HAN KIM v. DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF KOREA Cite as 950 F.Supp.2d 29 (D.D.C. 2013) State Sponsors of Terrorism until the whereabouts of Reverend Kim had been made known. Id. ¶ 25, Ex. E. This letter was followed by a letter from Representative Henry Hyde in his capacity as the Chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, dated November 4, 2005, after the Illinois congressional delegation had returned from a trip to Japan. Id. ¶ 25, Ex. F. A recently declassified internal State Department cable dated February 3, 2000, from representatives stationed in Seoul communicating with headquarters in Washington, D.C., states that a local Chinese paper reported that Chinese investigators had ‘‘strong evidence’’ that Reverend Kim was kidnapped from China by DPRK agents who had crossed over into China in late December to plan the abduction. Id. ¶ 26, Ex. G. The cable—authored a mere two weeks after Reverend Kim’s abduction—further reported that ten people were involved in Reverend Kim’s kidnapping, including a couple posing as North Korean defectors, and that Reverend Kim was held hostage in China before being transported into North Korea by his captors. Id. The State Department’s 2003 country report on North Korea discusses North Korea’s responsibility for disappearances and refers to ‘‘unconfirmed reports that in January 2000 North Korean agents kidnapped a South Korean citizen, Reverend Kim Dong Shik, in China and took him to North Korea.’’ Decl. of Robert Tolchin, Dkt. No. 37 at 3. The State Department also recounts that North Korea engaged in torture including ‘‘severe beatings, electric shock, prolonged periods of exposure, humiliations such as public nakedness, and confinement to small ‘punishment cells[.]’’ Id. at 4. The report describes harsh prison conditions in North Korea where ‘‘starvation and executions were common’’ and former prisoners reported severe beatings and ‘‘torture involving water forced into a victim’s stomach with a rubber hose and 37 pumped out by guards jumping on a board placed across the victim’s abdomen[.]’’ Id. A 2009 State Department country report on human rights practices in the DPRK states that the North Korean government was responsible for disappearances and that ‘‘[i]n 2008 the media reported South Korean missionary Kim Dong-shik had most likely died within a year of his 2000 disappearance near the China–DPRK border.’’ Decl. of Robert Tolchin, Dkt. No. 38 at 3. The 2009 report reiterates the reported torture methods and the harsh conditions of the prisons in North Korea. Id. at 3–4. However, the State Department cable and reports do not provide any firsthand accounts of Reverend Kim’s treatment, or address the nature or severity of any torture Reverend Kim suffered, or specify the frequency or duration of the acts of torture or the parts of the body at which they were aimed or any weapons used to carry them out. Expert research on human rights abuses in North Korea has reported widespread and systematic repression by DPRK operatives of DPRK citizens and foreign nationals, specifically by means of forced abductions and confinement in kwan-li-so, or political penal-labor colonies. The reports are based on first-hand accounts and satellite photography, among other data. Declaration of Professor David Hawk (‘‘Hawk Decl.’’) ¶¶ 8–13. Professor David Hawk has expertise in human rights in North Korea, has published extensively on that issue, and has interviewed scores of former prisoners with first-hand accounts of treatment in North Korean camps. He declared that prisoners of the penal colonies face harsh conditions and treatment, including below-subsistence food rations, back-breaking forced physical labor, brutal beatings, long-term solitary confinement, rape, and forced abortion. Id. ¶¶ 14–19. Prisoners are forced to perform labor twelve or more hours a day, seven days a