North Korean Gulag Survivors Tell Their Survival Stories to Bored South Korean Soldiers
As it turns out, inviting a North Korean gulag survivor to speak to South Korean troops is a lot like inviting Elie Wiesel to speak at a Pat Buchanan rally:
After speaking recently to a group of young South Korean soldiers about North Korea’s harsh labor camps, former prisoner Jung Gyoung Il — himself once a soldier in North Korea’s massive army — was stunned by the questions from the audience. One soldier asked how many days of leave North Korean soldiers were given. Another asked if North Korean soldiers were allowed to visit their girlfriends. No one showed any curiosity about the notorious network of gulags, a signature marker of the North’s brutality toward its own people.
In a rare acknowledgment, the South Korean government recently noted in a report that hundreds of thousands of North Koreans are languishing in the prison camps. But Seoul has made no public effort to exert pressure on Kim Jong Il’s regime over the issue. And many South Koreans, who hold deeply conflicted feelings toward their communist neighbor, are reluctant to even concede that the camps exist. [Stars & Stripes]
Actually, I don’t think this guy’s views are conflicted at all:
Jung Wook-sik of the Peace Network, a group of civic activists, said the existence of the gulags is “not relevant” in South Korea because many citizens feel their own human rights are being abused. Lee has been heavily criticized for, among other things, subduing peaceful protests and firing members of a teacher’s union that questioned his administration.
And it’s exactly the same thing, of course! You do remember Jung, don’t you, from when he was writing at OhMyNews as “Cheong Woon Sik?”
David Hawk, author of the study “The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps,” said little was known about the gulags until about five years ago, when large numbers of North Koreans managed to defect from the famine-stricken country.
Nothing in there surprises me much after four years in the USFK.
[Update: Reading more carefully now, I realize that “Jung Wook-Sik” may not be the same guy as “Cheong Woon Sik” after all.]