Please note this is absolutely not some kind of NK-version of a Holocaust denial post!
NK is in the news a lot lately, and something that never fails to be mentioned in a reddit thread about NK is the "three generations" policy, where someone deemed an enemy of the state is sent to labor camps along with their parents and children.
I was curious to read more about this. The history of the policy, the stories of NK refugees who had experienced this horror, etc. So I started googling around old askhistory threads and wikipedia and so on. I.e. places where you can follow the sources.
I was surprised to find that almost every instance I encountered of this claim was unsourced. On wikipedia, I found that the only cited mentions of the policy pointed to this Freedom House report:
https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/ConcentrationsInhumanity.pdf
Several other articles on the web mentioning the three generations policy also cited this report.
However that report also makes claims about the three generations policy without any apparent insight on how this information was sourced. Except for this important 1972 quote from Kim Il Sung:
Factionalists and enemies of class, whoever they are, their seed must be eliminated through three generations”
Various versions of this quote (due to translation differences etc.) are present in several articles I found talking about the three generations policy.
The thing is, I can't find any concrete information about the application of the policy. There's nothing in Kim Il Sung's quote that is prescriptive about labor camps, or the other commonly repeated things about the policy such that the parents/children may be released on the death of the "traitor".
What are some sources I could read for some real information on this policy?
I can't really provide primary sources on the practice because I don't have any on hand, but you may be interested in reading more about the practice in the book North Korea Confidential. It's written by two journalists that write for the Economist (I think), and I actually don't like this book very much since it reinforces the idea that North Korea is a one man dictatorship state (or a monarchy as it were) while claiming to disprove this notion which has been so prevalent in Western media (which it doesn't even try to do). Anyways I'm suggesting this book because it has a passage on what you're looking for:
"Perhaps most importantly, political imprisonment happens not merely to individuals, but rather, to whole families. A principle called yeonjwaje, or guilt by association, sees three generations of a family all sent to the gwalliso for the crimes of one member. Naturally, this acts as a great deterrent against challenging the regime. A man who distributes anonymous leaflets criticizing Kim family rule, for instance, may be joined in the camp by his children, his brothers and unmarried sisters, and his parents. His wife may be spared if she agrees to divorce him immediately. Married sisters would not join him, as the traditional Korean conception of the family is patrilineal, and when a woman marries, she is considered to have left her family.
Here, we can see once again the feudal mentality of the DPRK. The “three generations” idea is not communist in origin, but rather derives from Korea’s monarchical past. During the Joseon Dynasty, men who passed tough national examinations were brought into government service, and given land for three generations. Similarly, sons and grandsons of criminals and political opponents were discriminated against by the state (Found in Chapter 4)
This book does get the cultural contexts of a lot of North Korean phenomenons correctly, which is difficult to find in books written in English, and partially perhaps, the reason why you were unable to find any real sources on the practices is because scholars sometimes fail to note their sources when the information seems particularly obvious even in cases when it is absolutely justified for people to ask for sources and verification. Thankfully, the writers of North Korea Confidential did note the origins of the cultural practice, and I think you may be able to find more on the discussion of this practice if you consult Korean sources: maybe something will come up if you search 연좌제 (yeonjwaje).