“Before the camp meeting begins, the camp officials make sure that the number of families to be released has been checked and is correct. When the meeting begins, the Administrative Director, Executive Party Officer and the Security Director take their seats on the stage. Then the presiding officer reads the good performance reports of prisoners scheduled to be released, creating the impression that the prisoners will be released on the basis of good performance and due to the beneficence of the leader. Three prisoners scheduled for release, with the worst social background, are selected for speaking onstage. Then the camp meeting proceeds with three prisoners, selected from the group of prisoners not being released on the day, to come up to the platform for a separate session. After that, prisoners not on the release list are ordered to leave the meeting room, leaving only the prisoners soon to be released behind. These prisoners are compelled to swear that they will not leak information related to the Control Center to their relatives and outsiders after release. Only when this pledge is extracted is the camp meeting brought to a close. However, they are not sent to their homes directly after this meeting. Instead, they are forced to do some work at a mine and help miners. The following day the prisoners must go through a ritual of cordially offering a bouquet of flowers in front of a memorial table of leaders, then, offer a bribe to the camp official in their respective unit office. (A09, former prisoner, from PPC No. 18, 1975~2000) According to testimonies from former prisoners from PPC No. 18, prisoners were selected and released twice or three times per year on fixed days. The entire prisoner population in a particular sector was released in 1991. During the process, prisoners with serious crimes were transferred to Pukchang. Survey results indicate that some prisoners in Pukchang with good family background were transferred to PPC No. 18. This shows that a major camp reorganization took place in PPC No. 18 during 1991. During the process of camp reorganization, some prisoners were sent to Pongchang’s maximum-security camp, while some prisoners charged with less serious crimes were transferred from Pongchang to Camp No. 18, revealing that exchanges of prisoners by sectors and camps did take place. Thus, it appears that, in the case of PPC No. 18, individual prisoners were released and in some cases, prisoners from an entire sector were released. In this process, prisoners charged with more serious crimes were excluded from release and sent to the PPC at Pongchang, a camp with stricter security measures in place. The survey makes clear that prisoners were not released based on the termination of their prescribed detention term; rather, their release was determined during the period of their detention at the camp on the basis of their work/behavioral performance. In cases of prisoners released from the PPC at Pukchang, some were released because their detention term expired or on the basis of good performance records during the term of detention. 75