Human rights groups claim up to 200,000 North Koreans are held in political prison camps and penitentiaries across the country facing malnutrition, harsh labor, torture and executions.

Most prisoners were confined not for dissent but for political misdemeanors such as singing South Korean songs or joining a reading club, former detainees and activists say.

According to Amnesty International, 150,000 to 200,000 are incarcerated in six sprawling gulag-style prisons ― Camp No. 12 in Hoeryeong, No. 14 in Gaecheon, No. 15 in Yodeok, No. 16 in Hwaseong, No. 18 in Bukchang and No. 25 in Cheongjin.

Thousands are also held in at least 180 other detention facilities including seven reformation centers, the London-based human rights watchdog said.

“Men, women and children in the camp face forced hard labor, inadequate food, beatings, totally inadequate medical care and unhygienic living conditions. Many fall ill while in prison, and a large number die in custody or soon after release,” Amnesty said in its 2011 report.

Activists in South Korea, the U.S. and other countries have been waging campaigns against North Korea’s human rights abuses and China’s repatriation of defectors to their repressive homeland.

The North’s has vowed an “annihilation of three generations” of a family with any member caught fleeing.

The harsh conditions and ruthless treatment of inmates came to light in 2001 when Kang Chol-hwan published a book in 2001 after escaping the Yodeok camp, some 110 kilometers northeast of Pyongyang. Jung Sung-san, another former detainee, wrote a stage play titled Yodeok Story in 2006, based on Kang and others’ accounts.

In the U.S. State Department’s report on human rights in 199 countries released in April, North Korea was graded as “extremely poor” and remained at the bottom of the list along with China, Iran, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus.

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)