Editor's note: this story was translated from the original VOA Korean article.
North Korea has continued to expand and renovate detention facilities across the country, while estimates of the number of prisoners held in its political prison camps vary widely, reflecting the limited information available about the secretive system.
Seoul-based state-funded Korea Institute for National Unification estimated in its most recent report, published last year, that between 53,000 and 65,000 people were being held in four operating political prison camps.
South Korea-based news agency Daily NK recently cited an unnamed source inside North Korea as estimating that about 147,000 people were being held across six camps.
Greg Scarlatoiu, president of the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, told VOA he believes the “current political prison camp population could be closer to 200,000.” The figures, however, are not directly comparable because they are based on different sources, methodologies, and assumptions.
North Korea continues to deny that political prison camps exist and has long barred international investigators from accessing its detention facilities. As a result, satellite imagery has become one of the few available tools for monitoring developments inside the country's highly restricted prison system.
According to Daily NK, which employs several north Korean defectors, at least 14 detention facilities have been built or remodeled since late 2023. The sites include re-education prisons as well as other detention facilities. Experts caution, however, that construction activity alone does not prove that the detainee population has increased.
Ethan Hee-seok Shin, a member of the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, told VOA that political prisoners in North Korea “can face imprisonment without trial, lifelong forced labor and punishment that extends to family members under the state's system of guilt by association."
Such practices, Shin said, “help create a climate of fear that reaches far beyond the prison camps themselves."
Experts say satellite imagery can reveal new buildings, expanded perimeters and enhanced security infrastructure, but it cannot determine how many people are being detained or identify individual perpetrators of alleged abuses. For that reason, testimony from former detainees and insiders, along with internal government documents, remains essential for documenting alleged human rights violations and establishing responsibility.
Shin called for stronger international efforts to collect, preserve, and analyze evidence that could be used in future accountability processes. Scarlatoiu said those “efforts should be coupled with broader initiatives to increase North Koreans' access to outside information,” arguing that greater awareness of the outside world “remains a critical tool for long-term change."