State Dept. Religious Freedom Report Says Up to 120,000 Are Trapped in North Korean Labor Camps

Between 80,000 to 120,000 people are trapped in North Korean gulags with many of them being imprisoned for their faith, the U.S. State Department has said.

On Tuesday, the agency released its congressionally-mandated 2017 International Religious Freedom report, an annual document describing the status of religious freedom in every country.

This year’s report labels the Rohingya refugee crisis in Burma as “ethnic cleansing.” It also places an estimate on the number of people subjected to North Korea’s notorious system of prison camps.

Escapees over the years have shared the horrors of torture, forced labor and abuse they have experienced inside North Korea’s prison camps. People are imprisoned in what the Kim regime likes to call “re-education camps” for crimes such as worshiping in a church that’s not state-recognized or for defecting from the country.

“The government continued to deal harshly with those who engaged in almost any religious practices through executions, torture, beatings, and arrests,” the report states. “An estimated 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners, some imprisoned for religious reasons, were believed to be held in the political prison camp system in remote areas under horrific conditions.”

The State Department relied on the expertise of NGOs like Christian Solidarity Worldwide to state that a “a policy of guilt by association was often applied in cases of detentions of Christians, meaning that the relatives of Christians were also detained regardless of their beliefs.”

“Religious and human rights groups outside the country…