Tyrant Kim Jong-un who forces mothers to drown babies: Survivors of brutal North Korea reveal world's most horrific torture camps UN commission of inquiry in Seoul interviewing 30 defectors Witnesses include Shin Dong-hyuk, author of Escape From Camp 14 Harrowing evidence of country's "political penal-labour colonies' Accounts of mass executions, torture and forced labour Starving prisoners - including children - resort to eating rats, lizards and insects The young prisoner stood motionless in the office of the factory manager. Next to him stood the chief foreman and the floor foreman, who had reported him for his grave offence. "What were you thinking!?" the manager screamed. Do you want to die? Of course, he did not want to die - he was just 22 years old - but he knew, after many years in the brutal hell of North Korea's Camp 14, that life was very cheap. Behind the wire: Rare video footage taken by hidden camera in 2005 and shows what appears to be a executions in a North Korean concentration camp near Hoeryang along the Chinese border (File photo) His "offence" was severe indeed: he had accidentally dropped a sewing machine down a stairwell, and it was beyond repair. "Even if you die, the sewing machine can't be brought back," the manager shouted. Your hand is the problem! The chief foreman took hold of his right hand and, with a large kitchen knife, cut off the prisoner's middle finger, just above the first knuckle. Incredibly, the prisoner felt that he'd got off lightly. "I thought my whole hand was going to be cut off at the wrist," he said, "so I felt thankful and grateful." Shin Dong-hyuk's story of how he lost his finger is just one of the many horrors being recounted this week at a United Nations commission of inquiry in Seoul, South Korea. The commission are interviewing some 30 defectors who are fortunate enough to have slipped from the grasp of one of the vilest regimes the world has ever seen. Death: In tapes taken in 2005 that South Korean intelligence officers insist are fake, prisoners including children are kept in concentration camps that bear similarities to Shin Dong-hyuk's Camp 14 (File photo) Mr Shin, who testified on Monday, is one of the more well-known defectors. He has recently published an account of his experiences in a book, Escape From Camp 14. At times, the stories told by Mr Shin and his fellow defectors are almost too unbearable to hear - but it is the intention of the commission to publicise such acts of terror committed by the regime. It is hoped news of them will trickle across the border into North Korea, alerting its benighted people to what has been done in their name since the despotic Kim family took control in 1948. The 30 witnesses are just a handful of the hundreds of thousands of political prisoners incarcerated in a network of North Korean "kwan-li-so" - best translated as "political penal-labour colonies." In these colonies, three generations of families are held for life, often on the basis that a single family member was once deemed guilty of an offence against the regime. The supposed "crime" which saw Mr Shin born at Camp 14 in 1982 was that his two uncles had tried to flee the country in the mid-Sixties. Mr Shin's parents were both prisoners, and their marriage had been arranged in the camp. If their baby had been born out of what passes for "wedlock," then he would not have been allowed to live and they would have been executed for having "sexual contact without prior approval." Evil: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, son of former leader Kim Jong-il, presides over one of the most repressive regimes in history Another defector, Jee Heon-a, told the commission how one mother was forced to kill her own baby by holding it down in a bowl of water. "The mother begged the guard to spare her, but he kept beating her," Ms Jee said. So the mother, her hands shaking, put the baby face down in the water. The crying stopped and a bubble rose up as it died. A grandmother who had delivered the baby quietly took it out. Mr Shin testified that his first memory as a toddler was watching a public execution, and that he had seen two or three per year since. Many of those executed are those caught trying to escape. One former prisoner, Kang Chol-Hwan, in his book The Aquariums Of Pyongyang, has recalled a typical execution at Camp 15 in which the condemned man had his mouth stuffed full of stones to stop him shouting out any statements against the regime that might be heard by the onlookers. The man was then bound with three pieces of rope: one around his eyes, one around his chest and one at the waist. The leader of the firing squad then shouted: "Aim at the traitor of the Fatherland... Fire!" Three volleys were aimed at the man. The first hit him in the head, killing him instantly. The second hit him in the chest, causing