200,000 political prisoners in NK concentration camps

[wautd]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... rs-amnesty

North Korea holds 200,000 political prisoners, says Amnesty

Report by human rights group cites ex-inmates and defectors' accounts of torture and executions in series of camps

North Korea's political prison camps have expanded substantially over the last decade and hold 200,000 people, according to Amnesty International.

The human rights group says satellite imagery shows that locations identified as prison camps by defectors have grown rapidly in recent years. Former detainees and guards who subsequently escaped from the country described horrific conditions including torture and widespread malnutrition, Amnesty said, with every former inmate saying they had witnessed executions.

Thousands of prisoners are thought to be held purely for guilt by association under a system of collective punishment that holds relatives responsible when an individual breaks the law.

"Hundreds of thousands of people exist with virtually no rights, treated essentially as slaves, in some of the worst circumstances we've documented in the last 50 years," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty's Asia Pacific director. "As North Korea seems to be moving towards a new leader in Kim Jong-un and a period of political instability, the big worry is that the prison camps appear to be growing in size."

Satellite images showed four of the six camps sprawling over large tracts of land in remote rural areas of South Pyongan, South Hamkyung and North Hamkyung provinces.

A comparison with images taken 10 years ago showed that they had grown significantly, Amnesty said, with 15 more guardhouses at Yodok alone. It combined the evidence of additional buildings with former detainees' descriptions of conditions at the camps to arrive at its estimate of political prisoner numbers.

The South Korean human rights commission has also estimated a population of 200,000 while South Korean government sources have suggested around 150,000 people are held in the camps. North Korea has a population of around 24 million.

According to defectors, the camps consist of two areas. No one is ever released from the total control zones, for those alleged to have committed serious crimes such as those against the regime.

Those deemed to have committed less serious offences, such as being critical of government policy or illegally crossing the border, face sentences of between a few months and a decade in revolutionary zones.

Amnesty says only three people are known to have escaped total control zones and managed to leave North Korea. Most of its interviewees had been held in the revolutionary zone at a camp in Yodok.

A devastating famine in the mid-1990s killed hundreds of thousands in North Korea and the country has suffered food shortages ever since, but conditions appear to have been particularly gruelling in the camps.

Former inmate Jeong Kyoungil, who was detained in Yodok from 2000 to 2003, told Amnesty that prisoners received three meals of 200g of corn gruel a day, with food withheld if they failed to finish their work.

"Seeing people die happened frequently – every day. Frankly, unlike in a normal society, we would like it rather than feel sad because if you bring a dead body and bury it, you would be given another bowl of food. I used to take charge of burying dead people's bodies," he said.

Others reported torture, with detainees forced to spend a week or more in a cube-shaped cell too small in which to stand or lie down. North Korea, which does not acknowledge it has political prison camps, has not responded to the report.

This... country really is hell on earth.

[Broomstick]

Sounds like they borrowed a page from the Nazis - feed 'em just enough to extract the maximum amount of work before they drop dead. Minus the deadly showers, apparently, but they've even got the inmates cleaning up the dead for them.

NK is among the champion shitholes.

[K. A. Pital]

DPRK has massive malnourishment among the general population, it is more than obvious that the conditions in DPRK prisons are much worse. It is remarkable how the DPRK's hyperstalinist regime has weathered that long, though, when most post-Stalinist nations rapidly collapsed. Kim Jong's crazy decision to go completely autarkian and close borders even to nearest neighbors like USSR and China worked out well for his regime in the long term, perhaps therein lies the secret of DPRK's uncanny ability to weather any internal or external crises. However, daily life in Pyongyang isn't that nightmarish, so as long as you follow the conventional rules. I've read a blog by a Pyongyang university student. It's crazy at times, but Pyongyang sometimes has traffic jams, it has it's own internet (more or less, called Kwanmyong and obviously closed to outside world), mobile phones, etc. So it's not the same DPRK as it was during the 1990s famine, but I think it's not too far away from that.

[Broomstick]

DPRK has massive malnourishment among the general population

You see this at the border between north and south - the NPRK guards are notably shorter on average than the South Korean guards despite both groups being of the same ethnicity. The difference is nutrition.

Kim Jong's crazy decision to go completely autarkian and close borders even to nearest neighbors like USSR and China worked out well for his regime in the long term, perhaps therein lies the secret of DPRK's uncanny ability to weather any internal or external crises.

That, and they've been largely left alone by the outside world. Apparently no one has had much desire or incentive to meddle with their affairs.

