200,000 political prisoners in NK concentration camps

[wautd]

Literally some of the kids in these camps are now third generation prisoners being punished for ‘crimes’ such as having had a relative join the ROK Army during the occupation of the North.

Children start working at age 11 according to the few who have ever escaped, and some of them said they had no idea that any other kind of life existed in the world prior to escape. They also say they basically looked down on all other prisoners are unworthy of life, because that was how they were raised. Parents ect.. simply didn’t tell them about the outside to make life that little bit more tolerable and avoid them saying anything that would get them executed. The children are then worked so hard that in the escapees, the skeletons and especially arms bones actually grew bent from lifting heavy loads while malnourished.

Infuriating. Not only that such montrocities happen, but also that nobody is daring to do something about it.

[K. A. Pital]

Placing sanctions on the DPRK would only lead to more people starving (see: Songun policy, military gets supplies first). Attacking the DPRK... well, suffice to say lots of DPRK citizens and South Korean citizens will perish. The DPRK has nuclear weapons. f somebody "dares" to "do something" (what?) about the Great Leader regime, it is most likely that the Great Leader regime will weather this problem quite easily, but enormous numbers of its subjects will die.

When DPRK broke off relations with the USSR, they were notoriously active in trying to kill Soviet Koreans (DPRK students who were in the USSR at the time of the breakoff as well as defector pilots from the DPRK to the USSR and such). Andropov summarily granted political asylum (later - citizenship, when it became clear just what the DPRK was up to) to Koreans who happened to defect or simply did not want to return to the DPRK (because the fate of those who returned wasn't too inspiring, most of them served sentences even for the mere fact of being in the USSR). But that did not stop the DPRK in trying to annihilate its defectors at all costs. They even went as far as kidnapping students from Moscow; at that point Khrushev deported the DPRK ambassador to Pyongyang as party complicit in mass abductions of Korean students from Soviet territory.

I'd say DPRK's regime in case anyone does "anything" will only relay the suffering directly to the population.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Literally some of the kids in these camps are now third generation prisoners being punished for ‘crimes’ such as having had a relative join the ROK Army during the occupation of the North.

Children start working at age 11 according to the few who have ever escaped, and some of them said they had no idea that any other kind of life existed in the world prior to escape. They also say they basically looked down on all other prisoners are unworthy of life, because that was how they were raised. Parents ect.. simply didn’t tell them about the outside to make life that little bit more tolerable and avoid them saying anything that would get them executed. The children are then worked so hard that in the escapees, the skeletons and especially arms bones actually grew bent from lifting heavy loads while malnourished.

Infuriating. Not only that such montrocities happen, but also that nobody is daring to do something about it.

I hate to say this, but like Myanmar, there is almost absolutely nothing one can do that won't make the situation worse.

[K. A. Pital]

Technically you could double or triple the aid amounts - not everything goes to the army. You could give the DPRK oil and gasoline and lots of fertilizer and effectively subsidize its industries so heavily it gets at least a semblance of normal life, or maybe even exceeds the rather modest peak life standard they achieved in the 1970-1980s. True, it would make DPRK's armed forces more efficient and dangerous, but then again, Kim doesn't keep this huge army to attack, because any massive war will end the DPRK's government existence. This is to maintain an illusion of a world ready for war at any minute in the eyes of the North Koreans themselves. You could do the same with Myanmar but it is not done for obvious political reasons.

Part of the problem is complete and utter hostility of the DPRK: even the USSR was hard pressed to explain just why the hell we're giving anything to the DPRK when they engaged in blatant kidnapping of Soviet subjects in Moscow, as if to snub their nose at the "big brother". And the USSR was the DPRK's foremost supplier!

[Shroom Man 777]

They kidnapped Soviets? What? How? Where? When?

[Spoonist]

North korea is kidnapping cracy
http://www.sukuukai.jp/narkn/index.html

when the big leader wanted to make movies he collected a star and a director
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2821221.stm

when they wanted to breed spies that didn't look korean or have a teacher for a specific language they collected those as well
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Kore ... f_Japanese
Some where released after "negotiations" aka national bribes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/oc ... orea.japan
some remain
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/10/japan-korea


There is an excellent BBC documentary about the american defectee James Joseph Dresnok, called "Crossing the line", google it and see it, in it is a lot of tangents about other kidnappings and about life in NK.
It gives a good glimpse into the instanity that is NK and why it remains.


But if that is not insane enough, how about stealing the train cars that bring in the aid?
http://www.asianoffbeat.com/default.asp?Display=1001

[K. A. Pital]

They kidnapped Soviets? What? How? Where? When?

In the late 1950s. Korean students en masse asked the USSR for political refuge and were granted it (see: Yuri Andropov), later becoming citizens. At the same time, DPRK's special services started mass abductions in Moscow, nothing less, and continued to abduct more and more people until Khrushev kicked their ambassador's ass out to Pyongyang.

