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Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves
- bloggergirl 15y agoThank you for posting this. A key takeaway from the article is in the final paragraph: "if we allow it, we could live in a world that makes great strides forward, but that can never rid itself of the abhorrent authoritarian tool that is the concentration camp." We allow these horrors to occur. That's not a judgment on anyone; I'm definitely part of the problem because I'm not part of the solution (to borrow a cliche). But what can we do? That's a real question. I want to know what we can do. Yes, we can sign Amnesty International petitions, which is a step, but what else? The HN community is a problem-solving community. Human rights violations of all sizes and shapes (including and especially the North Korea concentration camps) are a major problem to solve. What can technology do to help? Can we solve fatigue re: "prolonged exposure to blaring 24 hour news streams that fry sensibilities with their constant emotional appeals"? Can we mobilize people and keep them engaged in helping people they don't know?
- chopsueyar 15y agoWe need to wait for large mineral or oil deposits to be found in North Korea, and then the US can implement democracy.
- bloggergirl 15y agoSo true! You hit the nail on the head, chopsueyar.
- TeMPOraL 15y agoSarcasm or not, it is a valid solution. Making the whole problem somehow relevant economically to US or international community might be helpful, although I have no idea how to do that.
- pavlov 15y agoNorth Korea does have large mineral resources, but China already has the upper hand in exploiting the political situation to gain access to them: “There are growing concerns that North Korea could be selling the development rights of mineral resources to China at a very cheap price as the relationships between the two Koreas worsen and North Korea has no other market to turn to,” said Yoon Hong-gi, an official with Korea Resources Corp. http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2931111 http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2931111
- ars 15y agoActually the biggest problem is that the North Korea military is pretty well equipped. Any military solution would require evacuating large sections of South Korea.
- jekdoce 15y agoInitial ideas: - Keep sharing the link for a week/month on Facebook, hopefully making it viral - Setup a Facebook page for this, asking the same question "What can we do?" - It has to start from within, see Tunisia, Egypt etc. - Making sure folks inside North Korea can access info via proxy servers if it's blocked
- TeMPOraL 15y agoAgree. I remember hearing that the general population of WWII Germany was unaware of the atrocities that happened in Nazi concentration camps. Given also the recent events in countries you mentioned, I think that making regular people in North Korea know what's going on in their country could be very, very important.
- fijall 15y ago2,292,133 were in prisons in the United States in 2009 [from wikipedia]. Even though I guess conditions are better, 200 000 doesn't sound like that many after all.
- bloggergirl 15y agoSorry, fijall, that the number of enslaved people (who are in many cases not guilty of crimes beyond disagreeing with a dictator) is not adequately horrific for you. Perhaps if they were 200,000 people you knew... or even one you knew.
- abrown28 15y agoIt makes me sick that a large percentage of the people in American jails are there for crimes that hurt no one but themselves but to compare this to the people in North Korea is just asinine.
- Wickk 15y agoAgreed. A conversation about our prison system is irrelevant. We're not locking people up in mass and forcing them to live in death camps. Our prison system is far from perfect but it doesn't compare to what these people are going through.
- schmittz 15y agoWhile I agree that such a conversation is irrelevant to this post, I would say that in certain cases we are pretty close to locking people up en masse and forcing them to live in fairly abominable circumstances albeit not death camps.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- CWuestefeld 15y agoAs I see it, the difference is only in degree. In both cases, people are being denied their freedom and taken away from their families, for engaging in activities that hurt no one, not even themselves. It's certainly true that American prisons are better. But given the OP's definition: "enduring starvation, torture, and rape while performing hard labor", we do hit a couple of checkboxes. My understanding is that prison rape, with guards just looking the other way, is still a real problem in America. And take a look down at Guantanamo for (an admittedly small number of) people who are imprisoned and tortured "without legal recourse", as the OP says. So it's just a matter of degree. There's certainly a good deal of ground for comparison.
- ck2 15y agoIf they still made the sears catalog I'd suggest the key to starting a peoples' revolt in North Korea would be to airdrop hundreds of thousands of catalogs across the country. Even without understanding the language, just looking at all the goods would make people start wondering why they are being made to suffer so.
