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'Horrific' North Korean Prison Camps Growing: Amnesty
SEOUL — North Korea has expanded its political prison camps in the past decade to hold about 200,000 people in "horrific" conditions, with some inmates eating rats to survive, Amnesty International said Wednesday.
A report from the London-based rights group painted a nightmarish picture of overwork, starvation and executions which detainees were forced to watch.
Amnesty said it had obtained satellite images revealing the location and size of the camps, along with new testimony from former inmates of the Yodok camp complex and others.
The ex-detainees testified that "prisoners are forced to work in conditions approaching slavery and are frequently subjected to torture and other cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment", Amnesty said.
All ex-detainees at Yodok in South Hamkyong province had witnessed public executions, it said.
Amnesty said comparison of the latest images with ones from 2001 showed a significant increase in the scale of the camps.
"As North Korea seems to be moving towards a new leader in Kim Jong-Un and a period of political instability, the big worry is that the prison camps appear to be growing in size," said its Asia-Pacific director Sam Zarifi.
Leader Kim Jong-Il is grooming his youngest son Jong-Un as eventual successor.
Amnesty said that in just one camp, Kwanliso 15 at Yodok, thousands are believed to be held after being judged "guilty by association" or simply because one of their relatives has been detained.
Many did not even know what crimes they were accused of.
Amnesty quoted Jeong Kyoungil, a detainee at Yodok from 2000-2003, as saying the working day started at 4am and ended at 8pm but was followed by two hours of ideological education.
"If we don't memorise the 10 codes of ethics, we would not be allowed to sleep," Jeong was quoted as saying in a Seoul interview last month.
Only those who finished their assigned tasks would receive the ration of a 200 gramme (seven ounce) bowlful of corn gruel, and inmates died daily.
"Seeing people die happened frequently -- every day," Jeong said.
"Frankly, unlike in a normal society, we would like it rather than feel sad because if you bring a dead body and bury it, you would be given another bowl of food."
Some prisoners ate rats or picked corn kernels out of animal excreta to survive, the report said. One former detainee at Yodok estimated that 40 per cent of inmates died from malnutrition between 1999 and 2001, it added.
Amnesty said authorities are also known to use a cube-shaped "torture cell" in which it is impossible either to stand or lie down.
The rights group said inmates deemed disruptive were thrown in for at least one week, "but Amnesty International is aware of one case of a child thrown into the cell for eight months".
Former detainees have frequently given similar accounts of harsh and life-threatening conditions in the camps. The US State Department in its 2010 human rights report cited estimates of 150,000-200,000 detainees.
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18 Comments so far
Show AllPrison/slave camps?
Whaddya call the U.S. prison system, using prison labor to build weapons and furniture and do customer service--
Everyone has broken some law sometime that can land them in this system should you prove not useful as an employee.
North Korea is, in this respect, better than the U.S.
At least they don't pretend to be a free country.
Give it a rest.
American values about freedom and justice doesn't cut it anymore.
Pure propaganda.
Those days are over.
Exactly. Furthermore, "Amnesty International" has been involved in creating war propaganda before in the past (i.e. the lies about Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators in Kuwait during the Gulf War).
Actually, that baby story was provided by a U.S. Senator who brought a girl into Congress to testify about what she saw. Later if was found to be a total lie, the girl was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador and had never been there. It has nothing to do with Amnesty International, which is one of the most respected agency in the world. Get your stories straight.
This country giving lectures on morality to any other entity is ridiculous.
In the USA one person in 31 is in prison, on parole, or serving a suspended sentence.
In the USA one adult in one hundred is behind bars.
This country has more people in prison both in numbers and as a percentage of the population than any other country.
Once the land of opportunity, upward mobility in the USA is now near the bottom among industrialized countries.
Infant mortality in the USA is on a par with third world countries.
This is the greatest country in the world IF you have a good job, plenty of money, and are in good health. Otherwise---tough.
USA! USA!
