The Camps – Page 6

May 31, 2007

Freedom House Will Host Discussion on N. Korean Concentration Camps

Their message: On May 21, 2007, Freedom House released a new report, Concentrations of Inhumanity. The report written by Hidden Gulag author, David Hawk, carefully details the criminal acts prohibited by Article 7 of the ( Rome ) Statute of the International Criminal Court which are being carried out in North Korea on a massive scale. You can download the full report at www.nkfreedomhouse.org. Freedom House and Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) cordially invite you to a panel discussion to...

Anju Links/Human Rights/The Camps

March 15, 2007

North Korea’s Blood Gold

Question: How can a banker and investor in overseas gold mines get sympathetic innocent-victim treatment from the International Herald Tribune? Answer: Go into business with this man. That’s the upshot of this IHT story on Colin McAskill, successor to Nigel Cowie as the new primary foreign stakeholder in the Pyongyang-based Daedong Credit Bank. Reporter Donald Greenless writes that among McAskill’s other functions, he is “helping to operate North Korea’s foreign gold sales.” McAskill offers “dossiers” of proof to disprove any...

Human Rights/Human Trafficking/NK Economics/The Camps

February 18, 2007

Holocaust Now: Looking Down Into Hell at Camp 22

Those who have lived to tell us about Camp 22, located in the bleak northeastern tip of North Korea, can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and all of them are former guards or staff. Of all of North Korea’s numerous labor camps and detention facilities, large and small, Camp 22 is one of the largest, and almost certainly the most terrible, if only for the inhuman experiments witnesses say were done to the men, women, children, and...

Google Earth/Human Rights/The Camps

February 6, 2007

Mass Escape at N. Korean Concentration Camp; 120 Escape

[For images of North Korea’s nuclear sites, click here; for updates and commentary on North Korea’s latest nuclear test, click here; for images of other concentration camps, click here and here; for more Google Earth imagery of North Korea, click here.] [Update 11 Feb 07: North Korea denies it] The Daily NK reports: Sources residing in the district of Chongjin, North Hamkyung informed on the 1st and 5th “On December 20th, a mass group of 120 prisoners from the...

Google Earth/Human Rights/Inside NK/Resistance/The Camps

October 30, 2006

Must-Read: NYT Op-Ed by Havel, Wiesel & Bondevik Calls on U.N. to ‘Turn North Korea Into a Human Rights Issue’

The authors, Vaclav Havel, Elie Wiesel, and former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik have co-authored a powerful argument for confronting Kim Jong Il’s atrocities against the North Korean people, which they call “one of the most egregious human-rights and humanitarian disasters in the world today.” They also call for a “renewed international effort to ameliorate the crisis facing the country’s citizens:” For more than a decade, many in the international community have argued that to focus on the suffering of...

"United" Nations/Europe/Human Rights/The Camps

October 23, 2006

U.N. Envoy: N. Korea Sends Handicapped to Camps

[Update: Welcome Powerline readers!] Since I began blogging about North Korea, one of my core philosophies has been that nukes, diplomacy, and human rights aren’t logically separable. That’s because you deal with governments that possess a basic regard for human life differently from those that lack one. Governments in the first category share our desire to preserve life by avoiding war. Governments in the second category seek only to preserve and expand their own power; their motivations are not...

"United" Nations/Human Rights/The Camps

October 5, 2006

Yoduk Story: A Roundup, Not a Review

I expected to hate it, because until last night, I’ve never not hated a musical. Actually, it held my interest and entertained me for three entire hours, and this from a man who is officially diagnosed with ADD. At times, I was quite moved, and I saw plenty of people in the audience crying. I didn’t “enjoy” it, any more than I “enjoyed” Schindler’s List. This wasn’t “Schindler’s List,” but it looked like good art to me, and a credible,...

The Camps

October 1, 2006

La Place Des Miserables: 39.713N, 126.895E

This is one district, called Pyongchang-ri, of the infamous Camp 15, now known worldwide as Yodok. Here, according to survivors, children labor, starve, sicken, and die beside their parents — thousands of them each year. The entire camp is massive, and not all of it is within Google Earth’s high-resolution coverage. This picture gives a partial overview; you can see another photograph of this district here, and more photos here. Yodok was the place Kang Chol-Hwan documented in “The Aquariums...

Google Earth/Human Rights/Korean Society/The Camps

September 4, 2006

The Gates of Hell: 42.471N, 129.824E

These are the gates though which prisoners enter Camp 22 in North Hamgyeong province. Camp 22 is the largest and worst of North Korea’s prison camps, with some portions set aside as a “life imprisonment zone” for prisoners who will never leave. Escaped prisoners and guards report that prisoners are killed in a gas chamber in the camp’s administration area, approximately 8 miles down the road in the background (no high-resolution photograph of the administration area is available on Google...

Google Earth/Human Rights/The Camps

August 8, 2006

More Details on the Washington Debut of ‘Yoduk Story’

[Previous] Via the Chosun Ilbo: A Korean musical about human rights abuses in North Korea’s notorious Yoduk concentration camp will be staged at the National Theater in Washington D.C. Producers of “Yoduk Story” said Monday the musical will debut there on Sept. 21. The 165-year old National Theater is right on Pennsylvania Avenue, about 100 m from the White House, and is one of the national symbols. There will be 10 shows until Oct. 1 at the theater. Suzanne Scholte,...

Activism/Human Rights/Korean Society/The Camps

July 10, 2006

Leaked British Intelligence Report Accuses North Korea of Biowar Experiments on Infants

“Hundreds of prisoners die there each week, the victims of biological or chemical experiments to test out [chemical and biological] weapons for North Korea’s CBW arsenal,” claims an MI6 report. In one intelligence file is the allegation that newborn babies are taken from their mothers and injected with biological agents or given injections of chemicals that blister the skin, leaving huge keloids, the sores seen on the bodies of Hiroshima victims. Caveat: I’m lukewarm on WorldNetDaily as a source, but...

Human Rights/North Korea/The Camps

Category: The Camps