Inside North Korea's labour camps !!!

Two US journalists have been sentenced to 12 years hard labour in a North Korean prison camp after being found guilty of "grave crimes" against the North Korean state.

Deeply secretive North Korea does not publish any details of the camps or the detainees held in them, but accounts from former inmates and guards who have defected paint a bleak picture.

Other details have emerged from the study of satellite photographs by intelligence agencies and human-rights groups.

The US state department estimates that 150,000-200,000 prisoners are detained in the camps, located in valleys in remote mountainous areas of the and central and northern part of North Korea.

There are thought to be between six and eight main camps, with dozens of other smaller camps.

Conditions in the network of labour camps are reported to be extremely harsh, with rights groups saying that torture and ill-treatment are widespread and thousands of children held and forced to work as slave labourers alongside their parents.

Worked to death

Based on accounts from former detainees, human-rights groups believe the conditions are so harsh that at some camps 20-25 per cent of prisoners die every year.

According to a recently published report by the nongovernmental US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, thousands of prisoners are forced to work - many to their deaths - in mining, logging, farming and industrial enterprises.