I totally agree with Nietzsche (above comment). I live in Indiana, home of Mitch Daniels, wanna be President, and we have the highest incarceration rate in the U.S. so that makes us have the highest incarceration rate in the World. We are worse than N. Korea. And the incidents cited above are just what the Tea Party types want to happen in our prisons . Already the medical attention for prisoners and the food have been cut back in Indiana prisons. Prisoners are dying due to lack of medical attention. But who wants to pamper those prisoners. Let a pregnant woman die for writing a bad check, that's the Indiana Way.
Bosh! According to the US, their's nothing illegal going on.
Frankly, the North Koreans are a bunch of amateurs.
They need some on the job trainging by the professionals in the good old USA..
We'd show 'em how to get it done and everything is entirely legal!
Then Amnesty Int'l can go STFU.
We have so much to offer, the only requirement for them would be the
commitment to learn.
Individuals could choose their technique of choice from a number
of American favorites.
Waterboardings, daily waterboardings w/ physician oversight,
rape with foreign objects, mock executions, gang rape,
gang raping underage family members within earshot,
sleep depravation, force feeding, forced enemas, forced nudity,
and forced homosexual acts.
Last but not least, hog tied for hours, nude/ hog tied for hours,
and, nude/hog tied for days without food, water, or access to a toilet.
Finally, there are the near death w/o physician oversight.
For example:
Beaten till unconscious, resuscitation in 60 seconds, then beaten again.
So, they ate a few rats, big deal.
No reason to get in a snit over it. Maybe they were hungry.
Americans are really a weird bunch.
I was born in Eastern Europe at the height of the communist dictatorships and i have seen people trying to escape the "workers paradise" by all sorts of means. Some of them made some of them were shot or beaten to death by border guards.
Later in my life, while living in the USA i saw people from Central and South America risking their life thru the burning desert or riding an inner tube in the Gulf of Mexico to escape from countries they do not like.
I also see some Americans call their on country a prison and compare it to North Korea. Last time i checked there was no exit visa required to leave the US, yet those people are still here whining and moaning instead of moving on and moving to place of that's more to their liking. What gives?
To what or whom is one supposed to be grateful toward? It's not as if there is this entity called country to whom we should be grateful. All rights that were gotten were won through societal struggle of one sort or another by those who came before. While we in the United States have more freedoms than those in North Korea, nevertheless our society is not perfect and those who struggle to make society better are merely carrying on a struggle not unlike the struggles that result in this society being as free as it is today, say as opposed to North Korea. Could there ever be a perfect society? I somehow don't think such a thing is possible. The struggle is a raison d'etre to struggle against the limitations of the human condition reaching ever forward. The thing I hate about the whole "gratefulness" argument is that it suggests that we should put up with our lot, citing the fact that we are better off than others therefore we should just shut up and be grateful.
This actually is the same logic used by many communist governments to justify their own rule. Take for instance the acclaimed Chinese writer Wang Meng. In 1956 during the Hundred Flowers Movement he wrote a piece called "A New Arrival at the Organization Department" which is about a young man frustrated in carrying out the aims of the revolution by bureaucrats that claim to represent it. The story is essentially one of furthering society beyond what the CCP had created. Nevertheless, Wang Meng was criticized, essentially because he dared challenge the supposed perfection of the society that the CCP had created in arguing for further social change. This is but one example from the socialist bloc. Your logic is actually the same as the socialist countries you are against in that you believe that one should put up with what they are given and ask for no more.
When one compares their own country against others and says that we have achieved the ideal society because we outstrip the others in our standard of living, one is setting themselves up for future social stagnation. The measure should be to compare what our society is with what it could be to encourage forward movement. If we all were satisfied and grateful for what we had, then we'd still be subject to the whims of capricious lords and kings that could dispatch us at a moments notice, just for laughs.
I began reading and posting on this site many years ago and, at that time, it was full of interesting conversations, various perspectives, open minded people, and civility among the posters. Now, most of those people are gone and have been replaced by verbally abusive, angry people who pick through every article looking for anything they can find to use as 'proof' of what they are angry about and what they are trying to sell, no matter how far the stretch. All they while, most completely ignore the topic of the article itself and almost no one here evaluates or discusses points or issues in unbiased or objective terms. And anyone who dares offer a comment that is not in line with the extremism now here is immediately attacked by a large mob.
