[6] HRNK was founded in 2001 by a group of foreign policy and human rights specialists to fill a gap in non-governmental expertise on North Korea.

Early members of the Board of Directors include figures such as Chuck Downs, Nicholas Eberstadt (of the American Enterprise Institute, conservative think-tank), Carl Gershman (president of National Endowment for Democracy), Morton I. Abramowitz (former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank), and Samantha Power (one of the Obama administration's proponents of the 2011 military intervention in Libya.[7][8][9]).

Solarz, a former New York Democratic congressman, was known as the "Marco Polo of Congress" for his long record of international travel and involvement in foreign affairs.

[citation needed] HRNK released its publication, Hidden Gulag Second Edition: Political Prison Camps, and held a conference at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

[citation needed] HRNK published Hidden Gulag IV: Gender Repression and Prisoner Disappearances by veteran human rights investigator David Hawk on September 18, 2015.

Most recently, HRNK and AllSource Analysis discovered the closure of the Camp 15 “Revolutionizing Zone” and issued this report: Imagery Analysis of Camp 15 “Yodŏk” Closure of the “Revolutionizing Zone.”[18] HRNK released the first comprehensive study of North Korea's discriminatory social classification system, Marked for Life: Songbun, North Korea's Social Classification System, to a group of 200 people at the American Enterprise Institute on June 6, 2012.

In April 2015, HRNK and AllSource Analysis, Inc. discovered what it believes to be a satellite image of an execution by ZPU-4 anti-aircraft machine guns at the Kanggon Military Training Center outside of Pyongyang.

Their allegations were reported on in “Unusual Activity at the Kanggon Military Training Area in North Korea: Evidence of Execution by Anti-aircraft Machine Guns?,” garnered significant media attention, including coverage by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

[19][20] At the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., HRNK hosted its first major conference on the "Hidden Gulag", addressing North Korea's prison system, on April 10, 2012.

HRNK provided the speakers, coordinated for the event, invited the Korean American community in the Chicago area, and presented talks on North Korea's political prison camps system.

The event, which was translated simultaneously on-site in Korean and English, was led by and featured HRNK Executive Director Greg Scarlatoiu, Resident Fellow Professor Hyun In-ae, and Board Co-Chair Roberta Cohen.

[25] The Brookings Institution and HRNK hosted an event in which Michael Kirby, chair of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea (COI), addressed the report's findings and recommendations.

[citation needed] On September 18, 2015, HRNK launched its publications The Hidden Gulag IV: Gender Repression and Prison Disappearances and North Korea: Imagery Analysis of Camp 15 "Yodok" - Closure of the "Revolutionizing Zone" at the Newseum in Washington D.C.

The conference featured presentations by the reports' authors David Hawk and Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. followed by a discussion with Roberta Cohen and Gwang-il Jung, a survivor of Camp No.