Search Results for: camp 22

September 3, 2013

Camp 22 Update

In an update to its previous imagery analysis, the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea seems to be migrating to the view that Camp 22 was closed in 2012, but if that’s the answer, the next question it raises is what happened to the prisoners there, once estimated to number as high as 30,000. The Washington Post asks that question in an editorial today: In a way, the camp was a city in its own right, albeit a locus of inhumanity rather...

Categories "United" Nations/The Camps
January 11, 2013

Camp 22 Update

A reader pointed me to these newer images of Camp 22, via HRNK.  The images show evidence of the destruction of at least one guard post and one guard tower.  I wouldn’t say this has completely changed my mind, but it’s significant and weighs in favor of the camp’s closure, alongside over signs such as the vegetable gardens and the continued reports of the Daily NK. You can add all of this to my analysis here and here.  All of this...

Categories The Camps
October 24, 2012

HRNK publishes Camp 22 imagery

HRNK seems to have gotten its hands on imagery of Camp 22 without the restrictive end-user license terms that came with the imagery I’d analyzed here.  Now, you can examine it for yourself at HRNK’s site and compare it to Google Earth imagery on your own.  If you spot something, say it in the comments. For what it’s worth, I see at least one change at Camp 22 that’s significant enough to be worth continued watching, to see what other...

Categories The Camps
October 15, 2012

New satellite imagery shows few changes at Camp 22

Those of us who watch North Korea spend a lot of time speculating, either because the truth is unknowable or because it’s not of interest to many of those who report the news for a living, or even to most of the top executives of the human rights industry. But when I read the reports of Camp 22’s closure, I decided not to settle for speculation this time.  These reports were simply too horrible, and too consequential, to be left at...

Categories Anju Links/The Camps
October 3, 2012

The Liquidation of Camp 22

I have updated the Camp 22 page to reflect the latest reports of its closure. According to one of those reports, out of an estimated 2010 population of 30,000 prisoners, all but 3,000 were starved to death and burned to ashes in a crematorium. The latter detail comes from a Korean-language Radion Free Asia report that reports details the Daily NK didn’t, so it suggests multiple sourcing. The people I’ve reached out to in the last few days sound convinced...

Categories The Camps

Holocaust Now: Looking Down Into Hell at Camp 22

Those who have lived to tell us about Camp 22, located in the bleak northeastern tip of North Korea, can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and all of them are former guards or staff. Of all of North Korea’s numerous labor camps and detention facilities, large and small, Camp 22 is one of the largest, and almost certainly the most terrible, if only for the inhuman experiments witnesses say were done to the men, women, children, and...

Comments: 55
April 13, 2007

‘Kim Jong Bill’ Richardson and Camp 22

[Update:   The dissenting comments have been erased again.  Gov. Richardson’s fans want to create a cult of adulation in which all  dissent is stifled and concentration camps are never mentioned.   All of this is somehow  familiar to a North Korea-watcher.] [Update 2:   Help us keep “Kim Jong Bill” on Wikipedia until he asks Kim Jong Il to close down Camp 22.  I’ve put the text and code at the bottom of the post, below the line.  Everyone is...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea/WMD
February 18, 2007

Holocaust Now: Looking Down Into Hell at Camp 22

Those who have lived to tell us about Camp 22, located in the bleak northeastern tip of North Korea, can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and all of them are former guards or staff. Of all of North Korea’s numerous labor camps and detention facilities, large and small, Camp 22 is one of the largest, and almost certainly the most terrible, if only for the inhuman experiments witnesses say were done to the men, women, children, and...

Categories Google Earth/Human Rights/The Camps
June 22, 2005

Chosun Ilbo Compares Army Barracks to “Concentration Camps”

The contagion of morally and historically moronic “concentration camp” analogies has spread to Korea. This time, shouts the Chosun Ilbo, Army barracks are concentration camps. Consider the trajectory of this discussion: from the tragic actions of a lone nut, we have arrived directly at this bewildering hyperbole. I’d be the last to dispute that the treatment of Korean soldiers deserves some sober inquiry and intelligent public debate. Comparing conditions there to places that were specifically designed to kill millions (rather...

