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Testimony of Ms. Soon Ok Lee (2002)
- greenburger 13y agoFor a detailed analysis of where North Korean prison camps are thought to be located see http://freekorea.us/camps/ http://freekorea.us/camps/ Some of the camps are massive, for example Camp 22 is estimated to be 225 sq. km and holding 50,000 people [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea#Internment_camps_for_political_prisoners http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea#Int...
- guyht 13y agoFor anyone who is interested on reading more about North Korean prison camps, Blaine Harden's 'Escape from camp 14' is an incredible read. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11797365-escape-from-camp-14?from_search=true https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11797365-escape-from-cam...
- hdevalence 13y agoIndeed, although it's not an easy read, and it takes time for the horror of spending one's entire life, birth to death, in a concentration camp, starving and being tortured to really sink in.
- eyeareque 13y agoIt is amazing account from someone who was born inside of a NK prison camp, escaping the camp, then NK, and finally making his way to California. I totally recommend it. I couldn't stop reading it once I picked it up.
- BrandonMarc 13y agoA more depressing read is "The Story of Oh" [0] - a South Korean who chose to move with his family to North Korea ... then, upon realizing how the facts on the ground differed from the fiction he'd been taught about the place, managed to escape. Without his family, mind you. His wife demanded he escape, the better to prevent others from following in his footsteps. ---------------------------------------- [0] http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/07/16/the-story-of-oh/ http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/07/16/the-story-of-...
- BorisMelnik 13y agoheartbroken, I wish we could do something over there.
- leokun 13y agoSeoul is within artillery range of North Korea. It would destroy that city and the global economy to "do something over there".
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- yongjik 13y agoI guess it could be very tempting when none of your parents, siblings, friends and other loved ones live anywhere nearby, and all those folks you propose killing don't look like you, don't speak your language, and don't even observe the same holidays. Seriously, WTF.
- angle943 13y agoNot only that, but many South Koreans still have relatives living in the North. So bombing the North is akin to bombing your own family
- wodenokoto 13y ago"Something" doesn't have to be a full on attack.
- downer91 13y agoI am uncertain that it would "destroy the global economy." That sounds like hyperbole. Convince me. It would be any unhappy event, assuredly, but if "the global economy" wasn't destroyed by the Iraq debacle, I'm pretty sure that a similar conflict in Korea would carry comparable consequences. All the same, I do not advocate any sort of war. Not out of squeamishness, but mostly because even the victors are handed empty promises by war. War isn't as productive as people would like to romanticize.
- middleclick 13y agoDoes North Korea have a future? Is it possible that someday that the current rule is overthrown and the rights and lives of people are restored? Can anyone with knowledge about this comment?
- TrainedMonkey 13y agoAs long as China wants a buffer with South Korea, it will keep North Korea going. Without China's support it would have collapsed long ago.
- owenmarshall 13y agoThat's a bit of a simplification, I think. The status quo benefits South Korea as well - reunification means absorbing crumbling infrastructure, 25 million undereducated and hungry people, and trying to integrate that with a technologically advanced economy. It'd make the costs of the German reunification look like nothing. It benefits everyone who isn't a citizen of North Korea for the current regime to stay in place.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- emiliobumachar 13y agoThere could be many shades of grey between reunification and status quo.
- BrandonMarc 13y agoIt doesn't benefit the US taxpayer. How much aid has gone down the hole?
- pekk 13y agoI don't think you have any serious evidence that this is the South Korean thinking.
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- huhtenberg 13y agoRecommended follow-up reading - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp I know most of you heard of it, but, seriously, take a moment and look a bit closer.
- Finster 13y agoReally. You're trying to compare Gitmo to North Korean prison camps? Certainly, Gitmo is no picnic, but I have to question if you actually RTFA.
- 27182818284 13y agoThe trend is what is disturbing. As time moved over the last 10 years they got closer rather than farther apart.
- NoPiece 13y agoHow so? All but 164 detainees have been released from Guantanamo. They were never close, and Guanatanamo is slowly being shut down.
- BrandonMarc 13y agoWhile true, one reason the U.S. doesn't need Gitmo so much anymore is we're still going after and finding the same people, but now they are executed with drones, rather than captured.
- pekk 13y agoIf one of the parties had allowed it, we could have dissolved Gitmo years ago
- 27182818284 13y agoHopeless suicides, infinite detention, torture (by the definitions of lots of countries other than the one employing the guards), etc. Let's say N. Korea camps are "boiling." It wasn't that Gitmo is boiling like N. Korea, but we did see a nasty trend of turning up the heat on the stove rather than cooling things down or keeping things room temperature. The trend was nasty enough that as soon as a new POTUS got in office an executive order was signed within days—January 22 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ClosureOfGuantanamoDetentionFacilities http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ClosureOfGuantana... , even if we still haven't worked out the execution of that order for various political reasons.
- adamio 13y agoWhat about never again? Are Jewish orgs doing anything to help this situation, given the human rights violations similar to the Holocaust? edit: Note, I'm genuinely asking here, not implying anything should/isnot being done
- maaku 13y ago> Are Jewish orgs doing anything to help this situation, given the human rights violations similar to the Holocaust? Probably the same things they were doing to help out in Rowanda and Bosinia.