However, daily life in Pyongyang isn't that nightmarish, so as long as you follow the conventional rules. I've read a blog by a Pyongyang university student. It's crazy at times, but Pyongyang sometimes has traffic jams, it has it's own internet (more or less, called Kwanmyong and obviously closed to outside world), mobile phones, etc. So it's not the same DPRK as it was during the 1990s famine, but I think it's not too far away from that.

I think that's something a lot of people don't get - they wonder why there hasn't been a big rebellion and it's as you say, if you follow the rules life isn't too bad. On top of that, North Koreans don't have much information about elsewhere to compare themselves with, they're constantly told things are worse elsewhere, and maybe they think it's about the same in the good places. How would they know otherwise if they don't have access to the information? If you behave, and your relatives behave, you can live OK lives and you don't have to think about the prison camps you don't see. On the other hand, rocking the boat gets you sent to those horrible places, so there's lots of incentive to not rock the boat and just go along with things as they are.

That's why it's critical to the regime to limit information about the outside world. If the population gets the notion things are LOT better elsewhere they might start getting uppity. The only folks in DPRK who get to see the outside world are elites who have a better than average lifestyle anyway, and thus have less incentive to rebel since they benefit from the current system.

[K. A. Pital]

Obviously. DPRK elites have Hummers H2 driving around in a nation which has little to zero petroleum.

[Broomstick]

Do they really?

How do they justify buying H2's from the Evil United States?

Or do they just view them as spoils of war or something?

[K. A. Pital]

Proofpic. I don't know. Probably they don't give a shit. "Proles" (or rather, Pyongyang teachers, scientists, etc.) drive DPRK-SK joint production cars.

[mr friendly guy]

On top of that, North Koreans don't have much information about elsewhere to compare themselves with, they're constantly told things are worse elsewhere, and maybe they think it's about the same in the good places. How would they know otherwise if they don't have access to the information?.

I would have thought the North Koreans living North and those living South would have an inkling to whats going on. Just looking across the border to China and SK. They have lights turned on.
Also the fact that North Koreans know to gather when Chinese tourist come near the border to get money, should indicate they are aware that their neighbours are more prosperous.

I have a feeling that being told things are worse elsewhere isn't referring to material wealth, but to ideological tidings, ie in SK you are the puppet to fascist America, here in NK we stand up to the American pigs.

[CaptainChewbacca]

North Korea actually tells its' people that the reason conditions are so bad is because they're sending aid to South Korea, which has been devastated since the war.

[folti78]

On top of that, North Koreans don't have much information about elsewhere to compare themselves with, they're constantly told things are worse elsewhere, and maybe they think it's about the same in the good places. How would they know otherwise if they don't have access to the information?.

I would have thought the North Koreans living North and those living South would have an inkling to whats going on. Just looking across the border to China and SK. They have lights turned on.
Also the fact that North Koreans know to gather when Chinese tourist come near the border to get money, should indicate they are aware that their neighbours are more prosperous.

I have a feeling that being told things are worse elsewhere isn't referring to material wealth, but to ideological tidings, ie in SK you are the puppet to fascist America, here in NK we stand up to the American pigs.

Limiting the average citizen's ability to communicate to anyone outside of their immediate place of living could do wonders to the spread of information. If you declare the areas next to the border special territories you can clamp down on the communication and travel more. Just think about the Soviet/Russian closed cities.
Or simply tell the population that those are Potemkin Villages, the evil neighbors put up at great cost to fool them.

[Ritterin Sophia]

You see this at the border between north and south - the NPRK guards are notably shorter on average than the South Korean guards despite both groups being of the same ethnicity. The difference is nutrition.

There may be malnourishment, but both the US and the RoK pick the biggest soldiers they can find for intimidation purposes to work the DMZ. When you get stationed over there they have guys watching you come off the plane, if you're over a certain height and you're combat arms you get grabbed for DMZ guard duty.

[CJvR]

North Korea holds 200,000 political prisoners, says Amnesty

Amnesty is wrong, every North Korean is a prisoner. Those 200.000 are just the part of the prisoners that is in for extra special punishment.

[Sea Skimmer]

. It's crazy at times, but Pyongyang sometimes has traffic jams, it has it's own internet (more or less, called Kwanmyong and obviously closed to outside world), mobile phones, etc. So it's not the same DPRK as it was during the 1990s famine, but I think it's not too far away from that.

The NK government actually completed a bunch of big canals in the 2000s to greatly improve the irrigation system in the country without using lots of water pumps they can’t afford to power. So they may be building out of the famine era… but they’ll always be one bad flood away from utter mass starvation again. They allow cell phones now only because the normal phone system was completely decayed and is largely unusable.

