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June 1, 2012

State Department’s New Country Report on Human Rights in North Korea Disappoints

The main development I take from the report it is that the regime seems to be moving in the direction of decentralizing its political detention system, opening up more smaller (and less visible) detention centers and possibly closing down one of the largest camps. The same NGO reported the police began to dismantle the sixth facility, Bukchang (Camp 18) in South Pyongan Province, in 2006 and it was unclear if the camp remained in operation in 2011. The NGO is...

Categories Human Rights/The Camps
May 31, 2012

North Korea’s Political Prison Camps Can’t Be Denied or Ignored Anymore

North Korea says they don’t exist. For years, South Korea didn’t want anyone to talk about them, and even now, it seldom does, at least directly. Our President, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, has never said a word about them in public. A few years ago, a foreign service officer was reviewing a draft of State’s annual human rights report on North Korea and asked its author to “sacrifice a few adjectives for the cause” of appeasing the...

Categories The Camps
May 12, 2012

Not Auschwitz, but Mauthausen

This was Mauthausen. I want you to remember the word… I want you to know, I want you to never forget or let our disbelieving friends forget, that your flesh and blood saw this. This was no movie. No printed page. Your son saw this with his own eyes and in doing this aged 10 years. – Fred Friendly, May 14, 1945 I’ve been reading witness testimonies about the horrors of North Korea’s concentration camps for years now, but after...

Categories The Camps
May 9, 2012

Welcome Back, Washington Post Readers

Chico Harlan of The Washington Post has written a story about that lengthy new report from South Korea’s National Human Rights Commission, and graciously threw me a couple of nice, fat links in the story (thanks, Chico!). This is a good thing for the North Korean people if more of us learn of their suffering. It’s also great for this blog, although it’s a bit like having a distinguished visitor stop by when you’re unpacking from a big move. This...

Categories Anju Links/The Camps
May 7, 2012

Refugees: Thousands Die at Jeungsan Prison, N. Korea

It’s been about a month since I attended an event here in Washington for the publication of the new edition of The Hidden Gulag, a report that documents North Korea’s prison camp system in agonizing detail with witness testimony and satellite imagery. The report added many pages of valuable testimony and data to our knowledge of these camps, which are probably the worst human rights violation anywhere in this world today. Yet almost as soon as the report was published,...

Categories Human Rights/The Camps
April 10, 2012

New Edition of “The Hidden Gulag” Adds New Imagery, Witness Accounts to Our Understanding of North Korea’s Prison Camps

Here.  Of personal interest to me is that witnesses have confirmed that this is indeed Camp 12, Chongo-ri, and this is indeed Camp 25, Chongjin.  There aren’t any new images of Camp 16 here, but in a few days, I’ll be posting an entire page of imagery of that camp, and the nuclear test site next door.  Thanks to David Hawk, Chuck Downs, Greg Scarlatoiu, and the HRNK board for giving me the opportunity to help with this.  David’s first...

Categories Human Rights/The Camps
April 8, 2012

Kang Chol Hwan and Shin Dong-Hyok Petition the U.N. for the Release of Their Family Members

While researching an unrelated post, I stumbled on this brief (opens in .pdf), filed just this week on behalf of Kang Cho-Hwan and Shin Dong-Hyok, and authored by international human rights lawyer Jared Genser. Kang, for those not familiar with him, is a survivor of Camp 15, author of “The Aquariums of Pyongyang,” and now a correspondent for the widely circulated South Korean daily, the Chosun Ilbo. According to the brief, Kang’s sister and her 11-year old son disappeared last...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights/The Camps
April 3, 2012

Rising attention on North Korea’s prison camps

A few years ago, I spent what felt like an hour or two on Skype with The Washington Post‘s Blaine Harden, sharing and explaining satellite imagery of North Korea’s prison camp system. No doubt, Harden talked to plenty of other people, too, and the result was an excellent report and interactive graphic about the camps. A few months later, Harden turned over the Post‘s North Korea coverage to Chico Harlan, and now we know why. Harden went on sabbatical to...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Camps
December 7, 2011

