I read this article today in the BBC and was struck by the article's use of the term "concentration camp." It seems that the number of news articles that allude to human rights abuses and atrocities in North Korea has increased lately, perhaps due to the country's recent leadership turnover and failed rocket launches. Its continued talks with China and other international politics faux pas don't help.
In this article, a South Korean citizen and his family defected to North Korea for a job opportunity promised him by North Korean agents who convinced him to defect. Almost immediately, he and his family regretted their decision, and they were installed in a guarded camp and forced to produce propaganda communications. He was given the opportunity to go on a mission to Denmark, and was eventually able to escape. However, his family was left behind. His wife and two daughters were put into a concentration camp. He heard from them once, most likely as an attempt at manipulation, but he never saw them again and doesn't know if they are still alive.
Really? There are still concentration camps, 65 years after the Holocaust? I felt so disgusted when I read this article - disgusted, appalled, and a little scared that these things still happen. And, in North Korea, it can happen to anyone - anyone who displeases the government, anyone who is in the wrong place at the wrong time. I read another article recently, this one in The Washington Post, about a man who was essentially born a slave in a North Korean labor camp. This article likened the camps to Soviet gulags, and said that the man's parents were ordered to mate and have him. His mother and brother were executed in front of him, and he had no reaction to this - because his only functions in life were to labor and work to avoid beatings. He was able to escape, the only known person ever to do so.
How do these things still happen? I know that attacking North Korea is in no one's best interests right now, and that that is not the way to deal with this. I know that the US and other countries have sanctions on North Korea, and are refusing to provide aid because of their continued nuclear efforts, but clearly these actions are having no effect. I don't know what the solution is, but the human rights situation is beyond anything that has been acceptable since the American Civil War.
