Posted on 07/20/2009 2:38:00 PM PDT by Mount Athos
Images and accounts of the North Korean gulag become sharper, more harrowing and more accessible with each passing year.
A distillation of testimony from survivors and former guards details the daily lives of 200,000 political prisoners estimated to be in the camps: Eating a diet of mostly corn and salt, they lose their teeth, their gums turn black, their bones weaken and, as they age, they hunch over at the waist. Most work 12- to 15-hour days until they die of malnutrition-related illnesses. Allowed just one set of clothes, they live and die in rags, without soap, socks, underclothes or sanitary napkins.
High-resolution satellite photographs, accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, reveal vast labor camps in the mountains of North Korea. The photographs corroborate survivors' stories, showing entrances to mines where former prisoners said they worked as slaves, in-camp detention centers where former guards said uncooperative prisoners were tortured to death and parade grounds where former prisoners said they were forced to watch executions. Guard towers and electrified fences surround the camps, photographs show.
"We have this system of slavery right under our nose," said An Myeong Chul, a camp guard who defected to South Korea.
They have existed for half a century, 12 times as long as the Nazi concentration camps and twice as long as the Soviet Gulag. Western governments and human groups estimate that hundreds of thousands of people have died in the North Korean camps.
Like several former prisoners, Jung said the most arduous part of his imprisonment was his pre-camp interrogation at the hands of the Bowibu, the National Security Agency.
"They knocked out my front teeth with a baseball bat. They fractured my skull a couple of times. I wasn't a spy, but admitted to being a spy after nine months of torture."
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Simple. Obama likes the system.
Chances are he admitted to being a spy a lot sooner, but the nine months of torture was just for fun for the prison guards.
Coming to a town near us?
Oh, those kids. They’re just being unruly teenagers </sarc>
Born and raised in a North Korean concentration camp. This is an hour long video including an interview with Dong Hyuk Shin, a 26-year-old born and raised in prison camp 14, and escaped in 2005.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms4NIB6xroc&feature=channel_page
Mauritania has 500,000 actual slaves and it gets how much media attention?
Where are the celebrities and the benefit concerts for the half-million slaves of Mauritania?
Not surprised. The American media was silent about the Soviet gulags also.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.