him to slump, and the third, aimed at the waist, caused the man to fall into a pit. As Mr Kang wryly points out: "This simplified the burial." Spy state: The UN commission of inquiry will look into government policing activities in North Korea Prisoners are sometimes made to throw rocks at the corpse until its skin comes off. Mr Kang also remembers how a bulldozer preparing some ground to be made into a field unearthed masses of body parts. "Scraps of human flesh re-emerged from the final resting place," he recalls. Arms and legs and feet, some still stockinged, rolled in waves before the bulldozer. I was terrified. One of my friends vomited. Mr Kang was then made to throw the body parts into a ditch. "That scene frightens me even more today than it did back then," he says. In some ways, those who die are the lucky ones and many prisoners do indeed choose suicide as the ultimate means of escape. Just as in the Nazi concentration camps decades before, prisoners are worked incredibly hard and subsist on pathetically meagre rations. As a result, the starving prisoners - many of them children, - eat what they can, including rats, frogs, snakes, and insects. Mr Shin recalled how rats were especially valued, as their meat can help stave off a potentially fatal disease called pellagra, caused by a lack of protein and niacin. Isolation: A satellite image shows a camp in Haengyong, North Korea, where prisoners are thought to be held by the tyrannical government Mr Shin would peel away the skin of a rat, scrape out its innards, chew the flesh and bones, then finish off with the rodents" small feet. Mr Kang prized salamanders, but they have to be eaten live. "The way to eat a salamander is to grab it by its tail and swallow it in one gulp, before it can discharge a foul-tasting liquid," he says. In the camps, the children eat anything that moves, including earthworms. If a group of prisoners is sent to work in a field, not one animal is left alive. Not surprisingly, the penalty for stealing food is severe. At Camp 14, one six-year-old girl was found by her teacher to have five kernels of corn in her pockets. The teacher forced the young girl to kneel in front of the class, whereupon he repeatedly beat her around the head with a wooden stick. The class was forced to watch as her head swelled up with bruises, and blood leaked from her nose. Eventually, she was taken away. She died later that evening. Such treatment is by no means unusual, and torture is common. Beatings on especially vulnerable parts of the body such as the face and hands are particularly favoured by the sadistic guards, who are encouraged to regard the prisoners as subhuman. Victims are made to kneel motionless on concrete floors for hours, or crouch in special punishment boxes for 15 days at a time. Prison state: A female North Korean soldier stands guard at the entrance of a women's jail on the banks of the Yalu River near North Korea's Chongsong county More awfully still, those being tortured have often been denounced by members of their own families. One of the most gut-wrenching pieces of testimony made by Mr Shin is his honest admission that it was he who betrayed his own mother and brother for plotting to escape from the camp. He was motivated by the fact that his mother had given rice to his brother and not to him, and partly because he knew that if they did escape, he too would be punished and in all likelihood shot. Mr Shin was forced to watch their execution. At the time, he was so desensitised and full of hate that he felt they deserved their fate. When his mother was led out, he noticed her head was swollen from being beaten. As the noose went around her neck, she looked for her son but Mr Shin did not meet her eye. Her death was terrible, as she struggled at the end of the rope. His brother's death was equally horrific, as bullets splattered his brains everywhere. The methods of execution varied according to the whim of the camp's commandant. In 2004, Mr Shin managed to escape Camp 14 and eventually the country disguised as a soldier. Callous: Kim Jong-un lives a fantasy life on the one hand, while allowing the torture and oppression of his people on the other Although his story and those of others who have been testifying in Seoul this week seem exceptionally brutal to our ears, they are commonplace in North Korean camps. Meanwhile, the country's leader, Kim Jong-un, continues to live in a kind of Never-Never Land, divorced from the sufferings of his people. His latest pet project is to build a ski resort, which he claims will be for the use of all. Just this week, though, the Swiss government blocked a deal to sell Kim any ski lifts, as it is inconceivable that the resort will be used by the public. And worthy though the UN commission is, it seems unlikely to stop the daily hell that is North Korea.