A Chilling Look Inside North Korea's Modern-Day Gulag

Google EarthNorth Korean Prison Camp 22

Controversy is flaring up over North Korea's human rights record.

Late last month, the UN General Assembly recommended that the Security Council refer the Kim regime to the International Criminal Court over a 372-page UN document released earlier this year detailing the Hermit Kingdom's human rights abuses.

This sets up a potential showdown at the Security Council, which has the power to actually put North Korea's system of internal oppression on the ICC's agenda - something that China and Russia, veto-wielding council members with plenty of human rights issues of their own, will undoubtedly try to prevent.

North Korea claims that the UN's findings are a "fabrication."

But the UN controversy is just a reminder that the regime's brutal system of political and economic repression is all too real.

In reality, North Korea operates a growing network of prison camps containing up to 200,000 prisoners living in unfathomable conditions.

Information about the camps is limited to reports from the few successful escapees, notably Shin Dong-hyuk, who told 60 Minutes about spending 23 years behind the wire in December of 2012.

Although there are no pictures from inside the camps, satellite images plus a set of illustrations supposedly drawn by a defector (the source of these images is unconfirmed) give a hint of the terror inside.

Warning: Some images are disturbing.

Paul Szoldra originally contributed to this report.