Given the severity of North Korea’s political prison camps and the multitude of human rights violations committed in the country daily, surprisingly little attention regarding this issue has been shown in the public sphere. Increased awareness and understanding of the human atrocities committed in North Korea will help bring aid to those who need it and hopefully prevent similar situations.
Yet little to none has been done to put an end to these prison camps. We are waiting for others to fix this situation while we turn a blind eye to the victims in the North Korean prison camps.
This is not an attitude we should adopt and teach the kids of our future generation. We need to take action and help those who are struggling through depraved living circumstances and grave social injustices.
The camps originated after USSR control, when Kim II Sung became president. The purpose of North Korea’s prison camps is to punish those authorities deem as ‘disloyal’. Approximately 200,000 people are known to be held in prison camps. This includes individuals who committed anti-revolutionary acts such as criticizing North Korea’s leadership and/or government, engaging in any form of contact with other countries or even being related or an acquaintance of an individual caught committing such acts (guilt by association), and there are plenty more unfair convictions and most often convicted individuals are not given the opportunity to face trial.
The labor camps are organized by two zones; the Total Control Zone and the Revolutionary Zone. Prisoners in the Total Control Zone are given harsher punishments and are never released. Whereas the Revolutionary Zone houses individuals authorities deemed to have committed less severe crimes.
North Korean Prison camps commit several appalling human violations. The United Nations Human Rights have reported that North Korea has committed “…crimes against humanity entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.”
The prisoners living in the labor camps have to endure countless beatings, starvation, insensitive methods of torture, and much more disturbing brutalities. In one case, a 13 year old boy was forced to stay in a cell where he was unable to stand or lie down for eight months because he was being disruptive.
Lee Young-guk was a prisoner in the notoriously harsh political camp known as Yodok. He was captured while attempting to ‘defect to South Korea’. He talks about the cruel punishments and living conditions of Yodok including public executions that take place every week. In addition, family members or friends of the sentenced individual who cry at the executions are arrested on the spot and taken into the detention center to be executed. Many prisoners have been killed by execution and that number as far as we know, is steadily rising.
In addition to the beatings and torture, prisoners are deprived of sleep and food. In fact, forty percent of prisoners die from malnutrition. Kang Chol-Hwan, now a journalist in South Korea, had spent 10 years in a prison camp. He was sent to the camp at the age of nine because his grandfather ‘fell out of favor with the elite’. He had almost died three times from malnutrition and exhaustion and had to eat mice, insects, and grass in order to stay alive. In another case, a woman who survived one of North Korea’s infamous labor camps had been sent to camp along with her four children and parents for gossiping about the regime’s former leader. She had spent nine years in Yodok, and her parents and 9 year old daughter as well as three sons- the ages 7, 4, and 1 all died from starvation.
Kang Chol-Hwan compares Yodok to Auschwitz. "It was like Hitler's Auschwitz concentration camp, not as large and there is a difference in the way people are killed. Hitler gassed people, Kim Jong Il sucked the life out of people through starvation and forced labor." Stalin’s gulags were around half long as North Korea’s prison camps. Nazi concentration camps were 1/12 as long as North Korea’s political prison camps.
An escapee named Shin Dong-Hyuk is the only person known to have been born and raised from the Total Control Zone and escaped. His story is revealed in a book called Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden. Shin gives outsiders a first-hand description of life inside camp 14. For a long time, Shin believed the world consisted of only prisoners and guards. I am impressed and motivated by Shin’s efforts to persevere and bring attention to the horrors that are currently transpiring in North Korea.
What outrages me, is the lack of public awareness and action to help those in the labor camps. The ignorance of the continuation of the prison camps is still ongoing. North Korea’s shroud of secrecy prevents us from recognizing all the horrors and barbarities happening. If we continue to dismiss the human rights violations coming from North Korea, I fear we will one day discover the true horrors occurring and regret not taking action sooner.
I have included a petition below to end the prison camps and ask every reader to take a look at it. I urge you to look further into this topic, tell others this information, and support this cause. By increased public awareness, we can then influence the global community to take action for the unconscionable acts committed in North Korea.
http://forcechange.com/14528/shut-down-horrific-north-korean-political-prison-camp/
Sources:
Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/escape-from-camp-14-blaine-harden/1103847959?ean=9780143122913
http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/17/world/asia/north-korea-bodyguard-yodok/
http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/27/world/asia/north-korea-labor-camps-hancocks/index.html
http://abcnews.go.com/International/north-korean-prison-camp-atrocities-detailed-report/story?id=22550914
http://www.buzzfeed.com/tasneemnashrulla/watch-former-political-prisoners-detail-the-horrors-of-north#.ckL7oqZQq
Yet little to none has been done to put an end to these prison camps. We are waiting for others to fix this situation while we turn a blind eye to the victims in the North Korean prison camps.
