New satellite imagery shows most prisoner housing in Yodok Camp No. 15 is demolished, deteriorated or uninhabited. Administrative/security infrastructure mostly unchanged so far. More here (but imagery dates are wrong): https://t.co/AqjvuUbxlrpic.twitter.com/joxU6900Sa
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?:
No. 12 camp of Jongo-Ri in North Korea.
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.
This would be great news if it does in fact happen not because I expect anyone in the North Korean leadership to ever stand trial at the ICC, but because of the further international pressure it puts on the regime to improve its human rights situation:
A draft U.N. resolution on North Korea’s human rights problem calls for referring the totalitarian nation’s leader, Kim Jong-un, to the International Criminal Court (ICC), a diplomatic source said Wednesday.
The draft resolution, written by the European Union, was circulated behind closed doors at the U.N. on Wednesday, the source told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak about the proposed resolution until it is adopted.
“It marks the first time that a U.N. resolution on North Korea human rights includes a plan to bring the North Korean leadership to an international court over anti-human rights charges although this is a draft now,” the source said. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but this may explain why the North Koreans recently have been trying to explain away their gulags as “reform through labor camps” instead.
