Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

http://singularityhub.com/2011/05/12/satellite-images-of-north-korea-prison-camps-find-200000-living-as-slaves/

by kkleiner • 15 years ago

486 204 15 years ago

bloggergirl6• 15 years ago

Thank you for posting this. A key takeaway from the article is in the final paragraph: "if we allow it, we could live in a world that makes great strides forward, but that can never rid itself of the abhorrent authoritarian tool that is the concentration camp."

We allow these horrors to occur. That's not a judgment on anyone; I'm definitely part of the problem because I'm not part of the solution (to borrow a cliche).

But what can we do? That's a real question. I want to know what we can do. Yes, we can sign Amnesty International petitions, which is a step, but what else?

The HN community is a problem-solving community. Human rights violations of all sizes and shapes (including and especially the North Korea concentration camps) are a major problem to solve. What can technology do to help? Can we solve fatigue re: "prolonged exposure to blaring 24 hour news streams that fry sensibilities with their constant emotional appeals"? Can we mobilize people and keep them engaged in helping people they don't know?

chopsueyar2• 15 years ago

We need to wait for large mineral or oil deposits to be found in North Korea, and then the US can implement democracy.

bloggergirl6• 15 years ago

So true! You hit the nail on the head, chopsueyar.

TeMPOraL2• 15 years ago

Sarcasm or not, it is a valid solution.

Making the whole problem somehow relevant economically to US or international community might be helpful, although I have no idea how to do that.

pavlov• 15 years ago

North Korea does have large mineral resources, but China already has the upper hand in exploiting the political situation to gain access to them:

“There are growing concerns that North Korea could be selling the development rights of mineral resources to China at a very cheap price as the relationships between the two Koreas worsen and North Korea has no other market to turn to,” said Yoon Hong-gi, an official with Korea Resources Corp.

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2931111

ars2• 15 years ago

Actually the biggest problem is that the North Korea military is pretty well equipped. Any military solution would require evacuating large sections of South Korea.

jekdoce• 15 years ago

Initial ideas:

- Keep sharing the link for a week/month on Facebook, hopefully making it viral

- Setup a Facebook page for this, asking the same question "What can we do?"

- It has to start from within, see Tunisia, Egypt etc.

- Making sure folks inside North Korea can access info via proxy servers if it's blocked

TeMPOraL2• 15 years ago

Agree. I remember hearing that the general population of WWII Germany was unaware of the atrocities that happened in Nazi concentration camps. Given also the recent events in countries you mentioned, I think that making regular people in North Korea know what's going on in their country could be very, very important.

fijall• 15 years ago

2,292,133 were in prisons in the United States in 2009 [from wikipedia]. Even though I guess conditions are better, 200 000 doesn't sound like that many after all.

bloggergirl6• 15 years ago

Sorry, fijall, that the number of enslaved people (who are in many cases not guilty of crimes beyond disagreeing with a dictator) is not adequately horrific for you.

Perhaps if they were 200,000 people you knew... or even one you knew.

abrown284• 15 years ago

It makes me sick that a large percentage of the people in American jails are there for crimes that hurt no one but themselves but to compare this to the people in North Korea is just asinine.

yequalsx4• 15 years ago

I fail to see your point. Does the number of U.S. prisoners diminish the vileness of what goes on in North Korea? Are you saying/suggesting that the numbers of prisoners in the U.S. are so great that other countries are beyond criticism? That it's hypocritical for Americans or the American government to be shocked by the situation in North Korea? Can you clarify?

josefresco• 15 years ago

I'll answer for him, it's your last suggestion It's hypocritical for someone in the US to criticize other nations about their prison systems when we're leading the world in locking people up for crazy shit. That's not to say we can't have an opinion, just not a holier-than-thou attitude about it.

baltcode• 15 years ago

No, the severity of the NK situation is not diminished in the least by US prisons. Neither is the severity of the problems of some people stuck in prison revolving doors in the US diminished by the greater injustice in NK. It is hypocritical of anyone to try and deflect justified criticism by pointing somewhere else. Other countries are not beyond criticism, but many people feel that they should be beyond the "lets invade them" policy.

Goronmon• 15 years ago

Are you arguing that prisons in the US are akin to what is described as concentration camps in the article, or that what is described in the article is comparable to what you find in US prisons?

sid0• 15 years ago

23.9 million North Koreans -- all of them -- are effectively in prison.

ck22• 15 years ago

If they still made the sears catalog I'd suggest the key to starting a peoples' revolt in North Korea would be to airdrop hundreds of thousands of catalogs across the country.