- callmeed 15y agoHow about SkyMall catalogs instead? They're already on the planes ;)
- ck2 15y agoSkymall is just gadgets, no? Sears catalog was full of every day practical stuff from clothing to household needs, tools, etc. The US government should have bought millions of leftover catalogs as propaganda to drop on countries like this. No bombs needed. Sadly it seems they stopped making it in 1993 (strangely well before internet shopping got started) http://www.searsarchives.com/catalogs/index.htm http://www.searsarchives.com/catalogs/index.htm http://images.google.com/search?q=sears+catalog&tbm=isch http://images.google.com/search?q=sears+catalog&tbm=isch
- blhack 15y agoIt went on much later than 1993. Christmas time always meant going through the sears catalog and circling things that I wanted. I remember being annoyed at all of the clothes I had to skip past to get the toys. This continued well past 2000. Here: http://www.sears.com/shc/s/nb_10153_12605_NB_Catalogs?adCell=BH http://www.sears.com/shc/s/nb_10153_12605_NB_Catalogs?adCell... It looks like they separated it into a few distinct catalogs, which is kindof sad.
- rdtsc 15y agoOh no! They'll find out everything they learned about greedy Western capitalist societies is true then...
- nooneelse 15y ago
- muhfuhkuh 15y ago"I can admire China’s growth in infrastructure and technology, it’s pursuit to compete on a global scale, but what good is all that growth if it allows these crimes to go on next door?" I admire America's prominence in infrastructure and technology, it's continuing domination on a global scale, but what good is all that power when over 40,000 people and rising are murdered because of a drug war for which they are complicit next door? It's great to try to solve problems that seem so fruitless and terrible, but isn't it akin to pointing your finger at a mirror?
- chopsueyar 15y agoYes.
- ugh 15y agoThe author of the article is no member of the US government and doesn't speak for it. To accuse him of hypocrisy on the basis of actions his government takes seems wholly misguided.
- muhfuhkuh 15y agoBut, pointing the finger at one particular government for their failure to sanction/punish/invade/liberate another country when they could "easily" do so seems totally justified? How about pointing the finger at the offending country, rather than at it's bordering ones?
- ugh 15y agoThe article makes very specific complaints about China’s behavior. Which do you think are unjustified and why?
- muhfuhkuh 15y agoI turned an exact passage from a heavily opinionated and critical article on North Korean slaves that turned into a Chinese government hit piece and held a light on US policies toward blood-soaked Mexican border drug wars (that are now spilling into Texas and neighboring states, btw). Do we need to excoriate and condemn the Kim regime and his policies and call for a revolution within their borders? Absolutely. Should we shame bordering countries into liberating them in the name of "freedom" (of which, said bordering country's people are themselves not free)? I believe the US is firmly (and some would say inexorably) ensconced in two wars (and on the ragged edge of 3 or some would say 4) trying to "liberate" the Middle East. How's that going for us?
- yequalsx 15y agoWhat I can't understand is how people can visit North Korea and not feel disgusted by giving support for that regime. I believe North Korea is facing another famine this year. Given the conditions in North Korea and the apparent iron grip its regime has on power is it better not to provide food aid? I can't decide for myself if it's better, for the long term, to let the nation starve and not help the people out or to feed them. I don't see a clear cut right or wrong way to view aid to North Korea. It's a disturbing case.
- elliottcarlson 15y agoThe problem is that visitors require a guide - someone who will hide the true nature of NK to them and ensuring they only see what they are allowed to see. Even though there has been a good amount of hidden camera footage exposed, or articles such as this one - there are plenty of people who may not really be aware of what is really going on there behind the scenes.
- MichaelApproved 15y agoThat reminds me of Nazi Germany when they went so far as to create a fake concentration camp for the Red Cross to visit.
- dantheman 15y agoIf you're interested in Theresienstadt (the concentration camp) there's a great documentary called Prisoner of Paradise. It tells the story a Jewish filmmaker forced to make a propaganda film about the camp. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner_of_Paradise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner_of_Paradise
- abrown28 15y agoA lot of the approved video is disturbing to me.
- lotusleaf1987 15y agoVice Guide has a great documentary available streaming on Netflix. It was so depressing/surreal/horrifying all at once.
- elliottcarlson 15y agoThere was a very interesting discussion about North Korea a couple of months back that had great links to undercover videos and photos from within Korea: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152223 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152223 The most notable video was Children of the Secret State (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1875007335054132657 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1875007335054132657) - I recommend everyone watch this...
- InclinedPlane 15y agoIt's interesting. Everyone seems to know how screwed up North Korea is, but few people know all the details, and the media doesn't report on these things much. Largely I think because it's so hard to gain access there.
