Kindgo
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North Korea's Concentration Camps
Three generations of one family can be locked up for years for a single "political" crime. Inmates pray for death. Aerial photos that emerged last week provided fresh evidence of camps hidden away in the center of the secretive and isolated country.
If the claims prove true, they present the government of Korean dictator Kim Jong Il as worse even than the usual portrayal of a nuclear-armed, brandy-swilling despot taking a nation of 20 million into ruin.
NBC News reported this week that in one camp in Haengyong, "Camp 22", 50,000 prisoners work under conditions so harsh that US officials and former inmates estimate up to 20 per cent die each year.
"They're just like Auschwitz," said the treasurer of the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights in Seoul, comparing the North Korean government to the Nazis.
"The only direct solution is the collapse of the North Korean government," she said.
The group says that tens of thousands of political prisoners are held deep in the mountains and designated "areas of complete dictatorship control".
Inmates are said to be used as human guinea pigs for biological and chemical agents. Pregnant women are forced to have abortions. Their husbands are sent to a special cell for three months.
Kang Churl-hwan spent ten years of his youth in a camp after an unexplained crime by his grandfather. In 1992 he was one of the few to escape. Kang is now a reporter with Seoul's Chosun Ilbo newspaper. "We were only given salt and corn. Most people died of malnutrition. Eating yellow worms on the dead pine trees was a very usual thing to do. "If you got to eat frogs, rats or snakes, that was considered a luxury."
One of the worst crimes in North Korea is to make contact with a Christian ministry through China. Kang says they get "sent to places from which they cannot ever return to society."
NBC reported that the state security agency maintains a dozen political prisons and about 30 forced labor and labor education camps. Two of the largest, including Haengyong, are said to be the size of small cities.
NBC had the pictures to prove it. The photos show acres of barracks surrounded by a 10ft barbed wire fence with land mines and mantraps. NBC also interviewed a man who served as a camp guard for eight years. At first he could not believe the inmates were human because they were so withered from hunger.
"They were like walking animals ... not human beings any more. . . .They trained me not to treat the prisoners as human beings. If someone is against socialism, if someone tries to escape from prison, then kill him. If there's a record of killing any escapee, then the guard will be entitled to study. Because of that, some guards kill innocent people. Beating and killing is an everyday affair."
The war with Iraq is almost upon us. Kim Jong Il's North Korea waits in the wings.
Author: Hal Lindsey
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God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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