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Category: The Camps

September 2, 2009

Just What North Korea Needed: Another Death Camp

Just when I thought that North Korea couldn’t possibly find worse ways to spend its drug-and-gun money than nuclear weapons or the Ryugyong Hotel: Amid signs of mass defections as the international community began putting pressure on North Korea in the wake of its latest nuclear test, the regime in early May gave orders that no resident was to be allowed to flee the country, followed by a massive crackdown. The National Defense Commission gave village-to-village indoctrination lectures on a...

Categories Human Rights/The Camps
August 30, 2009

Daily NK Reports Uprisings in Labor Camps, Factory

Recently, the North Korean regime decided that its emaciated slaves hadn’t worked hard enough and declared a “150-day battle,” sending more of them to labor in the countryside and in the factories. The “battle,” however, appears to have taken a turn the authorities didn’t anticipate, according to an exile organization called North Korean Intellectuals Solidarity: It reported, “In a provincial labor-training camp located in Dongheung-district, Hamheung, South Hamkyung Province, a camp inspector, who was also a manager in the Department...

Categories Resistance/The Camps
August 16, 2009

Camps 14 & 18 Google Earth Page Published

It took months to do it, but I’ve finally published a Google Earth page for Camps 14 and 18. This page accumulates all of the newly available witness accounts, scholarly research, and satellite imagery of the camps, which share very little except geographical proximity. I owe my deepest thanks to a reader who forwarded me a copy of the Korean Bar Association’s 2008 human rights report, which proved to be an invaluable resource for this project, and for others to...

Categories Google Earth/Human Rights/The Camps
August 6, 2009

Jackass Mails Hash to Self in South Korea, Does Time, Compares Self to Laura Ling and Euna Lee

When the news of Laura Ling and Euna Lee’s release broke, I warned you that you were going to read a lot of really stupid things, and you are.  But a reader also forwards a link to something completely unexpected from Cullen Thomas, writing at The Daily Beast. What could be more useful in making sense of an isolated and unpredictable rogue state’s holding of journalists as hostages than the unique perspective of a hash-smoking ex-con who did time in...

Categories Fiskings/Ling/Lee Incident/The Camps
July 25, 2009

Ex-N. Korean Special Forces Soldier Alleges Biowar Experiments on Handicapped Kids; North Korea’s Jihad Against Christians

The accuser, Im Chun-Yong, escaped from North Korea with several comrades in his unit a decade ago.  That alone should tell you something about the state of morale in North Korea’s most elite forces even then.  Im claims that he kept this story to himself until now: “If you are born mentally or physically deficient, says Im, the government says your best contribution to society”¦ is as a guinea pig for biological and chemical weapons testing.”  [….] The former military...

Categories Human Rights/Religion/The Camps
July 21, 2009

Absolute Must Read: Washington Post on North Korea’s Concentration Camps

At last.  The Washington Post has done a truly detailed, comprehensive, well-researched story on North Korea’s concentration camps.  It’s a story that the Post wouldn’t have done had Anthony Faiola or Glenn Kessler been doing the reporting; Blaine Harden deserves much credit for writing what deserves to become a major exhibit in the indictment of our State Department for its culpable complicity.  The satellite imagery of the camps features prominently in the story. (Disclosure:  I provided Mr. Harden and one...

Categories Human Rights/The Camps/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
July 6, 2009

Chosun Ilbo: Ling and Lee Likely to Be Sent to “Special” Labor Camp

The Chosun Ilbo speculates — and that’s pretty much all there is to this — that Laura Ling and Euna Lee will miss the opportunity to report on the conditions in a real North Korean labor camp. Lucky for them. Instead, they will probably be sent to a special camp originally built to accommodate ranking members of the Workers Party and other figures thought to merit special treatment. Special camps are better furnished than general camps, and inmates reportedly do...

Categories Ling/Lee Incident/The Camps
June 9, 2009

North Korea’s Nuclear Tests and Camp 16

I had previously speculated that the proximity of Camp 16 to North Korea’s main nuclear test site was probably more than mere coincidence (you can see Google Earth images of both at this link; click the images).  The Chosun Ilbo has now published the first indirect evidence — really, a gathering of rumors — to support my speculation, despite the regime’s extraordinary secrecy: How were even the locals kept in the dark? The terrain around Mt. Mantap in Kilju, North...