The biggest problem with that, and irony, is that extremism of any color is worthless and disingenuous at best and possibly intentional at worst. I am not a big fan of how many things are being done in the USA, and, I actually abhor many things that have taken place and are taking place. However, if one wants to make a counter argument, they need and are responsible to be even more careful to check facts and do research fully and deeply and only state their counter arguments in intelligent and reasonable terms, when they know that they are 100 percent true because of research, and not say things that are speculative or extreme or misleading. People here on CDs now use the very tactics of misinformation, speculation, and arousal via ridiculous claims that are false that they accuse those they hate of. There is so much anger and vile bitterness here now that almost all sensible discussions have ceased to exist. It has become a portal for nuts and those few rational and sensible people that remain are just that, few.
I have seen your name here for years, as some others, so I guess you must have noticed this too.
In terms of Korea and it's prisons and this article...it is horrific.
For posters here to 'immediately' use this article to say how worse the USA is and to even begin to compare the descriptions made in this article to prisons in the States is a perfect example of what I am talking about. The prison situation in the States is horrible and shameful, as are the policies and aspects of culture that created and support it. But to compare it to North Korea and this article is utterly and totally ridiculous and takes away ANY credibility the posters who make such leaps desire.
"the working day started at 4am and ended at 8pm "
That would be because the country does not have a lot of electric lighting. Without TV to keep you up late, you'd rise at dawn, too. Which is not to say that these hours aren't punishing: the coalminers in England used to have to do 16-hour days, too.
"Only those who finished their assigned tasks would receive the ration of a 200 gramme (seven ounce) bowlful of corn gruel"
Stupid. You feed the slaves *before* work, not after. A bowl of mush for breakfast, a bowl of mush for lunch. No dinner. As little protein and fat as you can manage. Keeps 'em docile - always hungry with no fat reserves, and unable to grow serious amounts of neurones. Anyone who has ever wondered why slaves don't simply rebel ought to try doing hard manual labour on that for a week or two.
"Perhap's people should sample North Korean hospitality to learn what the difference really is between a free society and a dictatorial country like North Korea."
Yay! Go USA! Better than North Korea!
"I began reading and posting on this site many years ago and, at that time, it was full of interesting conversations, various perspectives, open minded people, and civility among the posters."
An old man of the internet! I, too, remember when there were serious, intelligent people here.
BTW: "civility" is a dog-whistle. It means "Wimmins and niggers knowing their place and keeping their mouths shut. Now, mix me a mint julep while I oversee this whipping."
BTW: "civility" is a dog-whistle. It means "Wimmins and niggers knowing their place and keeping their mouths shut. Now, mix me a mint julep while I oversee this whipping."
LOL....touche....it does have that history.
Wouldn't it be great if instead of the saber rattling and the hammer and nail approach to U.S. foreign policy i.e.: "Axis of Evil" banter, as well as the over spending on wars for commodities, the U.S. instead had an actual department of peace and human rights.
Presently our credibility as a world savior is over. We can no longer be the super hero to stop the genocides unless there is oil beneath the ground where they are taking place. That is the sad side to this story. Actually the genocides that the U.S. pays attention to are the genocides by the leaders that the elite don’t like such as Saddam’s or NK’s. If they are a fascist corporate one it will be ignored. Look at East Timor or El Salvador.
Thank you Amnesty International for bringing this to our attention. You are the true leader and hope for so many that are oppressed in this sometimes all too cruel world. You fight for justice everywhere and have my greatest gratitude and respect. I Love you all, ...as well as all you try to help.
No, we cannot attack North Korea for this, but we can Love their people and keep them in our hearts, ...look for opportunities to expose North Korea's citizens to the rest of the world. Sooner or later with Love and information they will rise up and defeat the tyranny that now rules them with an iron fist. I pray for those in the prison camps there. Thank you Amnesty for giving hope to so many.