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<\/p>\nFears are growing that North Korea is preparing for a nuclear test, following the discovery of a secret path linking the country's largest concentration camp to its bomb test site.<\/p>\n
Kim Jong Un, who had previously destroyed the Punggye-ri test site in 2018, is believed to have rebuilt it for a potential new blast. The chilling new find in the North Korean wilderness could reveal how this was done.<\/p>\n
The country's biggest concentration camp, Hwasong, is just a few kilometres from Punggye-ri and is rumoured to provide slave labour to the test site. Previously, travel between the two locations required a 100-mile round trip due to the mountainous terrain.<\/p>\n
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However, satellite images have now revealed a hidden trail across the mountains, bringing the two sites within walking distance and suggesting forced labour may have been used to rebuild Punggye-ri. This worrying discovery was unveiled in a report by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), which warned that the regime "could conduct another test at any time of its choosing".<\/p>\n
The report also included testimony from a guard at another camp, who claimed that Punggye-ri was "a source of fear among the political prisoners once taken there, no one came back alive."<\/p>\n
Raymond Ha of HRNK stated: "Nearly eighty years after Allied air forces took aerial photographs of Auschwitz-Birkenau, satellite imagery plays a critical role in documenting and understanding the core of the Kim regime's crimes against humanity: its political prison camps.<\/p>\n
"This shows evidence of a physical connection between the Punggye-ri nuclear test site and Hwasong concentration camp."<\/p>\n
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Testimony from Hwasong itself is scarce. It's a maximum-security camp where political prisoners are locked up for life with no possibility of release.<\/p>\n
But Jacob Bogle, co-author of the new report, said that prisoners elsewhere had been "routinely used for forced labour… with little regard for their safety." He added: "So even though there are no known witnesses to Hwasong, there is also no reason to believe that the 20,000 prisoners there receive any better treatment."<\/p>\n
Mr Bogle speculated that prisoners may have been put to work digging out the tunnels where the regime detonates its nukes. He explained: "The excavation of tunnel one, where North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006, required the estimated removal of a minimum of 16.8 million kilograms of rock.<\/p>\n
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"North Korea already ranks last in the world for worker safety, but prisoners within the political prison camp system have no rights or legal protections whatsoever.<\/p>\n
"So it makes perverse sense to use what is effectively disposable labour to do the dangerous work of digging the tunnels of Punggye-ri.<\/p>\n
"Or to have them work on repairs and extensions at other tunnels after each nuclear test, where the risk of radiation exposure would be greater."<\/p>\n
The newly-discovered switchback trail is some 5.2km (3.2m) long and runs from Punggye-ri's first test tunnel to the perimeter of the Hwasong camp.<\/p>\n
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