North Korea's Prison Camps: Comparing The U.S. system to N. Korea's is loony toons.

[cali]

Gitmo is disgraceful and repuslsive. Our prison system is in dire, dire need of reform, but saying that the U.S. is as bad as N. Korea- or worse- is idiotic and ignorant.

Born and raised in a North Korean gulag
By Choe Sang-Hun

On Nov. 29, 1996, 14-year-old Shin Dong Hyok and his father were made to sit in the front row of a crowd assembled to watch executions. The two had already spent seven months in a North Korean prison camp's torture compound, and Shin assumed they were among those to be put to death.

Instead, the guards brought out his mother and his 22-year-old brother. The mother was hanged, the brother was shot by a firing squad.

"Before she was executed, my mother looked at me," Shin said in a recent interview. "I don't know if she wanted to say something, because she was bound and gagged. But I avoided her eyes.

"My father was weeping, but I didn't cry," he said. "I had no love for her. Even today I hate her for what I had to go through because of her."

Shin's story provides a rare glimpse into one of the least-known prison camps in North Korea.

Shin, now 24, was a political prisoner by birth. From the day he was born in 1982 in Camp No. 14 in Kaechon until he escaped in 2005, Shin had known no other life. Guards beat children, tortured grandparents and, in cases like Shin's, executed family members. But Shin said it did not occur to him to hate the authorities. He assumed everyone lived this way.

<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/world/asia/09iht-korea.4.6569853.html


Revealed: the gas chamber horror of North Korea's gulagA series of shocking personal testimonies is now shedding light on Camp 22 - one of the country's most horrific secrets


The Observer, Sunday 1 February 2004 00.49 GMT

In the remote north-eastern corner of North Korea, close to the border of Russia and China, is Haengyong. Hidden away in the mountains, this remote town is home to Camp 22 - North Korea's largest concentration camp, where thousands of men, women and children accused of political crimes are held.
Now, it is claimed, it is also where thousands die each year and where prison guards stamp on the necks of babies born to prisoners to kill them.

Over the past year harrowing first-hand testimonies from North Korean defectors have detailed execution and torture, and now chilling evidence has emerged that the walls of Camp 22 hide an even more evil secret: gas chambers where horrific chemical experiments are conducted on human beings.

Witnesses have described watching entire families being put in glass chambers and gassed. They are left to an agonising death while scientists take notes. The allegations offer the most shocking glimpse so far of Kim Jong-il's North Korean regime.

Kwon Hyuk, who has changed his name, was the former military attaché at the North Korean Embassy in Beijing. He was also the chief of management at Camp 22. In the BBC's This World documentary, to be broadcast tonight, Hyuk claims he now wants the world to know what is happening.

'I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber,' he said. 'The parents, son and and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.'

Hyuk has drawn detailed diagrams of the gas chamber he saw. He said: 'The <snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/feb/01/northkorea

[stray cat]

1. For some reason some people are reluctant to condemn anything other than the US

There are some places where I would really not want to live and that make America look great by comparison.

[cali]

2. It's interresting. Some people are so invested in seeing the U.S., not

only as the greatest evil the planet has ever known, but as the source of all evil currently. It's just stupid.

[votingupstart]

6. i could not agree more -

it is stupid and those people who have no grasp on reality continue to propagate the myth that the US is responsible for it all.

[Odin2005]

8. I don't hesitate to call those jokers "Hate-America-Firsters".

[cali]

9. they're really not that different from the wingnuts who blame all evils

on the Muslim world. It's largely just stupid hate.

[old mark]

3. We are not even in the ballpark. There are so many countries

so much worse than ours, and yet people delight in feeling terrible anger at our own country. If you want to find out about a REAL police state, read the link in the OP.
rec.

mark

[cali]

4. I understand feeling angry at my country: We've done some horrendous things

but my point in the OP was that we're hardly the only source of bad actions or suffering in this world, and that yes, there are nations that run penal systems that are far worse than those here.

[KharmaTrain]

5. Different "Justice" For Different Prisoners

A couple years ago, I saw an independent film about the North Korean gulags...video snuck out of executions and beatings. It's a ruthless system that is an instrument of a terror state to dominate and subjugate its own people.

I don't see the journalists being subjected to the worst of that system. They're too valuable. Right now there appears to be a struggle for power going on inside North Korea that can explain a lot of the current sabre rattling. It's someone or group trying to show their authority and an international reaction can demonstrate who has power and who doesn't.

These prisoners are too high profile and they can and will be used as bargaining chips down the road. Also, the last thing a North Korean regime would want is a pair of Western journalists seeing the worst of their system. They'll be used as propaganda instead...they're too valuable right now and will increase their bargaining "value" down the road.

[cali]

7. Agreed. I don't think that they'll be subjected to the worst horrors

I just wanted to point out that the N.Korean prison/labor camp system is horrendous- and yes, far, far worse than anything in this country.

[Obamanaut]

10. Will we see in this thread the typical "I'm so ashamed to be an

American"? Probably not.

[Smith_3]

11. If you want to make such a statement, you need numbers.

Ok, a gruesome story about an execution. There are also gruesome stories about beating people to death from gitmo et al. Comparisons of which is worse only make sense if you provide the numbers of how many prisoners were killed and how many tortured compared to the total number of prisoners.

I am very sceptic about the usefulness of "personal accounts" for making general statements.

A North Korean would probably argue that in their prisons boys don't get sodomized (or do they?).

[braunfels]

12. Sad

The fact that a comparison between N. Korea and the U.S. system of prisons/torture is even a topic of discussion is sad in and of itself. This country has lost it's way and I think it's going to be a very long time (if ever) before it gets back to being the "shining light on the hill". Rationalizing by comparing a very bad situation with others that are worse is a cop out.

[cali]

13. It was never the shining city on a hill. That's called myth, dear..

Pathetic that you believe that it was. My OP was in response to idiot posts here. The U.S. is not comparable to N. Korea. It's an absurd comparison, and not because the U.S. is so freakin' wonderful, but because of the realities of both nations.