New Report Shows Growing North Korean Forced Labor Camps

The gulag system in North Korea has two purposes, fear of going to one of these camps helps to keep the population in line and they provide slave labor for the state.  So you have a regime that has implemented modern day slavery and yet the North Koreans are welcomed in international events such as the Olympics.  Why aren’t the North Koreans completely shunned from international events like South Africa was during the Apartheid era for its human rights abuses?:

The brutal treatment meted out to North Korea’s political prisoners has been well-
documented, but a new report coming out Thursday, based on satellite images, portrays the extensive network of “reeducation” camps for less severe violations of Pyongyang’s penal code.

These camps are situated throughout the country, both on the outskirts of cities and in huge compounds in the mountains. Conditions are severe but come with the possibility of release.

The camps are run not by the secret police, who operate a separate system for political prisoners, but by the Ministry of Public Security. They are an important pillar of the regime of Kim Jong Un, a means by which the North Korean population is kept permanently cowed.

The world is transfixed with the nuclear threat from Kim’s regime, but it is ordinary North Koreans who suffer every day, said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, which compiled the report.  [Washington Post]

You can read more at the link, but this is why I have a hard time taking the ROK’s criticisms of forced labor in Imperial Japan over 70 years ago seriously when it will not condemn the forced labor of Koreans happening today.  North Korean human rights should not be an issue that is forgotten for political expediency.