Categories Uncategorized
June 22, 2005

Chosun Ilbo Compares Army Barracks to “Concentration Camps”

The contagion of morally and historically moronic “concentration camp” analogies has spread to Korea. This time, shouts the Chosun Ilbo, Army barracks are concentration camps. Consider the trajectory of this discussion: from the tragic actions of a lone nut, we have arrived directly at this bewildering hyperbole. I’d be the last to dispute that the treatment of Korean soldiers deserves some sober inquiry and intelligent public debate. Comparing conditions there to places that were specifically designed to kill millions (rather...

Categories Uncategorized
April 30, 2005

Bush Calls Kim Jong Il a “Tyrant;” Mentions Concentration Camps

Coincidence? Having remained fairly silent on the North Korea Human Rights issue, President Bush had some direct words for the North, on this of all weeks: U.S. President George W. Bush on Thursday poured oil on the flames by again calling North Korean leader Kim Jong-il a “tyrant”. He also said Kim was a “dangerous person” with “huge concentration camps” who “starves his people” and “threatens and brags.” Saying that George W. Bush “poured oil on the flames” is a...

Categories Uncategorized
April 29, 2005

Bush Calls Kim Jong Il a “Tyrant;” Mentions Concentration Camps

Coincidence? Having remained fairly silent on the North Korea Human Rights issue, President Bush had some direct words for the North, on this of all weeks: U.S. President George W. Bush on Thursday poured oil on the flames by again calling North Korean leader Kim Jong-il a “tyrant”. He also said Kim was a “dangerous person” with “huge concentration camps” who “starves his people” and “threatens and brags.” Saying that George W. Bush “poured oil on the flames” is a...

Categories Uncategorized
October 3, 2021

Selling Slavery: South Korean investors’ $900,000 Kaesong lobbying campaign

Documents filed with the Justice Department in July show that a group of South Korean investors hired a San Francisco law firm and a South Korean consulting firm to lobby the U.S. government to support reopening a shuttered, looted, and partially exploded manufacturing complex near Kaesong, North Korea. The documents were required to be filed with the Justice Department and made public under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA), a law designed to expose foreign propaganda and influence...

Categories Kaesong/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Law
September 20, 2017

Save North Korean Refugees Day: This Friday, September 22nd

What sort of place could be so horrible that a family of five would choose to die together rather than be sent there? The answer, of course, is this place, or this one, or this one, or this. Here is the story of a family that made that choice. A North Korean family of five, including a former senior official of the Workers Party, committed suicide last week after they were caught by Chinese police and faced deportation to the...

Categories Refugees
May 5, 2016

Please, Kurt Campbell, save Korea (and us) from the Trumpocalypse

For conservative North Korea watchers who are rightly depressed about the intellectual and moral death of the Republican Party, let me palliate your depression with a few observations. First, parties come and go. What matters is that democracy endures. Any casual observer of South Korean politics knows that democracies can outlive the dissolution of parties just fine.  Second, what matters to Korea policy is coalitions, not parties. On the Hill, there isn’t much of a partisan divide on North Korea policy...

Categories Diplomacy/Washington Views
April 1, 2016

European Union publishes new N. Korea sanctions regulation to implement UNSCR 2270

I’ve previously written about the importance of Europe’s role in enforcing U.N. sanctions against North Korea. On March 5th, the EU designated 16 people and 12 entities under its existing North Korea sanctions program. Yesterday, it finally announced the publication of a new “restrictive measures” regulation to implement UNSCR 2270. Based on the summary, the new regulation follows last month’s Security Council resolution right down the line. The measures extend, inter alia, export and import prohibitions to any item (except food or medicine)...

Categories "United" Nations/Europe/Sanctions