Kim Jong-un is the leader of North Korea. Source: AP Picture: Wong Maye-E

You’re treated like a slave and freedom is no reality.

These are the scary truths of what it’s like in a North Korean prison camp.

Kang Chol-hwan was held captive as a child in the Yodok political prison camp in the 1980s, he was sent to live there when his grandfather was accused of betraying the Kim government.

The Yodok camp segregated “enemies of the state” and prisoners were punished with hard labour.

After a decade, Mr Chol-hwan escaped North Korea and now smuggles USB drives to those left there, filled with media, movies and documentaries.

Kang Chol-hwan was held in a North Korean prison camp for 10 years before escaping to South Korea. Picture: Wikipedia/Creative CommonsSource:Supplied

The journalist and author has now revealed more about his harrowing experience growing up in prison camps and how he got away.

Mr Chol-hwan said his prison camp was “another form of Auschwitz” and described daily life as mundane, despite him seeing some of the most horrific things while working his fingers to the bone.

“We wake up at 5am and are forced to work until sunset,” Mr Chol-hwan said on Reddit.

“We are given lessons on Kim il-sung and Juche. We are forced to watch public executions. We are physically abused — hit and tortured.”

Mr Chol-hwan experienced no freedom while he was in North Korea — even when people were on holidays they could not travel and surveillance was so strict.

“There was a surveillance system but people do not question it because they have not experienced other government systems,” Mr Chol-hwan said.

“Sometimes we are taken in for questioning for touching the portrait of Kim il-sung, for example if we see dust or dirt on the portrait.

“That is stressful. We think about freedom as we grow up, but I think that (sic) human nature. We are stressed about this.”

Mr Chol-hwan’s family lived in Japan for some time, so he always had a sense of freedom and understood its virtues.

But before they were arrested, his parents told him to be careful because they were in fear of restrictions of the North Korean government.

“People near me started to go missing,” he said.

A female North Korean soldier looks out from behind a barbed-wire fence around a camp on the North Korean river banks. Source: AP Picture: Ng Han GuanSource:News Limited

Those in North Korea don’t get much of a sense of the outside world according to Mr Chol-hwan.

He told Reddit he listened to a radio in secret for a year while he was in the camp and said people only had limited access to Korean media.

Mr Chol-hwan said North Koreans were “brainwashed” by the government, making them seem strange to the rest of the world.

“I think it is lamentable that people think of the North Korean government and North Koreans as one entity,” he told Reddit.

“North Koreans may seem loyal to the government, but because they fear the government, they cannot speak their minds.”

When Mr Chol-hwan finally escaped and “defected” North Korea in the 90s, he had to leave his family behind and said these days the government tried to reach out to those who left, using their families as a lure back to the country.

“I would have loved to escape with all of my family but that was physically impossible,” he said.

“I feel sorry for them but I try to help them as much as I can.”

Satellite view of Camp 16, one of the most notorious prisons in North Korea. No ground-level pictures of the camp are known to have made it out of the country.Source:Supplied

Mr Chol-hwan told Reddit about the struggles to escape.

There were no specific routes and he said it was difficult to leave without the support of the South Korean government.

“I had heard that you could live in places such as Harbin, China,” he said.

“However, I was hopeful that other paths would open. Missionaries came and prayed for us. The heavens helped me and I was able to board a ship that took me from China to South Korea.”

He left China in January 1992 and got to South Korea in August the same year.

When Mr Chol-hwan arrived in South Korea, the strangest things shocked him.

“In North Korea, there was only one type of toothbrush available but here (South Korea), there were so many and I didn’t know which one to choose,” he said.

One of the soldiers guarding a North Korean prison camp.Source:News Limited

“Also, women’s rights in the two countries are so different. In North Korea, women are often treated harshly, but in South Korea, I saw women smoking, which is unimaginable in the North.

“Actually everything was shock. The fact I could travel whenever I want was shocking. In North Korea, you need a travel pass to go anywhere but in South Korea, the freedom of movement is taken for granted.”

Mr Chol-hwan looked to the future of North Korea and how it could be helped by other governments across the world.

He doesn’t however believe putting “pressure” on the Kim government would be enough.

“I don’t think they know exactly what kind of pressure is necessary. Economic pressure is not the only type of pressure. People need to learn what the North Korean government fears the most,” he said.

“First, the government wants to prevent defection. They fear that if many people start to defect, a unification similar to the German case will take place. So, they are focused on keeping the border shut.

“Second, the government wants to prevent North Koreans from having access to outside information. The more North Korean citizens know, the more danger it is for the government. So far, I do not believe we have been targeting either of these.”

Mr Chol-hwan believed the border needed to be opened so there could be a mass defection and said the information barrier needed to be lifted so North Koreans could access the outside world.

He said hope for North Korea in the future depended on whether Kim Jong-un was alive or not.

“In order for the country to open up, there needs to be a change in individual-centred political power,” Mr Chol-hwan said.

“I don’t think Kim will open up the country like Deng Xiaoping of China had done.”

He believed the Kim Jong-un regime would however disappear in five years, giving North Korea a new hope for the future.