North Koreans who file for divorce are immediately subject to forced labor, a US-based news outlet recently reported, citing sources from within the communist state.

According to a Radio Free Asia report on Monday, an anonymous source living in Yanggang Province, North Korea said that 12 couples saw their divorces finalized in court on Dec. 13. Immediately after the ruling, each person was sent to a military labor camp, the report said.

"Last year, only the person who initially filed for divorce was sent to a military labor camp. They are sending both (former spouses), starting last month," the source was quoted as saying.

In June of 2021, Seoul-based online media outlet Daily NK reported that while the Pyongyang authorities have been sentencing divorced people to six months in the military labor camps, it was the person "with more fault in the divorce" who was sent there.

This was thought to be in response to the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's orders in March of that year, who supposedly accused those seeking divorces of "bringing chaos into society, and being against the socialist lifestyle."

North Korean law acknowledges the possibility of divorce but does not stipulate any type of punishment for it.

Another source told Radio Free Asia about a person who served three months at a labor camp for divorce. The person reportedly said 30 of the combined 120 people at the camp were there for divorcing their spouses, and women generally were subject to longer terms than men.

This, the source said, was because divorces tend to be filed by women, as many divorces in the country are based on domestic violence by the husband.

A February report by South Korea's Unification Ministry said that in a survey of 2,432 defectors, 28.7 percent of women and 15.2 percent of men had been divorced. The report also carried testimonies of defectors saying that divorcing one's spouse can result in varying degrees of disadvantage in society and that bribes are needed to get divorced.

A January report by the Korea Institute for National Unification, based on interviews with 71 defectors, said an increasing number of women in North Korea prefer to cohabitate with their romantic partners rather than get married.