[Broomstick]

On the other hand, there's surprisingly (according to Lankov) no deficit of textiles and clothes, and most people are decently supplied with the above, compared to some nations where clothing is a problem. It would seem that making watches with DPRK industry would be easy (heavy industry in the USSR allowed to make enough machine tools to produce tons of watches even in late-Stalin years, from 1950 onwards), while textiles should be a problem.

I've been doing a little on-line research about the prison camps. Apparently, outside of mining, textiles are one of the industries at the camps. When you have slave labor producing textiles of course they become cheap.

If you have massive amounts of human labor, you don't even need any form of power to produce textiles, either. It may not be as efficient, but unpowered looms are quite capable of producing large quantities. After all, that's how it used to be done all over the world until the 1800's.

Apparently someone decided on the camps making textiles instead of watches.

[K. A. Pital]

Apparently someone decided on the camps making textiles instead of watches.

Easy decision, indeed. Textiles do not require special technical expertise and precise machine tools. Natural choice for labour camps, just as mining. Precise industry products are uncanny as a camp industry; as far as I know, no advanced industries are run by penal labour in the DPRK (that is, the ones that they run jointly with the Chinese and South Koreans).

[Rabid]

Apparently someone decided on the camps making textiles instead of watches.

Because the DPRK economy isn't organized around the exportation of finished goods, but around autarky and self-sufficiency, it is understandable that they would want to build/manufacture in priority what is needed for basic survival (clothes) over what would just offer some material comfort to their citizen/workers (watches).

Would you prefer having toilet paper or a book ?

[K. A. Pital]

Apparently someone decided on the camps making textiles instead of watches.

Because the DPRK economy isn't organized around the exportation of finished goods, but around autarky and self-sufficiency, it is understandable that they would want to build/manufacture in priority what is needed for basic survival (clothes) over what would just offer some material comfort to their citizen/workers (watches).

Would you prefer having toilet paper or a book ?

I think the problem is that their economy is incapable of making things that cost roughly the same (cheap watches and cheap clothes cost about the same in the USSR, and the USSR wasn't organized around export as well, it mainly made products for the internal market). Sadly enough, while the examples with textiles is at least somewhat rational (clothes are more important than watches), the DRPK manufactures in priority lots of weapons, which aren't needed for basic survival. They make and maintain lots of old, post-WWII Soviet hardware, and clothes, as well as housing, but they are not capable of making enough food, crazy as it is. The supply system in the DPRK is hardly optimal.

[Rabid]

Well, I guess it is optimized for what the Elites believe the country need. Somehow. Maybe. After all, as long as the plebe has the guns to fight any invader, it is sufficient to maintain the statu quo for the foreseeable future - which is all that matter to those in power. As long as some North Korean survive, the Glorious Democratic People's Republic of Korea will prevail !

But, seriously, North Korea ? Is there a more fucked-up country on this planet right now ? The whole situation seems so absurd, so grotesque that it would be hilarious ; if only it wasn't so tragic.


1% of their population in concentration/labor camps...

Just to make a quick calculation, how many inmates are detained in the US carceral system ? Quick wikipedia-fu says 2,424,279 in 2008. Roughly the same percentage of the population, but obviously better treated in the case of the US carceral system. I believe.

Does someone know if there is normal prisons or jail in the DPRK, or does every "criminal" go to the labor camps ?

[K. A. Pital]

But, seriously, North Korea ? Is there a more fucked-up country on this planet right now ? The whole situation seems so absurd, so grotesque that it would be hilarious ; if only it wasn't so tragic.

Some parts of South East Asia (poorest ones, e.g. Myanmar) and Africa are close to that. Africa in particular.

1% of their population in concentration/labor camps... Just to make a quick calculation, how many inmates are detained in the US carceral system ? Quick wikipedia-fu says 2,424,279 in 2008. Roughly the same percentage of the population, but obviously better treated in the case of the US carceral system. I believe. Does someone know if there is normal prisons or jail in the DPRK, or does every "criminal" go to the labor camps ?

Most criminals go to the "149 special decree zone" or "special dictatorship zone" (yeah, the labor camps are called "special dictatorship zone" in DPRK, not kidding), though the percentage of political prisoners is very high in DPRK penal system (some estimate it might be as high as 80%, even in the USSR this figure never topped 50%, and these was during mass incarcerations of Nazi collaborators who constituted the bulk of "politicals", ordinarily it was between 10% and 20%*). DPRK is a nation so tightly controlled ordinary crime has almost dissappeared. I could explain in more elaborate terms, but suffice to say that criminals would find it hard to move anywhere (like, between cities) or do anything at all because the cell leaders know everything about everyone.

