Category: Prison Camps

Kim Jong Un courting of Dennis Rodman equivalent to his enjoyment of Disney characters

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Excerpts of a CNN piece by Sung-Yoon Lee, an assistant professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a Kim Koo-Korea Foundation professor in Korean Studies:

Dennis Rodman, the former NBA star and the first American known to have met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was in the secretive country again this past week, purportedly to meet his “friend Kim, the Marshal” and perhaps also, to negotiate for the release of Kenneth Bae, a U.S. citizen detained since November.

Kim’s unconventional courting of Rodman is about equivalent to his enjoyment of Disney characters and scantily clad women on stage. It’s all jolly and trite pleasure.

Kim’s attraction to American icons such as the NBA or Hollywood does not signal a genuine overture to Washington. It does not indicate intentions of reform or opening up of the isolated totalitarian state that imprisons some 1% of its population in political concentration camps.

We should never forget that amidst the levity and bonhomie that will emanate from Pyongyang in the coming days, North Korea, throughout more than 60 years of its existence, has committed systematic and widespread attacks on its civilian population, including murder, extermination, enslavement, torture, enforced sexual slavery and disappearance of people. In short, these are crimes against humanity.

If anything, the young North Korean leader’s occasional displays of affinity for American pop culture will only irk the country’s revolutionary old guards. Kim clearly lacks the gravitas of his late father. He may believe that he is exuding an affable image by being seen with an American star. But by traditional Korean standards on how a national leader should carry himself, Kim comes across as less charismatic than — dare I say — a lightweight.

There is no reason to believe that the North Korean military would challenge anytime soon. Kim’s hold on power over the party and the military seems, for now, firm. But the prospects for a long, happy reign for whom propagandists tout as a demigod are dim.

North Korean prison camps

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As the world sits by, North Korea has imprisoned as many as 200,000 people in its prison camps. Although human rights violations remain unfortunately common in many nations, these camps form a category of their own in today’s world. North Korea’s gulag is a place where people aren’t people but rather objects for exploitation and elimination.

The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea released a report this week detailing the harrowing reality of Camp 22. Camp No. 22 covered some 775 square miles, a larger geographic expanse than London, New York or Los Angeles.

Satellite imagery suggests the camp recently closed. Good news? Not exactly. According to the report, after a food shortage in 2009-10, Camp 22’s population shrunk to somewhere between 3,000 and 8,000 people from around 30,000 in previous years. Thousands of prisoners seem to have evaporated into thin air — perhaps via Camp 22’s crematoria.

Last week also saw the conclusion of public hearings for a U.N. Commission of Inquiry investigation into North Korea’s human rights abuses. Although the U.N. commission has no formal prosecutorial powers, Michael Kirby, the retired Australian judge who led the inquiry, promised that the report he is overseeing will “not be just another U.N. document.”

Among the more chilling questions in the history of World War II is how the Allies could know about Auschwitz and other German death camps but take no definitive action, such as bombing the rail lines, to stop them. It is thus encouraging that the United Nations has stirred itself to pay attention to North Korea’s camps. Still, historians of the future may again wonder how the world could have known so much and done so little.

[The Washington Post]

Rodman back to Pyongyang but says won’t bring back jailed American

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Flamboyant former basketball star Dennis Rodman arrived in North Korea on Tuesday for a five-day visit, his second this year, but said he had no plans to negotiate the release of a jailed American missionary, Kenneth Bae. Bae, a Korean American who had been working as a Christian missionary in China and North Korea, was arrested in the northeast port city of Rason late last year.

“I’m not going to North Korea to discuss freeing Kenneth Bae,” Rodman told Reuters in a telephone interview before he left Beijing for Pyongyang. “I’m just going there on another basketball diplomacy tour.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is a basketball fan and appeared to get on well with Rodman on the earlier visit, with the two of them pictured laughing, eating and drinking together and watching an all-star basketball match.

Wearing his trademark dark sunglasses, the 6-foot 7-inch (2.01 meter) Rodman said, “I’m just trying to go over there to meet my friend Kim, the Marshal. Try to start a basketball league over there, something like that.”

He called Kim, 30, who rules unchallenged in a country where there are an estimated 150,000-200,000 prisoners in work camps, “an awesome kid”.

[WTAQ]

North Korea withdraws permission for visit by U.S. special envoy

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North Korea withdrew permission for a visit by the U.S. special envoy on North Korean human rights issues. Robert King had been scheduled to visit Pyongyang to ask the government to grant amnesty to Kenneth Bae. Bae, a U.S. citizen of Korean descent, was arrested in North Korea last year while attempting a Christian mission and sentenced to 15 years hard labor in April.

“We have sought clarification from the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) about its decision and have made every effort so that Ambassador King’s trip could continue as planned or take place at a later date,” the US State Department said.

A day later, in an article published in Rodong Sinmun, an organ of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, North Korea stressed that ongoing inter-Korean talks should not be used as a bargaining chip.  The daily also called on countries to not blindly follow the hardline stance taken by the United States.