- abrown28 15y agoI believe this is a satellite view of the Yodok concentration camp based on an image in the article. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=39.6119444444,+126.849166667&aq=&sll=39.402244,127.507324&sspn=2.911704,5.817261&ie=UTF8&ll=39.678754,126.862135&spn=0.022658,0.045447&t=h&z=15 http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...
- geuis 15y agoYes, you're right. I just found the same place independently. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Kwan-li-so&aq=&sll=38.427236,125.954132&sspn=0.412044,0.827408&ie=UTF8&ll=39.68394,126.875782&spn=0.101194,0.206852&t=h&z=13 http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...
- bigwally 15y agoNo way that camp could be holding 200,000 people. Anyone who has studied any geography could see that would be near impossible.
- ceejayoz 15y agoThere's more that one camp.
- bigwally 15y agoIf you watched the video they said it was all in 2 valleys. 200,000 in those two valleys? Impossible.
- kkleiner 15y agoSadly, I fear it is possible if you are squeezing 50 of them into a room designed for 5 people and feeding them tiny portions of corn meal each day.
- bigwally 15y agoIt would have to be more densely populated than the center of Hong Kong. This town/prison/concentration camp/detention center (or two valleys) would be lucky to have 10,000 people. We better not let the facts get in the way of chance to bash North Korea.
- jaekwon 15y agoI estimate roughly around 500 small housing units from what I've seen. The smallest units are about 60*30feet in size. For a slave labor camp, it would be easy to fit 100 people in each unit with two story bunk beds. That's already 50,000 people. The units may be more crammed than I imagine, and I may have missed miscounted these housing units. 200K sounds like an upper limit but it's not impossible.
- jhamburger 15y ago
- rorrr 15y agoUS prison population: 2.2 million http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/US_incarceration_timeline-clean.svg/250px-US_incarceration_timeline-clean.svg.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/US_...
- wcgortel 15y agoThis is a good statistic to raise, but it's not a direct comparison. The US prison population probably has much more in common with ordinary North Koreans than these individuals.
- daten 15y agoWhile I agree that it is a problem that the US has a large and growing prison population, I don't think it's a fair comparison to the conditions being described in these camps in NK. US prisoners are afforded many more human rights than the prisoners in these camps. They are fed and housed humanely. They are also given a fair trial as defined by the constitution before they are incarcerated and they serve specific prison terms with options for parole.
- roel_v 15y agoWhat's your point? That US prisoners and their extended families are being starved, raped and tortured for being critical of a government official, or questioning the official propaganda? Look, you may not agree with US drug policy, I know I don't (I'm not an American), but comparing what is happening in North Korea to what happens in Western prisons (apart from an isolated incident here or there) is, to put it mildly, disingenuous.
- bloggergirl 15y agoOkay, well, for those who would rather look at the problems with the US justice & prison systems than the NK camps... what are you doing to fix things here?--anything? Or are you just deflecting so that you don't have to try to help anyone?
- johnmossel 15y agoI'm sorry, but ... seriously, a nation that still hasn't closed Guantanamo Bay. Don't throw stones if you live in a glass house.
- johnmossel 15y agoOhhh... someone gonna cry?
- elliottcarlson 15y agoNo - it's just a ridiculous statement. A governments action does not reflect the opinion of the occupants of that country. Neither does it reflect that of an independent organization even if it is based in a country who has a different stance that may been seen as hypocritical. Does your government and leadership reflect everything you stand for?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- eropple 15y agoI would advise you to stop huffing butane until the comparison you have made sounds as plainly preposterous to yourself as it does to people who are not suffering from an altered mental state. HTH. HAND.
- Jun8 15y ago(This is a recurrent fantasy of mine) I think we should have an independent armed forces with the power to intervene in gross violations of human rights, something like the UN but with exponentially more authority (current UN peace keeping forces are a joke, e.g. see Srebrenica massacre, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre, for just one example of many). This force would have the initiative to wage war on authoritative regimes, like the Taliban, Kaddafi, and the one in North Korea. Currently this is done in a haphazard way, through NATO (e.g. Libya) or countries acting by themselves (e.g. France in Ivory Coast). Thinking of the practical problems clearly shows that this is an impossible idea. But on a theoretical level, is it valid (e.g. where does this force take its authority from)? I think so.
