What Sort of "Labor" in North Korean Labor Camps?

[democracy1st]

The sentencing of American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee to 12 years in a North Korean labor camp for a mysterious "grave crime" has inspired a slew of searches. One of the most popular queries: "What is a labor camp?"

There is no doubt that Ling and Lee will face an incredibly difficult ordeal. But what, specifically, will their prison be like? Details from the notoriously mum North Korea are scant. However, an article from the Los Angeles Times, written before the two journalists were sentenced, explains that "their future likely includes the possibility of hard labor, starvation, and torture in a penal system many consider among the world's most repressive." The article goes on to mention that labor camps, also known as gulags, put prisoners through "extremely hard labor under extremely brutal conditions." Death rates are high due in part to inadequate food.

Al Jazeera writes that while North Korea doesn't "publish any details of the camps or the detainees," accounts from former inmates and guards "paint a bleak picture." According to the article, human-rights groups estimate that 20%-25% of prisoners die every year due to the harsh conditions. The work consists of mining, logging, farming, and "industrial enterprises."

The Washington Independent writes that political prisoners can expect "prolonged periods of exposure to the elements, humiliations such as public nakedness, and confinement for up to several weeks in small 'punishment cells' in which prisoners were unable to stand upright or lie down." Meanwhile, the official site of the United States State Department offers a chilling look at human rights in North Korea.

While the two Americans cannot appeal the court's decision, it is worth noting that in 1996, an American named Evan C. Hunziker was sentenced to a North Korean labor camp. However, following government negotiations, he was released after three months. For the sakes of Ling, Lee, and their families, we hope a similar deal can be struck.

http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/92651/?fp=1





Diagram: A look at a labor camp


Along the North Korean-Chinese border
The Tumen River runs between the Chinese city of Tumen at left and the North Korean city of Namyang at right. Lee and Ling were detained south of here.



North Korean labor camps a ghastly prospect for U.S. journalists

In a typically terse statement issued Monday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported that the women were sentenced to 12 years of "reform through labor."

While Pyongyang has not said where the women will serve their time, their future likely includes the possibility of hard labor, starvation and torture in a penal system many consider among the world's most repressive, said David Hawk, author of the 2004 study "The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea's Prison Camps."

Ling and Lee may be sent to a "kyo-hwa-so" or re-education reformatory "that is the equivalent of a felony penitentiary in the U.S., as opposed to a county jail or misdemeanor facility," he said.


"It's extremely hard labor under extremely brutal conditions," said Hawk. "These places have very high rates of deaths in detention. The casualties from forced labor and inadequate food supplies are very high."

The group Reporters Without Borders said in a statement Monday that the harsh verdict was "clearly designed to scare journalists trying to do investigative reporting in the border area between China and North Korea."

North Korea experts with knowledge of the nation's penitentiary system worried over the women's fate.

"The first thing that passed through my mind when I heard about the verdict was that, from an American perspective, this is tantamount to a death sentence," said Scott Snyder, director of the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy for the Asia Foundation, a Washington-based think tank.

"There aren't a lot of guarantees in that type of environment. It's different from any prison that exists in the modern-day United States. This is a very sobering challenge for a new administration."

North Korean defector Kim Hyuck, who spent a total of seven months between 1998 and 2000 in a "kyo-hwa-so," said that the percentage of prisoners who die from the harsh conditions would be unimaginable in the west.

"It is not an easy place," he said of the camps. "Centers for men and women are separate. But even women's place is not comfortable at all. . . . When I was in the center, roughly 600-700 out of a total 1,500 died."

Hawk said many of the re-education camps are affiliated with mines or textile factories where inmates labor for long hours, shifts that are often followed by work criticism sessions and the forced memorization of dry North Korean policy doctrine.

The literal meaning of a "kyo-hwa-so" in Korean is "a place to make a good person through education," said Hawk, who interviewed a dozen gulag survivors for his study for a group known as the U.S. Committee for Humans Rights in North Korea.

Kim, 28, who now studies math at a South Korean university, said that escape from the camps is nearly impossible.

"If someone is missing, the rest of us would be put in jail. Nobody can go out. No one can work. If a missing person gets caught, without question they will be shot dead," he said.


"Nobody was successful in escaping. Three tried when I was there, but they all got caught as they couldn't cross the border into China. I was among 23 people put into the center -- and 21 of them died there."

Kim and Hawk described long days at the camps that began before dawn. Workers are fed "watery corn gruel" for breakfast and then sent off to their assignments, Hawk said.

To become sick, Kim said, is often to die.

Most people died from malnutrition and related diseases such as diarrhea and fever, he said. "There is no medication. Officers gave us a powder made of pine tree leaves. That's what they gave us for every disease. It was just to give some sort of comfort."


A harsher form of death was being sent to the solitary cell.

"If someone gets sent into that cell, they wouldn't endure even a week," Kim said. It's hard to sit there or stand there. Officers don't beat them in the solitary cell, because they are going to die anyway just by being left there."

The political prisoners fare worst of all, he said.

"They're taken care of separately by the spy agency of North Korea," he said. "They are beaten so harshly. There is no responsibility for their death."

Hawk said torture and punishment was often used as a tool to maintain control. "People are punished for violating labor camp regulations," he said. The most common violation is trying to steal food of one sort or another.

"If people eat food that's supposed to be for livestock, it's a violation. Failing to meet your work production quota is another violation. Punishment is severe beatings and forms of torture."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-korea-labor-camps9-2009jun09,0,3230915.story





A female North Korean soldier looks out from behind a barbed wire fence around a camp on the North Korean river banks across from Hekou, northeastern China's Liaoning province on Wednesday. North Korea's top court has convicted two U.S. journalists, and sentenced them to 12 years in labor prison, the country's state news agency reported Monday.

[ddiver]

1. Forced

nt

[madeline_con]

2. Kim Jong Il is trying Obama.

Send in special ops and take him out, IMO.

[KharmaTrain]

3. Kim's Not Calling The Shots...

He hasn't since his stroke...a reason his son has been named to replace him. This is being engineered by insiders possibly struggling for power. These actions appear to be someone trying to assert authority within.

It'd be foolish for the NKoreans to throw these journalists into the worst of their gulags as their value is too high. They're now bargaining chips. I expect they will be released somewhere down the road. The last they they'd want is two journalists with a real view into the meatgrinder that is that country's penal system.

[moggie]

6. Ask yourself why South Korea hasn't done that

If solving the problem of North Korea were as simple as "taking out" the top guy, don't you think it'd have been done by now? There's been plenty of time. Real life is rarely as simple as a gung-ho Hollywood action film.

[MADem]

4. The Chinese can fix this. They really need to get off the dime and do just that.

That crazy nitwit likes to nose-tweak the USA, but he'll hop to if the Chinese tell him "No food this winter, you little asshole."

[smalll]

5. I read something recently about the NK "labor camps" -- its like the Gulag Archipelago

(if you ever read that Soltzynitzn (sp?)) or even worse, if possible.

What some people at least on our side don't like to realize is that there is still pure evil out there in the world, and moreover, pure evil that is not, fundamentally, Our Fault. Sometimes, the Pogo-idea that "we have met the enemy, and he is us" is NOT the case. Sometimes, the real bad guys ARE "The Other."

:shrug: