A report by David Hawk entitled "The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea's Prison Camps," was released last week by the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. The report details, with ex-prisoners' and former guards' testimonies as well as satellite photographs, the conditions, tortures, and other inhumane activities taking place in hidden political camps in North Korea – including forced abortions and infanticides.

"We will no longer subsidize the North Korean regime to allow it to continue building gulags and committing gross human rights violations," Sen. Brownback said of his intended legislation. "We are making good progress on this bill and anticipate the support of several key senators."

Sen. Brownback also said his office has been inundated with petitions regarding the conditions in North Korea.

In the report, Hawk says as many as 150,000 or 200,000 people are imprisoned in slave camps in North Korea where torture and executions are routine and many die of starvation. The "crimes" for which prisoners were charged included singing South Korean pop songs, listening to South Korean radio, or otherwise offending the regime. Punishments, including imprisonment and torture, are meted out to the offender and the next three generations.

The report said North Korea's authorities practice a "particularly reprehensible phenomena of repression" against forcibly repatriated pregnant women.

According to the report, one woman watched in horror as military officials gave another woman a labor-inducing drug. Once the baby was born, she watched as the infant was suffocated with a wet towel before the mother's eyes. The women were told that no half-Chinese babies would be tolerated.

Another woman said she helped deliver seven babies, all of whom were either aborted previously or killed upon delivery.

Some of the babies who have been killed were jammed in the soft spot at the base of their skulls with forceps – the lethal step in the partial-birth abortion procedure currently used in the United States.

"If we do nothing, if we close our eyes, the North Korean regime will be emboldened to imprison and enslave more people," said U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea Chairman Fred Ikle. "International pressure is essential for any effort to improve the horrible human rights situation in North Korea."

The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea is a nonprofit organization and was founded in 2001 to address the pressing human rights situation in North Korea by conducting comprehensive research on three major areas of concern: the prison camp system, the unequal access to food problem, and refugees.