- lotusleaf1987 15y agoI 100% agree, imagine if we had invaded North Korea rather than Iraq. Both had bad tyrants/dictators but North Korea makes Iraq look like Disneyland. Same as number of other countries, I think we should be tackling objectively worse humanitarian problems as higher priority.
- run4yourlives 15y agoIf we had invaded North Korea, it is highly likely that the death toll would be in the tens of millions and that several cities in Asia would no longer exist. Add to that the fact that life expectancy around the world would probably dip sharply due to the widespread effects of radiation. It is a known fact that North Korea has at least 6-8 nuclear weapons. It's also a know fact that China will defend North Korea if it feels the situation is not in its best interests, as they did the last time we invaded. There are worse things than a prolonged limited regional conflict. Just because you have not experienced these within your lifetime does not mean they won't happen.
- Duff 15y agoIt sounds good until you explore the details. At the end of the day, someone pays the bills, and whomever controls the checkbook tends to set the agenda. There is no such thing as independence. Flashback to 1985. The Soviet puppet government was committing all sorts of atrocities against people in Afghanistan. Clearly the moral imperative was to stand up for the "freedom fighters", right?
- jacoblyles 15y agoIt's interesting to see reddit's America-hatred spread here. We can't condemn atrocities anywhere in the world without first holding America up as a paragon of all that is evil. The failure to recognize the good in America, indeed the many ways in which it still leads the world, and see the difference between a free country with perhaps too-strict sentencing guidelines and one which enslaves and kills its people for purely political transgressions, is indicative of the erosion of one axis of our moral compass and the early sign of a culture and a nation turning in on itself and destroying itself.
- ajkessler 15y agoIf I've learned anything, it's that we can't judge. Nope. Regime that interns its people in death camps? A system that engenders such poverty that people are forced into cannibalism? (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1875007335054132657# http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1875007335054132657#) Couldn't possibly judge. Nope, not with all the similar problems here in the evil ol' US of A.
- AJ007 15y agoNorth Korea: Homeless and those with homes starve to death. USA: Morbidly obese homeless chatting on cell phones
- pessimizer 15y agoSimply a lie.
- _delirium 15y agoI'm mostly interested in looking at the problems with the U.S.'s prison system before North Korea's because it is: 1) exceedingly bad; and 2) nearby enough that there is some chance we (=Americans) can do something about it. "North Korea is really bad" by contrast, I already believe, and we have a ton of evidence for it. Is evidence that North Korean prisons are also big and inhumane surprising? Yes, we should do something about it if possible, but we've been at a loss for decades about what to do about it; it's not like we haven't already been trying to pressure the regime there, and get rid of it if possible. The U.S. system is not just "too-strict sentencing guidelines" either; the prevalence of rape makes it imo basically an inhumane system. The government will not usually actually rape you (though rape by prison guards is also a problem), but it will put you in conditions that it has known for decades are likely to cause you to be raped. It continues to maintain those conditions and knowingly forces people into them, in effect (probabilistically) sentencing them to be raped. And regular Americans on the street will joke about "pound-you-in-the-ass prisons" or "hope you like the butt sex!", apparently considering this an appropriate, perhaps even good, way to punish criminals, since it adds to the deterrence factor by making the prospect of going to a prison with such conditions a frightening one. I guess we can make some hierarchy, where maintaining a prison system filled with starving inmates is worse than a rape-filled prison, which is in turn worse than a merely filthy/diseased prison, but it seems sort of pointless to justify things that way. I'd just go after the closest inhumane prison system, which I don't have to travel far to find. (It's also not purely a left-right thing; the left probably talks about it more, and the "tough-on-crime" right downplays the U.S.'s prison conditions, but it's also become a popular cause among Christian groups lately.)
- totalforge 15y agoAll North Koreans that are not in the elite inner circle are slaves. China, though annoyed, cannot act, since NK is a fellow Communist nation, though they are the goofy pseudo-Stalinist type. Eventually the regime will collapse, and NK will become a humanitarian project that will dwarf anything that has come before it.
- metatronscube 15y agoWell America, are you going to spread "Freedom and Democracy" there? It sure needs it.
- Estragon 15y agoDo they have primary resources for us to mine?
- code_duck 15y agoThey have a strategic location, how's that? Great to keep an eye on China and Russia. Well, I know we already have S. Korea in our pocket, but why not go for the whole peninsula? (just a line of reasoning, not my endorsement or something)
- brandong 15y agoNot until there is the political will to accept millions of US losses. Our current engagements are a walk in the park compared to what "bringing regime change" to North Korea entail. I'd wager that there hasn't been another large populace so thoroughly brainwashed in modern history- Nazi Germany isn't even comparable to "the hermit kingdom."
