U.S. Media Pick Up ‘Cheerleader Gulag’ Story

An AP wire story relaying the Chosun Ilbo’s original story (TKL post here) has been picked up by CNN.com and numerous other media sites.

The defector, whose real name wasn’t given, said the female cheering squad apparently violated a pledge not to speak about what they saw in South Korea, the Chosun Ilbo reported.

Citing another unnamed defector, the newspaper said the cheerleaders had pledged before going to South Korea that they would treat the country as “enemy territory” and never speak about what they saw there, accepting punishment if they broke the promise.

North Korea’s government insists it doesn’t abuse human rights, but it has long been accused of holding political prisoners in camps under life-threatening conditions. Between 150,000 and 200,000 political prisoners are believed to be held in the North, according to the U.S. State Department.

For many Americans, this story could personalize the horrors in the North and separate them from what many see as a big, mean world. Others will click on this sidebar story, which generally adds little to image of a creepy Stalinist anachronism that most Americans already have. In the South, it could be jarring for many who had been captivated by the cheerleaders emotionally to hear that some of them are now physical captives of a place from which many of them won’t return. What could be more emblematic of the folly of the Sunshine Policy – crowds swooning over controlled, regimented captives, who are then poured into the garbage disposal for being “polluted” by the outside world? What more dramatic illustration of the gap between what so many want the North to be, and what it really is?
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