By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS

It is no secret that respect for human rights is nonexistent in North Korea.

According to the U.S.-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), there are currently between 80,000 and 120,000 people imprisoned in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) for political reasons without access to due process.

And while Pyongyang adamantly denies it, satellite imagery and testimonies from former prison guards and inmates provide horrifying details about the scale and brutality of the kwanliso (forced labor camps), where so many of these prisoners are held, almost invariably incommunicado, and sometimes for life.

Extrajudicial executions, jail without trial, torture, starvation rations that leave prisoners so hungry that some turn to eating insects to survive, are all commonplace in these state-run camps.

Defectors of the DPRK are inevitably imprisoned, tortured or killed.

Defectors of the DPRK are inevitably imprisoned, tortured or killed.

Images of mass graves — presumably of some of the prisoners — have been recorded by external satellites.

There are no exact figures as to the number of forcefully disappeared persons in North Korea, but some international human rights groups put the estimates in the millions.

Whatever the numbers, these missing people — whose alleged crimes run the gamut from professing an unauthorized religion to having lived next door to a defector to hiding rations of food to feed their family to merely sporting the wrong haircut — are often forever lost to their families, and to history.

In North Korea, crimes against humanity are state policy.

But however grim and horrific the desperate state of human rights abuses may be in the so-called Hermit Kingdom, Lee Han-byeol, who escaped from the DPRK in 1999 at age 17 after watching her father die of starvation, her mother incarcerated and her brother forcefully disappeared and who is now one of seven Korean National Human Rights Commission (NHRCK) non-standing commissioners, wants the world to know that the situation for North Korean women and girls is even worse.

“In the prison camps, even young, prepubescent girls are systematically subjected to sexual abuse, rape, forced prostitution, gender-based violence and forced abortions, even in very late stages, and they are often denied basic health and sanitary care,” said Lee, speaking through a translator, during a roundtable conference with the Mexican media on Monday, Oct. 23.

Those few detained women who do manage to give live births generally have their offspring snatched from their arms while they are still nursing, and may never see their children again.

Those few detained women who do manage to give live births generally have their offspring snatched from their arms while they are still nursing, and may never see their children again.

“These women have no recourse and they face the brunt of the worst brutality at the camps,” Lee said. “The torture of women is endemic in the camps.”

Lee, who came to Mexico sponsored by the South Korean Embassy and the United Nations Human Rights Commission to speak about the DPRK’s dismal violations of international law and basic human rights — especially those of women and girls — before the Mexican Congress and to try to incentivize greater awareness of the plight of North Korea’s political and social prisoners, emphasized that females make up the lion’s share of kwanliso prisoners.

In fact, according to some external estimates, nearly 70 percent of the prisoners in the kwanliso are female, and, not surprisingly, more than 80 percent of North Korean defectors are girls and women.

Even without imprisonment, women in North Korea are treated as second-class citizens, she said.

North Korean girls and women are routinely harassed, sexually assaulted and arbitrarily detained by authorities and law enforcement officials with no provocation.

Even without imprisonment, women in North Korea are treated as second-class citizens.

Gender inequality is deeply embedded in North Korean society, and women and men are deeply segregated in most parts of daily life, ranging from work assignments to gender-segregated dinner tables, where women regularly receive smaller portions of food.

Studies conducted by the United Nations and various human rights organizations have indicated that at least 70 percent of North Korean women are routinely abused by their husbands, and there are no legal sanctions against domestic violence in the DPRK.

Because men in North Korea are prioritized over women, and given larger rations of food, it was the women who made up the highest portion of the nearly 3 million deaths that ensued during the country’s 1990s famine.

And what Lee said that she wants the world to know is that Pyongyang’s arms race is financed on the backs of its women.

“You cannot separate the two,” added Agustín Menéndez, an associate researcher specializing in North Korea at the Argentine-based, privately-funded Latin American Center for Democratic Opening and Development (CADAL) thinktank.

Menéndez, who flew in from Buenos Aires to accompany Lee during her whirlwind, two-day tour to Mexico, said that it is crucial that governments around the world take a solid position against human rights abuses in North Korea, noting that Mexico is only one of three Latin American countries, along with Cuba and Venezuela, that has a North Korean diplomatic mission in its territory.

Mexico is only one of three Latin American countries, along with Cuba and Venezuela, that has a North Korean diplomatic mission in its territory.

“The most basic right to life is not guaranteed in North Korea,” Lee said.

“The monthly salary at factories is not enough to buy rice for a single meal, which is why so many people suffer from hunger. North Koreans — especially women — are being exploited for labor by the state.”

She said that the last resort for many North Korean women is to flee, as she did, no matter the consequences.

And even when they do manage to escape — usually to China — 60 percent of North Korean female defectors end up sold into the sex trade, and most are sold more than once, according to the Korea Future Initiative, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to investigate and document human rights violations in the DPRK.

Asked what the chances were that the 75-year-old, third-generation Kim Dynasty would collapse any time soon, or even respond to international pressure to comply with globally accepted human rights, Lee, with classic Korean grace, hemmed and hawed, saying only that she had to try to change the situation in her native land by promoting international awareness and hope that the rest of the world would take a stand.

Menéndez, on the other hand, was more direct in his response, acknowledging that the current Kim Jung-un regime was supported by a powerful political network and financed by arms sales and North Korea’s wealth of rare minerals.

Nevertheless, he said, “sooner or later, everything comes to an end.”