- metatronscube 15y agoPerhaps, however I think its hard to brainwash starving masses turning to cannibalism fleeing the country in thousands across the border to China. The German Nazi regime was well fed and well equipped.
- jhamburger 15y agoI think you're totally wrong, there's no idealogical support for the regime there. The military support him because he makes them 1st class citizens and they know it's the only way they can eat. The civilians are just scared to death and trying to survive. And there wouldn't be millions of US losses, we would never put ourselves in that situation. It would be relentless airstrikes aiming at disabling air defenses/artillery positions and decapitation of the regime. The problem would be mass civilian casualties in south korea.
- tptacek 15y ago157 votes so we can have an amateur North Korea/US comparative studies class. Respite from 3-year-old LKML security flame war, also on the front page? Maybe. Still sad. See you in a week or so. My "minaway" is 10,000 again. Old timer? Have you tried this yet? It's a revelation. You will thank for me this advice. Noprocrast=yes, minaway 10000+. You might code instead, or drink whiskey and read a good book, or find some less exasperating place to rant at like-minded people online. Anything else you do will be better than HN on May 12, 2011.
- elliottcarlson 15y agoI respect most of what you post on HN - you have great insights and offer a lot of knowledgeable information to most of the threads you participate in - but I can't say this post was one of them. Wouldn't it be far more productive to skip threads that might not interest you? Otherwise you are, IMHO, adding a rant just like everyone you are criticizing.
- davidw 15y agoIt's way easier to post stories about current events and politics than it is to find genuine, high quality, on-topic material. The possibilities for rants are endless. They need to be ostracized, lest a trickle develop into a stream, river and then flood.
- kwis 15y agoHN Guidelines: > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. This is off-topic. There is essentially no chance that anything useful will shake out from the ensuing discussion. It's noise, and it crowds out the signal. I'm glad that tptacek's post is currently the #1 post.
- bloggergirl 15y agoThe article actually speaks to the fact that you can use tech to view atrocities like these that are otherwise kept hidden. No one would have evidence of North Korean concentration camps --- not with only 2 survivors in some 60 years (according to the article, if I'm remembering right) --- without satellites and, in particular, Google Earth. The conversation may have gone off-topic, but it didn't start that way.
- api 15y agoNorth Korea is effectively an abusive cult in the form of an entire nation. It's amazing that such a thing can exist, and when I really think about it the existence of something like North Korea raises disturbing questions about the nature of human consciousness. How can we claim to have free will or to even have consciousness at all if something like North Korea can actually exist?
- TheloniusPhunk 15y agoYeah, National Geographic mentioned this in a documentary a few years ago. This is where you end up if you try to flee to China, which is, in and of itself, indicative of the state of affairs in North Korea.
- cjoh 15y agoThis stuff gets me really excited for private space technology. The future is bleak for the anti-democratic states if there's eyes in the sky for everyone, and global connectivity.
- maxwin 15y agoThe real problem is Communist China. Without China's support, Countries like North Korea and Burma would have changed a long time ago. If China catches up in military power, it can be scary considering its relationship with Japan,Taiwan etc and its support for dictatorship. (Disclaimer:there's a difference between criticizing chinese communist regime and chinese people)
- ungerik 15y agoStandard procedure in communism... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAxKAzpGmVA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAxKAzpGmVA
- kloncks 15y agoAbout 2.3 million people are incarcerated in the United States. Recent figures say more than 12% are raped or endure sexual assault. Twelve-percent of 2.3m is 276,000 and 276k > 200k. Not defending North Korea. But I'm a strong proponent of "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" mentality. Let's take a good hard look at ourselves before deeming others violent, ignorant, dictatorial, or cruel.
- tokenadult 15y agoAtlantic article, "North Korea's Digital Underground," http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2011/04/north-korea-8217-s-digital-underground/8414/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2011/04/north-kore... makes for very interesting reading about attempts to help the common people of North Korea know what is going on in their own country and in the outside world.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mml 15y agoNobody seems to be mentioning that in NK, you go to prison, and your entire extended family, for 3 generations (yes, your great grandkids) will all die there. Comparison to us prisons is laughably pathetic.
- hartror 15y agoThis is a highly important dreadful story but what is it doing on Hacker News, let alone the front page?