Mother Forced to Drown Own Child in North Korean Prison, Says Defector

A 2009 file image of a North Korean defector in Seoul, South Korea. Some 30,000 North Koreans have successfully fled the North and been resettled in South Korea. Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

Details of a woman in a North Korean labor camp being forced to drown her new-born child emerged this week in a testimony given by a North Korean defector in Washington D.C.

At a detention center in North Korea, pregnant women were forced to carry out hard labor all day long, defector Ji Hyeon A told a U.S. Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing at Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Dec. 12.