Washington has held firm to the stance that the North must show tangible signs that it will give up its nuclear program if it wants to hold talks to ease tensions.  Pyongyang so far has balked at such moves claiming its nuclear deterrence is critical for self-protection.

US envoy to North Korea appealing for release of Kenneth Bae

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A senior U.S. envoy who will travel to North Korea on Friday said that he plans to strongly appeal for the release of Kenneth Bae but added that Washington has received no guarantees from Pyongyang the ailing man will be freed.

Bob King, the U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, said that the United States is increasingly concerned about the health of 45-year-old Kenneth Bae, a tour operator and Christian missionary who was arrested last November and accused of committing “hostile acts” against North Korea.

“We’re going to make an appeal,” King said after a meeting with Japanese officials. “He has health problems and we’re hopeful we will be able to make progress on that.”

When asked if he was confident Bae would be released, he said. “We haven’t been told that anything is definite.”

It will be the first public trip to North Korea by a U.S. administration official in more than two years. The U.S. has requested a pardon and amnesty on humanitarian grounds for Bae, who suffers multiple health problems and was recently hospitalized. Washington has been calling for Pyongyang to grant amnesty since Bae was sentenced on April 30.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Wednesday that the U.S. was hopeful that King would return with Bae, but she would not link that issue with the prospects for renewed U.S.-North Korean dialogue.

If North Korea releases Bae, it will be the second time King has come back with a prisoner. When he last visited North Korea in May 2011 to assess the impoverished North’s food situation, he came home with Eddie Jun. Jun, a Korean-American from California, was arrested for alleged unauthorized missionary work during several business trips to the country. He was released on humanitarian grounds.

Children on the margins of North Korean society

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Among the North Korean defectors testifying to the U.N. Commission of Inquiry into Human Rights in North Korea on Thursday was Kim Hyuk, 32, who at the age of seven after his mother’s death became a “ggotjebi” ― the North Korean term for street children, mostly orphans, who beg, scavenge and steal to survive.

As children began to die in the streets, Kim said special police units were set up to round up all the ggotjebi and send them to shelters and orphanages, where many still died of starvation. “There was no food at all,” Kim said of the orphanage where he spent three years. “Just powdered corn husk which left you constipated. I caught and ate lizards, snakes, rats and grass.”

Of the 75 children in the orphanage, 24 died. “The officials said it was due to disease, but it was malnourishment. They became too weak to walk. Their bodies were buried in the backyard,” Kim said.

Kim ran away but was then arrested for making smuggling runs across the border with China and served 20 months in a re-education camp where the conditions were as bad as the orphanage. “There were 24 of us who entered the camp on the same day. Only two survived,” he said.

Released from prison, Kim sneaked across the Tumen (or Apnok) River into China in December 2000 and arrived the following year in Seoul, where he now lectures on his experiences on behalf of the Unification Ministry.

[AFP]

The Deadly 10 Commandments in North Korean Prison Camps

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The 10 Commandments in North Korean prison camps, according to survivor Shin Dong Hyuk:

1. Do not attempt to escape. The punishment is death.
2. Never gather in groups of over three people or move around without the guard’s authorization. The punishment for unauthorized movement is death.
3. Do not steal. If one steals or possesses weapons, the punishment is death. The punishment for failure to report the theft or possession of weapons is death.
4. Obey your guards. If one rebels or hits a guard, the punishment is death.
5. If you see outsiders, or suspicious-looking people, report them immediately. The punishment for abetting in the hiding of outsiders is death.
6. Keep an eye on your fellow prisoners and report inappropriate behavior without delay. One should criticize others for inappropriate behavior, and also conduct thorough self-criticism in revolutionary ideology class.
7. Fulfill your assigned duties. The punishment for rebelling against one’s duties is death.
8. Men and women may not be together outside the workplace. The punishment for unauthorized physical contact between a man and a woman is death.
9. Admit and confess your wrongdoings. The punishment for disobedience and refusal to repent is death.
10. The punishment for trespassing camp laws and rules is death.

[Excerpted from Shin Dong Hyuk’s book, “Escape to the Outside World”]

Nine years in North Korean gulag because of a secret

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As a member of the North Korean elite in the 1970s, 77-year-old former dancer Kim Young-Soon had it all: well-connected, well-heeled and well-housed. Her privileged lifestyle was largely the result of having an older brother who was a general during the 1950-53 Korean War.

She also had many equally privileged friends — among them a pretty, married actress, Song Hae-Rim, who in 1969 became the lover of Kim Jong-Il, the as-yet unmarried son and heir of then-leader Kim Il-Sung.

“I knew I would never see her again,” Kim told the commission of the day Song visited her house to say she was going to move in to the junior Kim’s residence. Kim Jong-Il and Song never married and their relationship was kept secret for years in the deeply conservative North, even after Song gave birth to a son.

In her testimony on Wednesday, Kim Young-Soon said she was among a group “purged” to prevent the story of the relationship spreading. In 1970 she was summoned by the secret police, locked in a room and grilled for two months about her knowledge of “senior party officials”.

