The population of North Korea's city-size political prison camps could be tens of thousands lower than the estimate used for more than a decade by aid groups and the U.S. government, according to recent reports and accounts from researchers, who put the new number at between 80,000 to 120,000.
Satellite technology allows improved ways of estimating one of the world's hardest-to-pinpoint population figures, and the old range — 150,000 to 200,000 — could have been an overestimate, according to researchers.
But those researchers also say that the actual number of prisoners held by the North has probably fallen. They attribute the drop-off in part to a spate of prisoner releases at one camp, but they also say it is because the camps, in general, are so reliably lethal, killing faster than the pace at which people arrive. Some analysts also say the number of arrivals at camps has tapered off.