Categories Human Rights/Refugees/The Camps/WMD
June 9, 2009

Ling, Lee Sentences Raise Interest in North Korean Labor, Concentration Camps (Updated)

Again, the North Koreans demonstrate their talent for attracting the wrong kind of attention.  Following the conviction of U.S. journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, news outlets have begin publishing sidebar stories and printing background quotes about what life is really like in a North Korean labor camp.  The L.A. Times has a full length story about it, complete with a quote by David Hawk and a diagram of what appears to be Kyo-Hwa-So Number 1, near the city of...

Categories Human Rights/The Camps
January 27, 2009

‘Kimjongilia,’ The Movie

A new documentary will play at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and this is one that I’m going to be watching very carefully: “Kimjongilia.” The film is about North Korea and those who have escaped it, their tortuous flights, and their often equally tortuous deprogramming as they adapt to life on Earth. The film’s subject matter focus is on the concentration camps, and the astonishment of the Director, N.C. Heikin, that world opinion has not arisen in outrage against them....

Categories Activism/Books & Films/Human Rights/Refugees/The Camps
December 16, 2008

WaPo Finally ‘Discovers’ Concentration Camps in North Korea

I submit that any man so morally retarded that he would utter the statement quoted below is not qualified to represent the values or interests of the United States abroad. And South Korea isn’t alone in tuning out the horrors. The United States is more concerned with containing North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. The State Department’s stunning lack of urgency was captured in a recent statement from its assistant secretary for Asia, Christopher R. Hill: “Each country, including our own, needs...

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks/The Camps
November 25, 2008

The Daily NK on Camp 18

As North Korean concentration camps go, Camp 18 has a reputation for being less terrible than most. The Daily NK helps to keep that in perspective by publishing an interview with a survivor. He says prisoners there were branded on their stomachs to better identify them. He also testified that at the political prison, “15~20 are publicly executed around this time of the year. Lim also noted, regarding life at the camp, “The teachers try to instill animosity towards parents...

Categories Human Rights/The Camps
March 25, 2008

S. Korean Human Rights Commission Will Investigate Atrocities in N. Korea

South Korea’s human rights agency said yesterday it would launch a probe into abuses in North Korea by interviewing defectors from the communist state.  The National Human Rights Commission has included investigating its neighbor ¡ ¯s record as one of its major tasks this year. “We will conduct a survey on the overall human rights conditions in North Korea this year by hearing from defectors, said commission spokesman Lee Myung-jae.  The number of defectors to be interviewed could be in...

Categories Appeasement/Defectors/Human Rights/Refugees/The Camps
February 28, 2008

Louise Arbour, an Exceptionally Ineffective U.N. Bureaucrat, to Step Down as High Commissioner for Human Rights

I would like to think that on defending human rights, the U.N. may soon become a little less worthless, but we might have said so when Mary Robinson stepped down, too. Recent history isn’t encouraging. You can’t defend something you can’t define. Still, Rep. Ileana-Ros Lehtinen is pleased: (WASHINGTON) ““ The announcement that United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour would not be seeking a second term is “the first step toward saving the broken UN human rights...

Categories "United" Nations/The Camps
December 3, 2007

Camp 14: An Other-Than-Human Existence

[Update: I almost forgot this UPI link, and thanks to the friend who forwarded the link. Sometimes, I think it’s your blog, and I just assemble it. It’s certainly easier for me that way, and much more interesting.] If you have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, Camp 14 survivor Shin Dong-Hyuk has an opinion piece published describing life inside a place that no other prisoner has ever escaped to describe. If you don’t, a number of other pieces...

Categories Human Rights/The Camps
July 10, 2007

‘Before she was executed, my mother looked at me.’

I’ve been blogging about stories like this for three years, and I still can’t believe human beings are capable of some of the things that my rational minds knows they’re fully capable of: On Nov. 29, 1996, 14-year-old Shin Dong Hyok and his father were made to sit in the front row of a crowd assembled to watch executions. The two had already spent seven months in a North Korean prison camp’s torture compound, and Shin assumed they were among...

Categories Human Rights/The Camps
June 8, 2007

Freedom House Panel on N. Korean Gulags

If you couldn’t make it to the Freedom House panel on the North Korean gulags, “Concentrations of Inhumanity,” Freedom House was kind enough to send of some of the remarks, the bios of the panelists, and even a few pictures. One of the two most salient points I take from the discussion is human rights scholar David Hawk’s explanation of why operating these camps is a “crime against humanity,” as defined by the Rome Statute. The other is the general...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/The Camps