Olivia Enos, Forbes: The Need To Develop Policies To End North Korea's Nazi-like Prison Camps
How bad are the conditions inside North Korea’s political prison camps? Holocaust survivor and former judge at the International Court of Justice, Thomas Buergenthal, says that he believes that they are as bad, possibly even worse, than concentration camps of Nazi Germany. North Korean political prison camps, which contain an estimated 120,000 individuals today, are among the worst, but not the only severe human rights abuses committed by North Korea.
Just this past week, the U.S. House of Representatives heard testimony from two North Korean refugees, Hyeona Ji and Han Ga Hee, and three experts on human rights challenges in North Korea, including the former Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights, Robert King.
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Update: North Korea's Prisons 'As Terrible Or Even Worse' Than Nazi Camps (NPR)
WNU Editor: I would not call these prisons Nazi-like concentration camps. The Nazis focused on eliminating ethnic and "undesirable" groups. The North Korean political prison system follows the Soviet gulag model .... squeeze every economic benefit out of your prisoner until they are dead.
2 comments:
@WNU I think both existed in Nazi Germany.. for one, they certainly did use prisoners for labor (producing steel), but they also used their material values (from currency possessions they had on them, to gold teeth they saw removed when they were dead, or sometimes before, I would imagine), and then there was the execution -- but this execution component again had an economic aspect, as food, resources and space was getting scarce and diseases were rampant. SO there clearly were several economic components to the Nazi model, it was not just about elimination (that was really Hitler and his hatred for Jews)..someone correct me if I'm wrong
in any case, we should prepare to get those prisoners out.. and soon.. can you imagine if a guy working at the border (the gentleman who fled North Korea and was shot 5 times) had intestinal worms and was malnurished... how life must be like in those camps.. ffs get them out!
I'm about as far as a person could get from an apologist for NK.
But regarding the many stories over the years about political prisoner camps, and forced labor camps, how can observers discriminate between those types of camps and ordinary prisons for ordinary felons?
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