Personally I suspect that North Korea has actual detailed plans on going for controlled starvation to simply reduce the population to a more easily sustained level. Its not a question that the people around Pyongyang are much better fed them those in remote provinces. If you have only ever thought of the people as cattle it makes perfect sense.

[JME2]

Nearly a quater million?

Jesus Christ...

[Broomstick]

You see this at the border between north and south - the NPRK guards are notably shorter on average than the South Korean guards despite both groups being of the same ethnicity. The difference is nutrition.

There may be malnourishment, but both the US and the RoK pick the biggest soldiers they can find for intimidation purposes to work the DMZ. When you get stationed over there they have guys watching you come off the plane, if you're over a certain height and you're combat arms you get grabbed for DMZ guard duty.

How do you know NPRK doesn't do the exact same thing? Those might be their biggest soldiers, too.

[Sea Skimmer]

The largest camp is over 13 miles in diameter with a lethal electric fence. It’s easy to have that many people in camps when you imprison whole extended families in them continuously since 1953. 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.

How do you know NPRK doesn't do the exact same thing? Those might be their biggest soldiers, too.

North Korea would choose guards for political reliability above all other factors; since the Joint Security Zone guards could literally take one step into South Korean territory and claim asylum.

[Simon_Jester]

Well yes, but how politically reliable do you need them to be? Winnow through the population looking for the 5%, or 1%, of most reliable individuals, that'll give you men you can trust not to defect, but it's still a population of thousands. From there, you just pick the heftiest men in the group and tell them off to the job: "You, yes you, One Big Mother, you're now a joint security zone guard."

[Broomstick]

I am morbidly curious - for what sort of labor are these prisoners used? Presumably it would have to be done on-site. Do they have factories there?

[erik_t]

A shit-ton of coal mining, as I recall.

[Sea Skimmer]

Well yes, but how politically reliable do you need them to be? Winnow through the population looking for the 5%, or 1%, of most reliable individuals, that'll give you men you can trust not to defect, but it's still a population of thousands. From there, you just pick the heftiest men in the group and tell them off to the job: "You, yes you, One Big Mother, you're now a joint security zone guard."

They’ll never be able to match the US selecting the largest of its men for the job as they step off the plane in Korea so why look like they are trying? A single guard defecting would be far more loss of face. They’ve got a fanatic history of crazy incidents to make the point that they are powerful in the JSA; this is after all why the US and ROK insist on big guards. They want them to have a better chance in a fist fight straight up. The ROK even has a special judo police unit on hand to ensure hand to hand superiority. Totally insane.

It’s far more likely to me that the North Koreans want the politically reliable big people as special forces suicide commandoes because quite literally in that role the men can carry more explosives and equipment and blow up more of the capitalist pig dogs in the first minutes of the Second Phase Fatherland Liberation War. The KPA is pretty crazy, but that mostly comes from them being very very practical people. So much so that humanity is not a valid concept, only victory.

I am morbidly curious - for what sort of labor are these prisoners used? Presumably it would have to be done on-site. Do they have factories there?

The biggest task is coal mining, and they have factories and facilities to make everything the mines need such as repairing the coal wagons. The camps also farm all available flat land; this is one of the reasons why they are so big, and have sundary minor industries to support that. Furniture factories have also been reported, textiles weaving and some other minor consumer good manufacturing, some of which is apparently exported to China and thence, allegedly, has turned up in the US market relabeled as made in China. Also some escapees have reported that they witnessed repeated experiments

Basically the people in the ‘’total control regime’ part of the camps are worked to death in the mines underground, while everyone else and most of the families are in the ‘revolutionary zones’ and do everything else.

Also some escapees reported witnessing repeated experiments with lethal chemical gas weapons, and what from the descriptions appear to be biological toxin weapons. I really don't see a reason to discount the claims. Its not like its really any worse then having the death camps in the first place. The same people also basically said at the time they didn’t even view the tests as wrong because they’d been so brainwashed literally having been born into the camps and not even knowning of the outside world. Parents didn’t tell them. Some have said they didn’t even know who Kim Jong Il was. They were just totally isolated from reality until they got older and were told the truth in secret, pretty much the ultimate slaves.

[K. A. Pital]

Mines, mostly. The DPRK heavily invested in mines after the current God-Emperor Kim came to power, as I recall. Some of them are located within penal territories.

The NK government actually completed a bunch of big canals in the 2000s to greatly improve the irrigation system in the country without using lots of water pumps they can’t afford to power. So they may be building out of the famine era… but they’ll always be one bad flood away from utter mass starvation again. They allow cell phones now only because the normal phone system was completely decayed and is largely unusable.

