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A human rights group says North Korea's political prison camps appear to be growing in size.

Amnesty International has published satellite images of the suspected camps and testimonies from former detainees.

The group says the camps have significantly expanded in the last decade to an estimated 200,000 inmates.

Amnesty's Asia Pacific director Sam Zarifi says North Korea can no longer deny the existence of such institutions.

"The conditions inside those camps are of people who are held [in] near slavery, facing severe malnutrition and torture, after almost no legal process whatsoever," he said.

"We think there is quite a bit of room for political action initially and in particular from China, who is somewhat frustrated with its troublesome ally and neighbour."

Amnesty said that in just one camp, Kwanliso 15 at Yodok, thousands are believed to be held after being judged "guilty by association" or simply because one of their relatives has been detained.

Many did not even know what crimes they were accused of.

Amnesty quoted Jeong Kyoungil, a detainee at Yodok from 2000-2003, as saying the working day started at 4:00am and ended at 8:00pm but was followed by two hours of ideological education.

"If we don't memorise the 10 codes of ethics, we would not be allowed to sleep," Mr Jeong was quoted as saying in a Seoul interview last month.

Only those who finished their assigned tasks would receive the ration of a 200 gram bowl of corn gruel.

"Seeing people die happened frequently - every day," Mr Jeong said.

"Frankly, unlike in a normal society, we would like it rather than feel sad because if you bring a dead body and bury it, you would be given another bowl of food."

Some prisoners ate rats or picked corn kernels out of animal excreta to survive, the report said.

Amnesty said one former detainee at Yodok estimated that 40 per cent of inmates died from malnutrition between 1999 and 2001.

The report said authorities are also known to use a cube-shaped "torture cell" in which it is impossible either to stand or lie down.

The rights group said inmates deemed disruptive were thrown in for at least one week, "but Amnesty International is aware of one case of a child thrown into the cell for eight months".

Former detainees have frequently given similar accounts of harsh and life-threatening conditions in the camps.

The US State Department, in its 2010 human rights report, cited estimates of 150,000-200,000 detainees.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/04/3207899.htm