She told them nothing but was then taken — along with her four young children and both her parents — to Yodok, a newly-built prison camp in a remote mountainous region in the northeast. There was no trial, and no indication of her sentence.

“They didn’t even tell me what my offence was, and only said, ‘All of you are supposed to be dead, but are being allowed to live here at the greatest mercy of our leader’,” Kim recalled.

So began a nine-year ordeal in what Kim described as “the most hellish place in the world”. Inmates had to work from dawn to dusk — tending fields, cutting trees, building livestock sheds — followed by hours of ideology classes in the evening. Rations were a handful of salt and maize that was cut if inmates failed to meet their daily work target.

Kim said they supplemented their diet with anything they could catch, including snakes, salamanders and rats. “We ate anything that moved or sprouted from the soil,” she said

Inmates caught trying to escape or scavenging leftovers from the guards were executed in public. Anyone showing sympathy for them was either beaten, tortured or even executed themselves.

Kim’s said her father starved to death within a year and was soon followed by her mother. One of her sons drowned in a stream while one daughter was sent to live with a farmer family and never seen again.

Kim said many fallen members of the elite were in the camp, including a celebrated movie director, former generals and a prominent soccer star. “No one was free from the grips of the Kim dynasty,” she said.

Nine years later, a visiting military official who knew Kim Young-Soon’s brother managed to help arrange her release in 1979. After getting out, she found her husband had been sent to another prison camp which “no one can walk out alive from”. She never saw or heard from him again. Kim’s youngest son was caught trying to flee the North and executed in 1989 at the age of 23.

She was also under constant surveillance by neighbors and secret police, who warned her against spreading “ungrounded rumors” about the leadership.

The famine that decimated North Korea in the mid-1990s — coupled with the shock at her son’s execution — convinced Kim that it was finally time for her to escape. In 2001 she bribed her way across the border with China and eventually made it to Seoul in 2003, where she works as a dance teacher and lectures on life in North Korea. “Those who live in a free society will never truly understand what happens in those labor camps,” she said.

[xinmsn]

Former prisoners tell UN inquiry about life in North Korean prison camps

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Being forced to kill your own baby is a daily occurrence in North Korea’s prison camps, former inmates have told a United Nations inquiry held in Seoul. The inquiry, chaired by former Australian High Court Justice Michael Kirby, is the first to expertly examine North Korea’s human rights record, ABC News reports.

One ex-prisoner, 34-year-old Jee Heon-a, told the hearing about a mother who was forced to drown her own child.”It was the first time I had seen a newborn baby …. ” she said. “Suddenly there were footsteps and a security guard came in and told the mother to turn the baby upside down into a bowl of water. The mother begged the guard to spare her, but he kept beating her. So the mother, her hands shaking, put the baby face down in the water. The crying stopped and a bubble rose up as it died.”

Jee was incarcerated in 1999. Her fellow inmates were barely fed. “Everyone’s eyes were sunken. They all looked like animals, she said. “Frogs were hung from the buttons of their cloths, put in a plastic bag and their skins peeled off. They ate salted frogs and so did I.”

Another defector, Shin Dong-hyuk, was forced to watch the execution of his mother and brother. Shin, who was born in the prison camp, overheard his family members planning an escape attempt and turned them in.

In a separate incident, the North Korean guards chopped off Shin’s finger after he accidentally dropped a sewing machine. “I thought my whole hand was going to be cut off at the wrist, so I felt thankful and grateful that only my finger was cut off,” Shin said.

There are 150,000-200,000 people trapped in North Korean prison camps, Reuters reports.

Deteriorating Kenneth Bae moved to hospital

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Kenneth Bae, the American citizen sentenced to 15 years in a North Korean labor camp, has been moved to a hospital after a serious deterioration in his health, his sister said.

Detained in North Korea in November and sentenced in April for “hostile acts to bring down its government,” Bae is now suffering from severe back and leg pain and has lost more than 50 pounds, his sister Terri Chung told CNN late Sunday.

Chung said she received the information from the U.S. State Department, which told her the Swedish ambassador to North Korea had visited Bae in the hospital on Friday. Sweden represents U.S. interests in North Korea because the United States has no diplomatic presence in the secretive state.

Kenneth Baeimprisoned Kenneth BaeDetention in North Korea has taken a heavy toll on Bae, who has already been dealing with other health problems, including diabetes. In a video released early last month, Bae had stated, “Although my health is not good, I am being patient and coping well,” his head shaved and face noticeably thinner than in earlier photos. in that interview, he spoke of health problems including diabetes, high blood pressure, fatty liver and a back problem.

“I think the last three months in the labor camp have certainly been very trying on both his mental and physical health,” Chung said by phone from the Seattle area. The eight hours per day of farm labor, which Bae had never done before, appear to have worsened his symptoms, she said, adding that “he’s also under a tremendous amount of stress.” Other problems he’s suffering from include kidney stones, dizziness, blurred vision and loss of vision.

The family is “extremely concerned” about the situation and is pleading with the U.S. government to help Bae’s case, Chung said.

North Korea has so far showed no sign of budging on the case of Bae, who they call Pae Jun Ho, his Korean name.