As for the USA, yes, they incarcerate a shit-ton of people, as many as in Stalin's times (surprisingly enough, modern Russia also incarcerates almost as many people per capita as it did during Stalin's times), however the conditions in Stalin's pre-industrial Russia and Russia now are vastly different. Even more so with the USA. Preindustrial mortality in US prisons is a long memory. The USA's War on Drugs and massive arrests made the USA the biggest, in absolute numbers, incarcerator in world history and the leading (or one of the leading) prison-states in per capita numbers. Some indicate mass arrests made the USA safer (crime level drop correlates to the incarceration), but I'm not sure if that's the case.

As for the DPRK, it really isn't a pre-industrial society. It's a society with a collapsed industry (no oil, fertilizer and stuff to keep it running), the camps are one of the few things that keep functioning, the other is spontaneously arising markets (which were there since the 1980s).

* - in Stalin's times between 1930 and 1953, what I meant by ordinarily, it fluctuated between 10-12% and over 50% immediately post-WWII because the camps were flooded with dozens of thousands of Nazi collaborators who obviously went by the "political" 58th article "Treason". After 1953, they were gradually pardoned and the number of politicals lowered to almost zero (the USSR preferred to make singular cases of expulsion of loners, between 1953 and 1990 it maintained a low level of "politicals' in the penal system, they never reached even 1% of the detainees, much less any significant percent of the population)

[Marcus Aurelius]

Does someone know if there is normal prisons or jail in the DPRK, or does every "criminal" go to the labor camps ?

In most historical totalitarian states, which used forced labor camps in a major way, ordinary prisons were used mainly as transit places before going to the camps and perhaps for very minor crimes which in most other countries would get you only fines or a suspended sentence. I do not know, but I wouldn't be surprised if that were also the case in North Korea.

[Broomstick]

Would you prefer having toilet paper or a book ?

I'm such a reader I have to actually think about that... but yeah, if it was book vs. toilet paper, if I was foolish enough to choose "book" it would eventually have pages torn out to be used as toilet paper.

No, I get your point. The DPRK has to be practical.

[Broomstick]

Just to make a quick calculation, how many inmates are detained in the US carceral system ? Quick wikipedia-fu says 2,424,279 in 2008. Roughly the same percentage of the population, but obviously better treated in the case of the US carceral system. I believe.

Well, sure - prison is never pleasant, but US prisoners are fed sufficient calories and nutrition to sustain health (actually, in some cases prisoners have excess body weight), there are limits to their work hours, and their children (in the case of women who give birth in jail) are sent to relatives outside of prison for a normal life, or in the worst case, fostered on the outside. In the US, having a job while incarcerated is a privilege that must be earned, and prisoners who work are required to be paid (it's a pittance, but they are paid wages). There is also the possibility of appeal, parole, and your relatives aren't thrown behind bars just because they're related to you.

Some rather significant differences.

[Serafina]

Stas, weren't the majority of "Nazi-collaborators" prisoners of war who were forced to work for the Nazis, instead of actual (read: voluntary) collaborators? Because i'd certainly count them under "political prisoners" as in "imprisoned for purely political reason".


Also, i'd choose a book and use some washable rags for toilet paper instead There, now i destroyed that metaphor.

[Simon_Jester]

I think I would rather live in an American prison than as an average citizen outside the prisons in North Korea. Certainly I'd rather live in a European prison than as an average citizen in North Korea.

At the very least, it's not an easy choice to make, in my opinion.

[Rabid]

@ Broomstick & Simon_Jester :

Yes, yes, I recognize being in a prison in the US and being in a labor/political-prisoner camp in North Korea are two situation so different as to becoming almost non-comparable.

The reflexion was just that... a reflexion about the proportion of people in both countries which have their liberties restrained (compared to their average fellow citizen). It would be interesting to correlate theses results with the crime-rates (by the law standards of each countries) and the number of extra-judiciary executions / murders for each countries. For all the countries on earth.

It may be a bit out of topic, though.

Also, i'd choose a book and use some washable rags for toilet paper instead There, now i destroyed that metaphor.

Congratulations, Citizen ! For your creative use of our country's resources, you have been promoted to one of our special Personal Enrichment Camp.

Aaaw, shit.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Man, all this talk about how weird the DPRK is reminds of a troll that was over at SB named Mantrid, it was actually kind of funny.

PS Bonus Democratic People's Republic of Canada Thread

[K. A. Pital]

Stas, weren't the majority of "Nazi-collaborators" prisoners of war who were forced to work for the Nazis, instead of actual (read: voluntary) collaborators? Because i'd certainly count them under "political prisoners" as in "imprisoned for purely political reason".

Majority of the forced labour (civilians and POWs used in Germany as slave labour) returned without incidents. On the other hand, there were hundreds of thousands of real collaborators (primarily, nationalists from Galicia, parts of the Caucasus, the Baltics, the vlasovites, etc.). Those were hardly peaceful labourers, and often they were complicit in Nazi plans in the East. However, they're still political prisoners - they were imprisoned for taking up arms against the Soviet government.