N. Korea Glasnost Watch: Video shows men sent to camps for copying American movies
The Telegraph has obtained guerrilla footage of two men, one 27 and one 30, being tried and sentenced to nine months in a labor camp for copying and selling American movies.
The North Korean judge, or official, says that one of the defendants is “a person immersed in the corrupt ideology of capitalism” and tells the crowd that the criminal acts were “revealed by agents in South Korea operated by our party.”
During the full 12 minutes of footage, filmed secretly by an onlooker and seen exclusively by the Telegraph, neither man is given the chance to speak, and both are sentenced to time in an unnamed correctional labour camp. The exact length of the sentence appears to be around nine months – experts say around one to two years is common.
Not stated in the article is that the men aggravated their crime by failing to pay a sufficient bribe to avoid trial entirely.
“This video is in itself very rare – very few bits of footage are able to get out of North Korea. But also, public trials are extremely rarely reported outside North Korea,” he said.
“This video corroborates the vast evidence from witnesses’ testimony that there is no judicial system to speak of. People are denied access to lawyers, or any right to defend themselves, and are sentenced without any knowledge of what their sentence will be, in terms of length, or where they will end up. It demonstrates the brutality of the North Korean system.”
Footage like this is incalculably important for corroborating the testimonies of defectors, for increasing international pressure on the regime and those who help finance and perpetuate it, and as a deterrent against repressive actions like these. If cameras become ubiquitous enough that Pyongyang reasonably fears that its repressive acts will be filmed and shown abroad, it will face pressure to reconsider its actions for fear of greater international isolation.
In related news, the Daily NK reports that Pyongyang granted a Liberation Day amnesty to “thousands” of prisoners in its labor-reeducation camps. It arrives at this estimate by extrapolating from the number of releases observed in local areas. These are the smaller kyo-hwa-seo, not the larger kwan-li-so political prison camps. Those watching for signs of political change will be disappointed:
The first batch of released prisoners mainly consisted of petty economic criminals, robbers, violent offenders, and those who injured others while driving due to carelessness, he explained. Notably, the first cohort did not include a single prisoner arrested by the State Security Department [SSD] for what are considered “political crimes.” The second amnesty wave, set to take place at 5 prisons, is slated to follow the same pattern as the first: that is, political prison camp [kwanliso] detainees will remain exempt from amnesty. [Daily NK]
In other words, the regime is releasing people sentenced for acts that would be crimes in normal societies, even as it continues to arrest and hold people for thoughtcrimes, and other offenses against the state’s totalitarian control.