This is not an attitude we should adopt and teach the kids of our future generation. We need to take action and help those who are struggling through depraved living circumstances and grave social injustices.
The camps originated after USSR control, when Kim II Sung became president. The purpose of North Korea’s prison camps is to punish those authorities deem as ‘disloyal’. Approximately 200,000 people are known to be held in prison camps. This includes individuals who committed anti-revolutionary acts such as criticizing North Korea’s leadership and/or government, engaging in any form of contact with other countries or even being related or an acquaintance of an individual caught committing such acts (guilt by association), and there are plenty more unfair convictions and most often convicted individuals are not given the opportunity to face trial.
The labor camps are organized by two zones; the Total Control Zone and the Revolutionary Zone. Prisoners in the Total Control Zone are given harsher punishments and are never released. Whereas the Revolutionary Zone houses individuals authorities deemed to have committed less severe crimes.
North Korean Prison camps commit several appalling human violations. The United Nations Human Rights have reported that North Korea has committed “…crimes against humanity entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.”
The prisoners living in the labor camps have to endure countless beatings, starvation, insensitive methods of torture, and much more disturbing brutalities. In one case, a 13 year old boy was forced to stay in a cell where he was unable to stand or lie down for eight months because he was being disruptive.
Lee Young-guk was a prisoner in the notoriously harsh political camp known as Yodok. He was captured while attempting to ‘defect to South Korea’. He talks about the cruel punishments and living conditions of Yodok including public executions that take place every week. In addition, family members or friends of the sentenced individual who cry at the executions are arrested on the spot and taken into the detention center to be executed. Many prisoners have been killed by execution and that number as far as we know, is steadily rising.
In addition to the beatings and torture, prisoners are deprived of sleep and food. In fact, forty percent of prisoners die from malnutrition. Kang Chol-Hwan, now a journalist in South Korea, had spent 10 years in a prison camp. He was sent to the camp at the age of nine because his grandfather ‘fell out of favor with the elite’. He had almost died three times from malnutrition and exhaustion and had to eat mice, insects, and grass in order to stay alive. In another case, a woman who survived one of North Korea’s infamous labor camps had been sent to camp along with her four children and parents for gossiping about the regime’s former leader. She had spent nine years in Yodok, and her parents and 9 year old daughter as well as three sons- the ages 7, 4, and 1 all died from starvation.
Kang Chol-Hwan compares Yodok to Auschwitz. "It was like Hitler's Auschwitz concentration camp, not as large and there is a difference in the way people are killed. Hitler gassed people, Kim Jong Il sucked the life out of people through starvation and forced labor." Stalin’s gulags were around half long as North Korea’s prison camps. Nazi concentration camps were 1/12 as long as North Korea’s political prison camps.
An escapee named Shin Dong-Hyuk is the only person known to have been born and raised from the Total Control Zone and escaped. His story is revealed in a book called Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden. Shin gives outsiders a first-hand description of life inside camp 14. For a long time, Shin believed the world consisted of only prisoners and guards. I am impressed and motivated by Shin’s efforts to persevere and bring attention to the horrors that are currently transpiring in North Korea.
What outrages me, is the lack of public awareness and action to help those in the labor camps. The ignorance of the continuation of the prison camps is still ongoing. North Korea’s shroud of secrecy prevents us from recognizing all the horrors and barbarities happening. If we continue to dismiss the human rights violations coming from North Korea, I fear we will one day discover the true horrors occurring and regret not taking action sooner.
I have included a petition below to end the prison camps and ask every reader to take a look at it. I urge you to look further into this topic, tell others this information, and support this cause. By increased public awareness, we can then influence the global community to take action for the unconscionable acts committed in North Korea.
http://forcechange.com/14528/shut-down-horrific-north-korean-political-prison-camp/
Sources:
Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/escape-from-camp-14-blaine-harden/1103847959?ean=9780143122913
http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/17/world/asia/north-korea-bodyguard-yodok/
http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/27/world/asia/north-korea-labor-camps-hancocks/index.html
http://abcnews.go.com/International/north-korean-prison-camp-atrocities-detailed-report/story?id=22550914
http://www.buzzfeed.com/tasneemnashrulla/watch-former-political-prisoners-detail-the-horrors-of-north#.ckL7oqZQq