| Submit your comments on this article |
| China-Japan-Koreas |
| North Korea’s Gulag |
| 2004-03-17 |
| By William C. Triplett, National Review Online One of a series of excerpts from the book Rogue State: How a Nuclear North Korea Threatens America. EFL. North Korea built on the Chinese model and added a new depravity — child political prisoners. Neither the Soviets nor the Chinese sent children to the concentration camps but the Dear Leader sends the entire family. One of the best accounts of the North Korean gulag is written by someone who was sent to the camps at the age of nine, because his grandfather had offended the system. His sister was only seven; she was also sent to prison. In North Korea, the children of political prisoners are called "seedlings." Official propaganda proscribes the proper treatment of these children, "desiccate the seedlings of counterrevolution, pull them out by their roots, and exterminate every last one of them." The camps are designed to exploit the prisoners’ labor until they die. Prisoners are given difficult and dangerous labor such as mining under unsafe conditions. Children are assigned heavy work as well, such as logging. Even before the famine of the mid-1990s, prisoners, including children, were on rations that would not sustain life in the long run, much less allow for any sort of normal growth. Since the political prisoners are never released, there is no danger of them divulging military secrets; they are assigned to work on missiles and other special weapons. One camp, Camp #14, is notorious for its use of prisoners "as guinea pigs for developing chemical warfare technology," according to information obtained by the Seoul Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights. Since the North Korean secret police send entire families to the labor camps, they have a higher proportion of women imprisoned than even Stalin’s gulag or the Chinese concentration camp system today. According to information obtained by a South Korean human rights group, it’s bad luck to be an even moderately attractive young woman in the camps. High Communist Party officials troll the camps looking for victims to be used as sex slaves. If the women become pregnant, they are forced to have an abortion without anesthesia. When their usefulness is over, the women are murdered. Their deaths are covered up as "shot while trying to escape." In much the same way, the Nazi "Death Doctor," Josef Mengele, used to comb the arriving trains for an attractive evening companion, only to have her shot the next day. The prisoners of the North Korean gulags are filthy and disease-ridden. Beatings, torture, and executions are common. There is nothing to check guards from exercising brutality. Perhaps a third of the prisoners survive, for a while, as informers. In the end, death comes to nearly all of them, sooner rather than later. The Dear Leader’s concentration camps are very efficient both for removing any real threat to the regime and in reinforcing the system of state terror. By some estimates, the North Korean gulag currently holds 200,000 men, women, and children. An estimated 400,000 people have perished in the camps over the past several decades. Rumors of the camps-of-no-return circulate in the general population and fear of denunciation prevents an organized opposition from forming. . . . but of course, it’s simplistic to call this "evil," right? |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #5 I'm with you Steve. Anyone who thinks they can reason or deal with this monster (after he broke several deals make with Madelaine Halfwit and South Korea And looking at how he starves his own people) is an idiot. I say nail his intestine to a fencepost and throw him off a cliff. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2004-3-17 7:23:08 PM |
| #4 While I'm generally a pretty mild-mannered guy, I want the NKor leaders, prison guards, etc. shot. All of them. None deserve to live. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2004-3-17 3:52:32 PM |
| #3 I saw Madelaine Halfwhit on O'Reilly last night. That excrement had the audacity to visit Dear Leader and blow a large volume of warm smoke up his ass, smiling and clapping at the parades. What a pig. There is no greater moral stain from the Clinton years (and there were a LOT of stains with that guy). |
| Posted by: remote man 2004-3-17 12:46:27 PM |
| #2 IF you think this is bad you should hear what Amnisty International has to say about Gitmo if you have the stomach for some real horrors! |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2004-3-17 12:28:23 PM |
| #1 Evil? Naw, it's just an alternate socio/economic system. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-3-17 10:20:05 AM |