Life in North Korea
Two excellent editorials on life in North Korea. Axis of Evil seems to fit...
First, from the
BBC News comes the story of Kwon Hyok who defected from N. Korea in 1999. In 1993, he was Head of Security at prison camp 22 in Haengyong, an isolated area near the border with Russia.
In his words:
bq. "In North Korea, " Kwon Hyok explains, "political prisoners are those who say or do something against the dead President Kim Il-sung, or his son Kim Jong-il. But it also includes a wide network of next of kin. It's designed to root out the seeds of those classed as disloyal to North Korea."
bq. In prison, says Kwon Hyok, "there is a watchdog system in place between members of five different families. So if I were caught trying to escape, then my family and the four neighbouring families are shot to death out of collective responsibility."
bq. Torture, he says, was routine. "Prisoners were like pigs or dogs. You could kill them without caring whether they lived or died.."
bq. "For the first three years" he explained " you enjoy torturing people but then it wears off and someone else takes over. But most of the time you do it because you enjoy it."
This article goes on to tell of more horrible stories and cites independent verification of Kwon Hyok's stories.
The other editorial comes from
The Guardian Observer and tells of the gas chambers at Camp-22:
bq. 'I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber,' he said. 'The parents, son and and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.'
Next up for a regime change...
Posted by DaveH at February 2, 2004 9:46 AM