Even without understanding the language, just looking at all the goods would make people start wondering why they are being made to suffer so.

callmeed• 15 years ago

How about SkyMall catalogs instead? They're already on the planes ;)

ck22• 15 years ago

Skymall is just gadgets, no?

Sears catalog was full of every day practical stuff from clothing to household needs, tools, etc.

The US government should have bought millions of leftover catalogs as propaganda to drop on countries like this. No bombs needed.

Sadly it seems they stopped making it in 1993 (strangely well before internet shopping got started)

http://www.searsarchives.com/catalogs/index.htm

http://images.google.com/search?q=sears+catalog&tbm=isch

rdtsc• 15 years ago

Oh no! They'll find out everything they learned about greedy Western capitalist societies is true then...

nooneelse• 15 years ago

Sometimes I like to indulge a similar fantasy. Only in mine it would be an airdrop of hundreds of thousands of small, hand-crank powered, mesh and satellite enabled, fully encrypt-able communication devices. Upon start-up, the helpful cartoon would explain something like... "you don't have to use this to talk to the outside countries you have been taught to distrust (though we hope this gift helps you see us in a better light), but you can use these to talk to each other privately (without your government knowing it is you doing the talking). Also, if you have relatives outside of North Korea, they are very likely waiting to talk with you in a chat-room or forum. What's a chat-room? Well, glad you asked..."

Yeah, naïve fantasy. But except for very slow strategies (like supporting the thin strands of journalism/information flow inside the country), I can't think of much else that can be done that doesn't include the look of military adventurism and the big risk of needing to rebuild one and a half countries. Even air dropping food directly to towns without the propaganda would risk Seoul.

theycallmemorty• 15 years ago

With the amount of thought-policing that goes on in that country, I can't imagine even beginning to explain to those people their true nature and the nature of pretty much every other human on earth.

daliusd• 15 years ago

The funny thing - you would use mesh enabled device yourself. Actually if there were such cheap devices they would find their way to North Korea somehow. I remember reading article about North Koreans living on border and using mobile phones with Chinese operators' accounts.

Jun86• 15 years ago

Airlifting catalogs may be impractical but the gist of your idea is so true! One big factor in USSR's fall, I think, was people's knowledge of the superiority and availability of goods available in the West.

eru• 15 years ago

That was even more pronounced in East Germany. (And actually Easterners thought the West to be a much better place, based on all the ads they saw. Everybody watched West German TV.)

kalid• 15 years ago

Unfortunately, I don't think it's a question of disliking the regime, but people having the power/food/resources to fight back.

lotusleaf19874• 15 years ago

I've similarly joked that for the 3 trillion we're spending on Iraq and Afghanistan we could've just flown planes overhead that dropped porn, pop music, fast food, junk food, Xbox/PS3s, iPods/iPads etc. It would've been much cheaper, more effective, and worked much faster.

Who's going to want to be a martyr when you're Tivo'ing something at home microwaving a Hot-Pocket?

amackera• 15 years ago

How about just dropping food?

ksolanki• 15 years ago

How about just not interfering?

Edit: To all downvoters: Perhaps this statement is at a wrong place, but yes, these countries (in the Middle East or Africa) might be much better off if the developed countries and China would not be after their natural resources.

sliverstorm• 15 years ago

This has been demonstrated in the past to nurture dependance and a sense of entitlement towards the free food.

marshray2• 15 years ago

Because the regime would simply drop poisoned food in the same packages.

muhfuhkuh4• 15 years ago

"I can admire China’s growth in infrastructure and technology, it’s pursuit to compete on a global scale, but what good is all that growth if it allows these crimes to go on next door?"

I admire America's prominence in infrastructure and technology, it's continuing domination on a global scale, but what good is all that power when over 40,000 people and rising are murdered because of a drug war for which they are complicit next door?

It's great to try to solve problems that seem so fruitless and terrible, but isn't it akin to pointing your finger at a mirror?

chopsueyar2• 15 years ago

Yes.

ugh3• 15 years ago

The author of the article is no member of the US government and doesn't speak for it. To accuse him of hypocrisy on the basis of actions his government takes seems wholly misguided.

muhfuhkuh4• 15 years ago

But, pointing the finger at one particular government for their failure to sanction/punish/invade/liberate another country when they could "easily" do so seems totally justified?

How about pointing the finger at the offending country, rather than at it's bordering ones?

abbasmehdi2• 15 years ago

Come on muhfuhkuha, you're taking this out of context. The author is saying that China is an accomplice in crimes committed by NK because it expels refugees who face imminent threat in NK, thus making China an accomplice. China cannot push escapees back into shark waters and say "I am not the shark", I'd say "Yes China, but you kind of fed this person to the shark."

