A new report has shown that penalties imposed on North Koreans trying to flee the country became much harsher in recent years.

In its White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea released on Tuesday, the Seoul-based Korea Institute for National Unification said that before 2014, North Korean citizens who were caught attempting to flee were imprisoned for six months. However, the punishment was heightened to three to five years of hard labor in prison camps.
 
The state-run institute's report was based on interviews with some 180 North Korean defectors who entered South Korea between the end of 2014 and 2015. The report said escapees who failed in their escape attempts were locked up in the Jongori indoctrination camp in North Hamgyong Province and Gaecheon indoctrination camp in South Pyongan Province.

The institute said that to prevent defections, North Korean authorities tightened surveillance and punishments against families of escapees and strongly cracked down on the use of mobile phones. The institute also found that North Korean laborers dispatched overseas are suffering from excessive working hours and exploitation in wages.
 
Interviewees who had worked in parts of the Middle East, China and Russia said that they had to hand over 90 percent of their wages to the North’s ruling party in the name of allegiance funds and had to work for more than 16 hours a day.
 
Sources familiar with Pyongyang affairs cited that two North Korean construction workers in Qatar, who were suffering from the harsh conditions, fled from their workplace and sought refuge at a local police station last month.