December 10, 2011 – Citizens’ Rally and Walk on Behalf of the Daughter of Tongyeong

From NKnet: On Saturday, December 10* in Seoul join South Korean citizens who have been walking 680km to rescue the Daughter of Tongyeong and her two daughters from imprisonment in North Korea for over 20 years. Performances “¢ Elec-Cookie “¢ Traditional Martial Arts Performance “¢ Modern Dance Performance “¢ NB Crew (B-Boy group) “¢ A Song for Abductees ““ sung by singer Lee Kwang Pil “¢ Answer (North Korean Song Troupe) “¢ Ha-Ha-Ho-Ho (Brass Ensemble) Ongoing during the day “¢...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Camps
May 25, 2011

Defectors Accuse North Korea of Killing Handicapped Kids

I have no way of knowing whether reports like this can be true, but one thing I can say with confidence is that the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, and Jimmy Carter will not demand an independent investigation to find out: Free North Korea Radio, run by North Korean defectors, reported last Tuesday on the murderous acts toward disabled children by the country’s own government. Disabled children who are born in the city of Pyongyang are taken...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Camps
May 7, 2011

Too Little, Too Late, But Better than Nothing: Amnesty International on North Korea’s Political Prison Camps

Six years after it breathlessly declared Guantanamo Bay “the gulag of our time,” Amnesty International has gotten around to concluding that North Korea “can no longer deny the undeniable:” “These are places out of sight of the rest of the world, where almost the entire range of human rights protections that international law has tried to set up for last 60 years are ignored. “As North Korea seems to be moving towards a new leader in Kim Jong-un and a...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Camps
March 21, 2011

Anju Links, including how to host your own NK political prison camps exhibition

Not the same as Joshua, but here are a few links I’ve found interesting of late. _________________________________ PSCORE’s regularly been posting news articles in English the last few months (don’t see RSS, sent them an email about that maybe a month ago). _________________________________ Host your own NKHRs exhibition:  SAGE Korea, the group that held an exhibition on North Korea’s political prison camp system, “Where Love Does Not Exist,” is putting its contents on the web for download so other groups...

Categories Anju Links/The Camps
October 19, 2010

The Boy Who Cried “Sheep!”: One Man’s Mass Murderer Is Selig Harrison’s Reformer

For someone who judged the evidence of North Korea’s uranium enrichment program so skeptically, Selig Harrison sure doesn’t set a very high bar to perceive evidence of “reform” in North Korea. But Harrison’s latest op-ed in the Boston Globe is in equal parts breathless and baseless, and might just extend his dismal predictive record into the next decade. In his desperation to find some sign that North Korea’s new Inner Party is a hothouse of reforms, Harrison pounds the square...

Categories Humor/Satire/Kremlinology/The Camps/Useful Idiocy
August 13, 2010

Repatriated South Korean POW Sent to Yodok

An octogenarian South Korean POW has been sent to a North Korean prison camp after he was caught attempting to escape the country and return to his homeland more than 55 years after being captured during the Korean War. [Open News] According to the report, the “peace forest” that will be Jung’s final destination is the infamous Yodok, or Camp 15. Follow me in a slightly cynical thought. If we’re going to start using the I.C.C. as a means to...

Categories Korean War/North-South/Refugees/The Camps
July 1, 2010

In Their Desperation to Meet With Ban Ki-Moon, N. Korean Gulag Survivors Try Borrowing a White Guy

North Korean gulag survivors are knocking on Ban Ki-Moon’s door, asking for a meeting to tell him what he’s known for a decade — that the North Korean prison camps they lived to tell about, no thanks to Ban, are the Mauthausens and Buchenwalds of our time. Odd thing is, it would be a lot easier for Ban to simply not answer if former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik weren’t knocking with them: “The profound suffering of the North...

Categories "United" Nations/Activism/Human Rights/The Camps