A/HRC/10/18 page 9 23. Many punishments are totally unreasonable and abusive; for instance, students are reported to have been sent to labour training (re-education and forced labour) for watching South Korean dramas.14 Citizens who fail to turn up for work allocated to them by the State are sent to labour camps. There is a wide variety of detention facilities ranging from political detention camps (kwanliso) for political crimes to correctional labour punishment in labour camps (kyohwaso) for other crimes. There are reports of public executions and secret executions in political detention camps.10 In 2004, a new type of punishment was introduced in the form of labour training, with sentencing ranging from six months to two years. This has been used particularly for those caught leaving the country illegally. 24. Although torture is prohibited by law, it is extensively practised. Meanwhile, the abhorrent prison conditions, including lack of food, poor hygiene, freezing conditions in winter, forced labour and corporal punishment, result in a myriad of abuses and deprivations, ensuring that many prisons are a death trap for inmates, whose plight is sometimes mitigated by bribery. 25. The justice system leaves much to be desired; it lacks an independent judiciary, lawyers acting genuinely on behalf of accused persons, and juries, which would provide the checks and balances to deliver justice. Even though all three elements exist in the system, they are subservient to the State and do not uphold the internationally recognized notion of the rule of law. In fact, judges are appointed by the State and operate under the direction of the Supreme People’s Assembly. The jury system is based on two people who work with the courts (usually one judge at first instance) - not to ensure that the rights of the accused are upheld but to confirm the list of crimes presented at the trials and to confirm the conviction of the alleged wrongdoer. Anomalously, lawyers protect the State rather than their defendants. On-site open trials are also held, ostensibly to educate the public; in reality, they are an instrument to intimidate the public, without any regard for the defendant’s right to a fair trial and the right to privacy.10 26. On another front, the authorities have been involved in kidnapping a number of foreign nationals, usually with the aim of either using them to train others for espionage purposes or of stealing their identity with a view to later infiltrating the countries of origin. A number of cases concerning Japanese nationals abducted by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea remain unsolved and require an effective response from the latter to ensure transparency and accountability. The six-party talks have offered some room to address this issue at the bilateral level, but the talks are currently stalled. Over 10 countries have been affected by the conduct of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which has perpetrated these crimes extraterritorially - evidence of the pernicious range of its human rights violations with transnational implications.15 14 15 Ibid., No. 183, August 2008. Proceedings of the fifth general meetings of the International Parliamentarians’ Coalition for North Korean Refugees and Human Rights, Seoul, 23-26 November 2008.