The DPRK government is crazy in a way too; they mostly realize what sort of a system they are maintaining, but nobody wants to get out of the game. I think they are trying to cope with power shortages. The shortages are really crazy (compared to Russia or any other industrial nation). The aforementioned student mentions that Pyongyang has electricity around 250 volt during summer and spring, but in winter it drops to around 100 volt. Blackouts are frequent and common, each room has a stabilizer but sometimes the voltage is so low it can't be helped. Centralized hot water is available only during winter for 30 minutes (7 to 7:30 in the morning), however, there are public bathhouses with 24-7 hot water. Also, since this year Pyongyang stopped being "dark", they switch on electricity every day.

Personally I suspect that North Korea has actual detailed plans on going for controlled starvation to simply reduce the population to a more easily sustained level. Its not a question that the people around Pyongyang are much better fed them those in remote provinces. If you have only ever thought of the people as cattle it makes perfect sense.

I don't think the DPRK has such plans, and it's not like their fertility rates are too high, as well. If they wanted to reduce their population, they could have declined any aid sent their way.

[Sea Skimmer]

The DPRK government is crazy in a way too; they mostly realize what sort of a system they are maintaining, but nobody wants to get out of the game. I think they are trying to cope with power shortages. The shortages are really crazy (compared to Russia or any other industrial nation). The aforementioned student mentions that Pyongyang has electricity around 250 volt during summer and spring, but in winter it drops to around 100 volt. Blackouts are frequent and common, each room has a stabilizer but sometimes the voltage is so low it can't be helped. Centralized hot water is available only during winter for 30 minutes (7 to 7:30 in the morning), however, there are public bathhouses with 24-7 hot water. Also, since this year Pyongyang stopped being "dark", they switch on electricity every day.

They've been building a lot of small scale hydro power plants and some wind turbines lately which might be part of that. Many of the power shortages were linked to the low water levels that also helped caused the famine.

I don't think the DPRK has such plans, and it's not like their fertility rates are too high, as well. If they wanted to reduce their population, they could have declined any aid sent their way.

Well, some of the aid never reached the people as one might expect. We know some of the aid given in the 1990s, tens of thousands of tons of it, went right into underground tunnels and was never seen to emerge again, speculation was the food being stored to ensure that they could feed the regime's protectors even if the famine got worse.

[K. A. Pital]

I thought the DPRK was always balancing on the brink of famine, and when they started going batshit crazy with their Juche thing, they still relied on USSR aid to keep rice rations high enough. The natural disasters only exacerbated the problem, which was chiefly the collapse of the USSR and the cut off in aid which the USSR was giving the DPRK. Their life expectancy massively declined since 1991-1993. Before that they had a more or less liveable 900 grams of rice ration per worker, 300-400 per schoolkid.

[Sea Skimmer]

The biggest factor I was they need to import huge masses of fertilizer to keep the land productive; this is not unusual for intensively used farmland. The USSR supplied just about all of it prior to 1991. The post 1991 fuel shortage also meant electrical power became critically short. The the drought conditions made everything worse. Not only did they have less water in the fields, they had less water for hydro power stations to make electrical power to run pumps. If the weather had been better they might have still had a famine, but the toll would have been a lot lower.

North Korea was never doing well, but the land area they have would be able to largely support the population if it could be intensively cultivated. They’ve also been slowly reclaiming land from the ocean; but of course without fuel it is very difficult to do that kind of heavy engineering.

[K. A. Pital]

Incidentally, why is the fuel situation in DPRK so bad? I've heard different claims, some accusing China, Russia and the West in basically creating the fuel collapse in the DPRK by refusing to export fuel or supply it as aid; others claim Kim refuses to buy/ask for it, or something like that. As far as I know, the DPRK is not under blockade like Cuba, or is it?

Sometimes the DPRK rationing system is being extremely hard to understand and even paradoxical. One example (off-hands, I read about it in Lankov's DPRK book) was that a usual Soviet watch easily available to a shool kid in the USSR, costing a few kopeks, cost more than 300 NK won, which is half a year worth of DPRK wages. 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.

Another strange fact about the DPRK, good or bad, but the official marriage age in DPRK is extremely high. There are no underage marriages, because the minimal age is 22 years for females and 24 for males, used to be three years higher in the 1970s. It is supposedly related to the fact that the Songun policy requires a draft of able men for 5-7 years into the Army (something they don't really object to, as entering DPRK's army means better rations, easier way to get into the KWP and the possibility to become a local administrator when you retire from service if you're a villager) or something else like that.