North Korea’s prison camps - The gulag behind the goose-steps

North Korea’s prison camps

 

The gulag behind the goose-steps

 

A ghastly secret that the North Koreans have tried to hide for too long

 

Apr 21st 2012 | TOKYO | from the print edition, The Economist 

 

 

LOOKING down on members of a 1.1m-strong army that applauded his every remark, Kim Jong Un giggled with delight during the centenary on April 15th of the birth of his late grandfather, Kim Il Sung. The contrast with his unsmiling father, Kim Jong Il, who died in December, could not have been clearer.

Unlike his father, the mop-haired Mr Kim spoke directly to the nation, in a resonant voice that masked the monotony of his message. His regime invited international television crews to film the festivities. Unexpectedly, it admitted that a mission to put a satellite into orbit in honour of his grandfather had failed. It all made for good television, and some commentators claimed to detect signals from the young ruler of a new openness in the regime.

Yet fresh reports in recent weeks about the victims of repression in North Korea are a reminder of how ruthless the dictatorship still is. It insists that “political prisoner” is not in its vocabulary. Yet growing numbers flee persecution. According to David Hawk of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, some 23,000 recently escaped North Koreans now live in South Korea. They include hundreds of former political and other prisoners. They bring with them harrowing tales of the brutality they have suffered.

Their stories have enabled Mr Hawk to update “The Hidden Gulag”, which first shed light on the slave-labour conditions in North Korea in 2003. The new edition provides testimony starting in 1970 about different types of forced-labour camps: the kwan-li-so for political prisoners, from which there is usually no release; the kyo-hwa-so penitentiaries mostly for those serving out sentences as common criminals; and detention centres for those forcibly repatriated from China. All appear to involve mistreatment that frequently ends in death. In the detention centres near China, North Korean women suspected of being made pregnant by Han Chinese are subject to forced abortions, the report says. (The state preaches an extreme gospel of racial purity.)

Even prison guards attempt to escape the country. Based on their testimonies and those of former inmates, Mr Hawk estimates that there are 150,000-200,000 political prisoners, penned into a string of camps that can be pinpointed on Google Earth (being “sent up to the mountains” is a euphemism among ordinary folk for those who disappear). Many prisoners are stunted and deformed from back-breaking work, 12 hours a day, seven days a week, with so little food that they eat rats and snakes, and pick through cow dung for grains of corn. Clothing is threadbare.

Whole families, including children, are incarcerated for “guilt by association”. Under an edict from Kim Il Sung in 1972, up to three generations must be punished in order to wipe out the “seed” of class enemies. There are no trials for those in the political camps, but presumed deviants are suspected of, as Mr Hawk puts it, wrongdoing, wrong thinking, wrong knowledge, wrong association or wrong background. Crimes include a failure to wipe the dust off a portrait of Kim the patriarch; having been a diplomat or student in eastern Europe in the late 1980s and therefore having witnessed the collapse of socialism; having contact (usually in China) with South Koreans; or being a Christian. Nowhere in the world matches North Korea for forced disappearances. Victims are held incommunicado, rendering the level of inhumanity even worse in the North Korean gulag than in that of the former Soviet Union.

The testimony of one recent escapee, Shin Dong-hyuk (a new name), stands out. He was born in one of the camps to a mother and father given rare permission to have children. He first saw the outside world when he escaped in 2005, aged 22. His life is chronicled in a remarkable new book, “Escape from Camp 14”, by Blaine Harden, an occasional contributor to The Economist. At six, the young Shin witnessed a prison teacher beating a girl his age to death for hiding grains of corn in her pocket. Dehumanised by the constant cruelty, he told a guard that his mother and brother planned to escape. After weeks of torture on suspicion that he was complicit, he and his father were forced to witness their executions. Years later, he escaped by clambering over the body of his friend, who had died on the electrified perimeter wire.

Mr Shin’s father, Shin Kyung Seop, is a new focus of attention. He was imprisoned in 1965, and some believe he may well have been killed after his son’s escape. on April 3rd a petition was filed with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, seeking his urgent release—however futile that may sound. The young Shin, who scorned his father while in the camp for breeding him into such cruelty, has since released a video in his honour. It ends: “I want to get to my knees and apologise for being cold and mean. I hope you survive in the camp any way you can. I really appreciate that you gave me life.”