- w1ntermute 13y ago> Are Jewish orgs doing anything to help this situation They're too busy recreating the Holocaust with the Palestinians as the victim. Every couple of months we hear about the Israelis expanding their lebensraum by building some new settlements on Palestinian land.
- swordswinger12 13y agoIsrael != the international Jewry. Assuming as such is thinly-veiled anti-Semitism.
- w1ntermute 13y ago> thinly-veiled anti-Semitism Oh please. Make one negative comment about Jews and you get called an anti-Semite. It's even worse than with blacks.
- clarky07 13y agoYou must be one of those poor oppressed middle class white males from America. It's so rough that people call your racist comments racist. How dare they.
- ninjac0der 13y agoNot everyone has to be completely precise and politically correct to have a conversation, just most of these kinds. Know your audience. :)
- deliminator 13y agoAlso interesting is this interview with prison guards who have defected. Camp 14 - Total Control Zone [Abridged]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb1iwo4txE4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb1iwo4txE4
- DanBC 13y agoThat's from 2002. See also http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/10413950/UN-inquiry-chief-reduced-to-tears-by-North-Korea-brutality.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/10... from 2013. EDIT: Corrected year typo, thank you kohanz!
- kohanz 13y agoJune 21, 2002 I'm guessing "2012" was a typo for "2002".
- firstOrder 13y agoHopefully someday we'll see hearings on Americans massacring South Korean civilians some day ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_Massacre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_Massacre ). We even have written orders and memoes showing it was U.S. policy to fire upon civilians. Or maybe supporting the dictatorship in South Korea, and it's massacre against members of the democratization movement in 1980 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Democratization_Movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Democratization_Movemen... ). General Wickham sent troops from the DMZ so that the South Korean army could commit the massacre actually. We could go on about Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib torture, the NSA spying on all e-mails, phone calls and web site browsing and saving it forever etc. But no, let's hear more about a US Senate hearing on human rights in North Korea - from 11 years ago...what a farce.
- roel_v 13y agoIt's quite offensive by itself that you're even suggesting the things you are listing are within 2 or 3 orders of magnitude within what is happening in North Korea.
- DominikR 13y agoWhat exactly makes you believe that this testimony is accurate, and not just manufactured by the US government. It wouldn't be the first time they did that.
- dba7dba 13y agoYou think the Senate testimony is fabricated? How about this story? http://www.npr.org/2012/03/29/149061951/escape-from-camp-14-inside-north-koreas-gulag http://www.npr.org/2012/03/29/149061951/escape-from-camp-14-... If you think camp 14 is fabricated, how about detaining 85 year old American veteran with no due process? But i know, you will keep saying it's all fabricated...
- DominikR 13y agoI am not defending the north korean regime, since there is enough data that proves that it is oppressive and violates human rights on a large scale. (just like the US government did with all their wars since 1950 that killed millions, or extrajudical executions of US citizens in the war on terror, or torture and indefinite detention without trial) And no, I am not strictly believing that the Senate testimony is fabricated, it's just a possibility for me, since there are documented cases where testimony was fabricated in front of the Senate to legitimate a war.
- zoba 13y agoGeorge Clooney has a satellite he uses to keep track of a warlord. Individuals have capabilities which were previously accessible only to nations. I wonder if it is possible that an individual might intervene in North Korea, instead of a nation... but the parallels of a individual intervening in another nation's affairs sound a lot like terrorism. Some more thinking to do here...
- astrodust 13y agoThat's actually an interesting project. Here's a link for the lazy: http://www.satsentinel.org/our-story/george-clooney http://www.satsentinel.org/our-story/george-clooney He doesn't have his own satellite, obviously, but buys satellite imagery to document war crimes and to warn against incursions.
- rz2k 13y agoThe Logan Act[1] might be a place to start, though it's more often used as a theatrical threat, in the same way that people accuse each other of treason whenever they disagree. [1]http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/953 http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/953
- dba7dba 13y agoTo those trying to somehow link Guantanamo to labor camps in NK, please, stop. You are only making yourself look foolish. Such comparisons don't help your cause at all. 500 or so prisoners in Guantanamo versus 200,000+ in NKorean camps. The NKorean prisoners don't get medical help, freedom to worship religion of choice. The 500 are NOT there along with their wife, kids, grandkids, on both sides of the family. In NK, once a person is taken to one of the camps, it usually means 3 generations of his family is taken there. Think about it, 10+ or more people (including little kids) are dragged away to labor camps because of actions (or perceived actions) of 1 person in the family. Please, stop comparing Guantanamo with NKorean labor camps.
- scotty79 13y agoYes. It fits better to Phoenix Program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program than Guantanamo.
- olefoo 13y agoWhat about comparing Corrections Corporation of America and it's privatized prisons to DPRK labor camps? Perhaps a bit of a stretch given how clean and sanitary private prisons are known to be. But since American prisoners are forced to labor at wages that are a fraction of the market rate for the same work and are charged for their incarceration at a rate higher than it is possible for them to earn in prison... perhaps it is not so different.
- richardlblair 13y agoThe lack of formatting on that page is driving me insane. It's so hard to visually parse.
- richardlblair 13y agoGod damn, this is so hard to read. Not because of the formatting, but because the stories told are so terrible.