poisoning themselves with flower roots.
       (7) Other rape victims self-induced abortions by inserting 
     a rubber tube in their vaginas.
       (8) Rape of teenage girls and their subsequent attempts to 
     commit suicide by jumping in the Daeqdong-gang River were so 
     common that prison guards were deployed to the river to 
     thwart them.
       (9) Four pregnant women were executed for protesting the 
     fact guards forced them to run down a mountain in a failed 
     effort to induce miscarriages.
       (10) Twelve prisoners were shot and killed in the commotion 
     that ensued after the execution of the 4 pregnant women 
     referenced in paragraph (9), and a former prison guard 
     witnessed a prisoner's newborn baby, most likely fathered by 
     a high-ranking official, fed to guard dogs and killed.

[[Page S5316]]

       (11) Female prisoners suspected of being impregnated by 
     non-Korean men (namely Chinese men) are subjected to 
     especially harsh treatment, with one witness describing a 
     prisoner being injected with a labor-inducing drug and having 
     to watch as a guard suffocated her newborn to death with a 
     wet towel.
       (12) A former North Korean army nurse testified that she 
     saw multiple abortions performed by injecting Ravenol (a 
     motor oil) into the wombs of pregnant women and that babies 
     born 3 to 4 months premature were ``wrapped in newspapers and 
     put in a bucket until buried'' behind the detention center.
       (13) Deliberate starvation, malnutrition, and overwork are 
     extremely common, resulting in the deaths of countless 
     prisoners.
       (14) At one prison camp, 1,500 to 2,000 prisoners, mostly 
     children, are believed to have died each year from 
     malnutrition, while many other prisoners were beaten to death 
     for failing to meet production quotas.
       (15) Starving prisoners are regularly executed when caught 
     scavenging for food.
       (16) At one prison camp, starving prisoners who were found 
     digging up edible plants on a mountainside were shot to 
     death.
       (17) At another camp, a witness saw a fellow inmate 
     executed for stealing potatoes, while in a separate camp a 
     witness described the execution of numerous prisoners caught 
     scavenging for leftover food in prison guards' quarters.
       (18) A prisoner was beaten to death for hiding stolen corn 
     in his mouth.
       (19) Public executions by firing squads or other means are 
     common, especially for prisoners caught attempting to escape.
       (20) The existence of mass graves is well documented, 
     including detailed descriptions of mass burial sites at or 
     near prison camps, as well as testimony about bodies being 
     ``dumped'' on mountainsides near prison camps.
       (21) An undisclosed location near a prison camp was 
     regularly used for nighttime executions, with gunshots 
     clearly audible.
       (22) At a 1990 prison riot, approximately 1,500 prisoners 
     were shot and killed, their bodies discarded in a closed 
     mine.
       (23) In order to satisfy production quotas, inmates--
     including teenagers--were forced to perform 15 to 16 hours of 
     hard labor per day.
       (24) One witness was forced to perform hard labor (carrying 
     logs) when he was 9 years old.
       (25) At one mine in particular, prisoners were forced to 
     work 20 hours per day, with a witness testifying that 
     approximately 200 prisoners died each year at that mine 
     alone.
       (26) A soldier supervising a forced labor site at a 
     political prison rolled a log down a steep mountainside, 
     killing 10 prisoners as they were carrying logs up the 
     mountain.
       (27) The bodies of some prisoners who died as a result of 
     forced labor or torture were thrown into the cells of 
     prisoners in solitary confinement and later strung on barbed-
     wire fences where they were eaten by crows.
       (28) One witness described a torture chamber with blood and 
     flesh on the walls and decaying corpses of past victims 
     placed in the chamber in order to instill fear in the next 
     prisoner.
       (29) Psychological abuse in political prisons is pervasive, 
     with gruesome acts, including executions, carried out in 
     plain view of fellow prisoners in order to terrorize them.
       (30) Torture is a routine feature of life in political 
     prisons, with a 2014 report by Amnesty International 
     concluding that ``North Korea's prison camps are very 
     possibly home to some of the most appalling torture in the 
     world'';
       Whereas officials of the Government of North Korea 
     continually deny the existence of the labor camps;
       Whereas the Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity in North 
     Korea Political Prisons Report of 2017 found that North 
     Korea's labor camp system ``has no parallel in the world 
     today''; and
       Whereas the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human 
     Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea found 
     that the government continually commits crimes against 
     humanity and will not cease, ``because the policies, 
     institutions, and patterns of impunity that lie at their root 
     remain in place'': Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate--
       (1) calls upon the international community to--
       (A) demand that the Government of the Democratic People's 
     Republic of Korea dismantle its labor camp system;
       (B) create a special tribunal with jurisdiction to 
     investigate and remedy crimes against humanity committed by 
     the Government of North Korea;
       (C) consider targeted sanctions against those individuals 
     who have committed such crimes against humanity; and
       (D) ban import of goods made by prisoners in the North 
     Korean labor camp system;
       (2) calls on the leadership of the Government of North 
     Korea to--
       (A) immediately cease human rights abuses;
       (B) release the roughly 80,000 to 120,000 political 
     prisoners;
       (C) halt the ongoing arrests of North Koreans on political 
     and religious grounds;
       (D) allow the International Committee of the Red Cross 
     entry into the camps to assist with the release and 
     rehabilitation of prisoners;
       (E) allow entry to the United Nations High Commissioner for 
     Human Rights and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on 
     Human Rights in North Korea to monitor the situation and 
     assist with the rehabilitation;
       (F) comply with international standards of food 
     distribution and monitoring and allow full access to 
     international humanitarian agencies; and
       (G) end the exportation of North Korean forced labor 
     consistent with obligations under United Nations Security 
     Council Resolution 2397 (2017);
       (3) strongly condemns the use of forced labor by the 
     Government of North Korea; and
       (4) calls on the United States Government to--
       (A) consider additional sanctions to the extent possible 
     against those individuals responsible for the North Korean 
     kwan-li-so labor camp system, including individuals 
     administering such labor camps; and
       (B) continue to raise awareness in the international 
     community of the kwan-li-so labor camps and the continuing 
     atrocious crimes being committed in the labor camps.

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