The stories are heartbreaking, but foreigners who deal with the regime rarely bring them up. Some say that is because the North Koreans storm out of meetings when the subject of repression is raised.

This week the UN Security Council tightened sanctions on Pyongyang for its botched rocket launch, which it says is a violation of a ban on ballistic missiles. The North’s angry reaction suggests UN nuclear inspectors will not be visiting shortly, despite a February agreement to let them in. More sanctions may follow if, as many think likely, North Korea conducts a third atomic test soon. But there is no such pressure on human rights. As Roberta Cohen, chairman of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, puts it: “It is not just nuclear weapons that have to be dismantled in North Korea, but an entire system of political repression.”

 

from the print edition | Asia

 

 

 

North Korea’s gulag

 

Never again?

 

The gross abuses of human rights in North Korea shame the whole world

 

Apr 21st 2012 | from the print edition, The Economist 

 

 

IN LABOUR camps across its remote northern reaches, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea detains an estimated 150,000-200,000 political prisoners. The regime claims to hold precisely none. Or rather, in the formulation of the late Kim Jong Il, punishing the enemies of the state protects the North Korean people’s human rights.

The gulag’s captives are not told of their crimes, though torture usually produces a “confession”—which might admit to defacing an image of the “Great Leader” or listening to a foreign broadcast. There is no defence, trial, judge or sentence, though most inmates remain in the camps for life, unless they escape. They are victims of forced disappearances, in that neighbours, colleagues and distant family members know nothing about the fate of those who vanish. Inmates are held incommunicado, without visits, food parcels, letters or radio. Chronically malnourished, they work in mines, quarries and logging camps, with one rest-day a month. Infractions of camp rules, such as stealing food meant for livestock, damaging equipment or having unauthorised sexual liaisons are punished with beatings and torture. Guards rape women prisoners, leading to forced abortions for the pregnant, or infanticide. Inmates are under pressure to snitch. Executions are routine—and fellow prisoners must often watch (see article).

Consider the case of Shin Dong-hyuk, the subject of a new book (“Escape from Camp 14”). He was born of “model” prisoner parents in Camp 14, Kaechon in 1982 and spent his first 22 years inside. As punishment for dropping a sewing machine, his finger was cut off. He was also suspended over a fire, and a hook was thrust through his belly, to make him “confess” to joining an escape supposedly being planned by his mother and brother. He was then made to witness their executions.

Whole families are incarcerated at a time. Kim Il Sung, the state’s founding ruler, declared that: “The seed of factionalists or enemies of class, whoever they are, must be eliminated through three generations.” Just as guilt was heritable under the feudal Chosun dynasty, so the Kim regime divides the population into hereditary classes of the “loyal”, “wavering” and “hostile”. The gulag is filled with the third kind, people perceived to be Christian, or from the wrong background, or thought to have insulted the honour of the Kim dynasty.

The North Korean gulag has persisted for twice as long as its Soviet counterpart did. Yet the world looks away. The United States expends its diplomatic energies in negotiations over the regime’s tinpot nuclear and missile programme, with little to show for the effort. South Korean brethren have other things on their minds—the political left wants better relations with the North, while others just wish it was not there. As for China, an ally, it forcibly repatriates North Koreans who have fled across the border, even though they face execution.

Rarely does the gulag intrude. Perhaps the scale of the atrocity numbs moral outrage. Certainly it is easier to lampoon the regime as ruled by extraterrestrial freaks than to grapple with the suffering it inflicts (The Economist is guilty). Yet murder, enslavement, forcible population transfers, torture, rape: North Korea commits nearly every atrocity that counts as a crime against humanity.

 

Break with the inheritance

A world that places any value on the idea of universal human rights should no longer overlook North Korea’s enormities. China should end its shameful forced repatriation of North Koreans and allow the Red Cross and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees into border areas. It should also cease sheltering the Kims at the UN, which should launch a commission of inquiry. America and South Korea, especially, must not hide behind nuclear diplomacy, but press harder on human rights. on April 15th the state’s young new ruler, Kim Jong Un, marked the centenary of his grandfather’s birth. This third-generation seed of the Kim dictatorship must now be confronted with his own murderous inheritance—a blot on humanity.

 

from the print edition | Leaders