A/HRC/25/CRP.1 noses. The entire town, including one witness who spoke to the Commission (who was 13 years old at the time), was forced to attend the brutal spectacle. The spectators swore at the victims and threw rocks at them. The witness did not know what became of the family.513 • In 1996, another witness saw how the authorities in Musan used a car to drag a man using a hook pierced in his nose. They announced by loudspeaker that they had caught a traitor and “had to pay the Chinese four times the village’s budget to get him back”. Little children followed the car and threw stones at the man. This terrifying experience triggered the witness to flee the DPRK.514 407. As more and more people fled from the DPRK during the mass starvation of the 1990s, the DPRK authorities seemed to have systematized their punishment of repatriated persons. The process follows very regular patterns and different security agencies closely coordinate their actions. Based on interviews with repatriated persons and former officials, the Commission finds that the actions described below generally reflect the treatment of DPRK nationals upon repatriation from China. 408. DPRK citizens who leave the DPRK illegally and are arrested by the Chinese authorities are handed over to the SSD at the border. There are at least five known border towns through which repatriated persons are taken to and “processed”: Hoeryong, Hyesan, Musan, Onsong and Sinuiju.515 Initially, repatriated persons are taken to an SSD interrogation detention centre near the border, where they suffer repeated illegal and sexually invasive body cavity searches (see below). SSD agents then question them on how and why they fled, including who assisted them in their departure from the DPRK and what they did in China. This interrogation usually involves torture of the kind described in section IV.D.2. 409. Depending on the nature of the allegations against them and their background, the fate of repatriated persons is determined by the SSD. Persons found to have made contact with ROK nationals and/or Christian missionaries are sent for further interrogation at the provincial SSD headquarters. From there, they are sent either directly to a political prison camp (kwanliso) without any trial or imprisoned in an ordinary prison camp (kyohwaso) after an unfair trial.516 In cases considered to be particularly grave, such as having contact with ROK intelligence officials, the victim faces execution. 410. Conversely, those found to have solely gone to China looking for food and/or work are handed over to the MPS, where the interrogation process is usually recommenced. If the MPS confirms that the person is only an “ordinary” border crosser, it commits him or her to detention in a holding centre (jipkyulso). There, the person remains detained, sometimes for months, until MPS agents from the person’s home county collect him or her and place the victim, usually without a trial, for several months to a year in a labour training camp (rodongdanryundae). • A former SSD agent, who worked in border security, indicated that the SSD considered anyone who illegally fled to China to be a traitor, no matter their reason, and would “not treat them as human”. However, the worst types of “defectors” were those who were planning to go to the ROK or had contact with ROK intelligence agencies. People who agreed to spy for ROK intelligence agencies were always 513 514 515 516 114 TJH038. TJH018. David Hawk, The Hidden Gulag: The Lives and Voices of ‘Those Who Are Sent to the Mountains’, Washington D.C. The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2012) p. 118. See section IV.E.