A new survey on North Korean escapees is giving the world some insight as to what goes on inside prison camps in the reclusive state.

The survey was based on interviews with some 13-hundred escapees living in China between August 2004 and September 2005 and on 300 escapees who were living in South Korea in November of last year.

According to the survey, 55 percent of the escapees in China said they were used as human experimentation subjects while in the North. Five percent of that group and seven percent of escapees in South Korea said their infants were murdered at the camps.

Fifty-one percent of the escapees surveyed in South Korea said they had witnessed executions while there, and 60 percent of the escapees in China said they had seen deaths caused by torture.

Most of the escapees were found to have been deprived of meals while in the North.

Marcus Noland, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, made the survey public during a recent seminar at the Korea Development Institute.