The US has a very generous amnesty and refugee program, and if you can prove in court that you will be killed or prosecuted in your home country then you're granted residency. I personally know 3 people who have undergone this process. If they tried the same in China, they would have been swung right back over the border.

muhfuhkuh4• 15 years ago

"The US has a very generous amnesty and refugee program"

... unless you're a little boy from communist Cuba who wanted to live free in America but was repatriated at gunpoint in the middle of the night[1].

[1]http://www.nndb.com/people/574/000025499/

abas• 15 years ago

This is from close to 30 years ago, but I think it illustrative of what could still easily happen in the US (and perhaps does, I'm not too knowledgeable about refugee issues):

In the 80s around a million fled violence (from repressive governments, civil wars and paramilitary groups) in central America seeking asylum in the US. They were largely turned away due to political considerations (i.e. the administration wanted to maintain ties with the governments of those countries). You can read about it in this wiki entry about the sanctuary movement that developed to help some of those people in spite of the US government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_movement

burgerbrain• 15 years ago

Ignoring the fact that this tangent is offtopic, two wrongs don't make a right. The "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" attitude is and always has been absolute bullshit.

EDIT: s/sin/stone/

dimmuborgir• 15 years ago

Mexico is a functioning democracy and the Mexican drug mafia isn't America's headache.

Whereas, China has a long history of supporting North Korea despite it being a ruthless dictatorship.

uuilly2• 15 years ago

Making a concentration camp is intentional. Allowing a drug war to proliferate is neglect. Intent matters in criminal sentencing and it matters here.

zinkem2• 15 years ago

What do you call it when the CIA participates in the drug trafficking, is that acting with neglect or intent?

lotusleaf19874• 15 years ago

They're being murdered because of our own un-pragramatic religious and ideological interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. I agree with the right to bear arms, but there should a limit. A hand-gun with a limited magazine seems reasonable, an assault rifle with armor piercing bullets and an extended magazine doesn't.

In 2005 when the assualt weapons ban was lifted the cartels were able to get their hands on a cheaper and better source of weapons. The balance of power shifted more to the cartels as they were able to get better weapons. We should be helping Mexico because the cartels are beginning to look like an insurgency.

Edit: If you're downvoting me can you at least try to explain why it's not our fault that our weapons sold in the US are being used to murder civilians and contribute to a narco-state? Felipe Calderon even said this as recently as yesterday on Bloomberg.

yequalsx4• 15 years ago

What I can't understand is how people can visit North Korea and not feel disgusted by giving support for that regime.

I believe North Korea is facing another famine this year. Given the conditions in North Korea and the apparent iron grip its regime has on power is it better not to provide food aid? I can't decide for myself if it's better, for the long term, to let the nation starve and not help the people out or to feed them. I don't see a clear cut right or wrong way to view aid to North Korea. It's a disturbing case.

elliottcarlson6• 15 years ago

The problem is that visitors require a guide - someone who will hide the true nature of NK to them and ensuring they only see what they are allowed to see. Even though there has been a good amount of hidden camera footage exposed, or articles such as this one - there are plenty of people who may not really be aware of what is really going on there behind the scenes.

MichaelApproved• 15 years ago

That reminds me of Nazi Germany when they went so far as to create a fake concentration camp for the Red Cross to visit.

abrown284• 15 years ago

A lot of the approved video is disturbing to me.

lotusleaf19874• 15 years ago

Vice Guide has a great documentary available streaming on Netflix. It was so depressing/surreal/horrifying all at once.

aw3c2• 15 years ago

And so is our lifestyle. We rely on the exploitation of the rest of the world but close our eyes and pretend everything is fine. After all, the bad things happen in far-far-away to people of different races and cultures.

yequalsx4• 15 years ago

I think it's fair to bring up exploitation of resources, and labor conditions in other countries so that rich countries can live at a higher standard of living. But there is a difference from visiting an exploited country to visiting a country whose regime exploits its own people. Would you agree with this?

carussell2• 15 years ago

Assuming there's legitimate reasoning behind them, and not just "I don't like it", could someone explain to me why this comment got so many downvotes?

pstack2• 15 years ago

It's our way. We do business with China and visit them regularly, even though we know that much of what makes their manufacturing industry so competitive is the use of slave prison labor.

It's weird how we decide what people deserve "liberation" and what people we just shrug our shoulders at and keep supporting, in one form or another, the government that is oppressing them.

cynicalkane• 15 years ago

We do business with China and visit them regularly, even though we know that much of what makes their manufacturing industry so competitive is the use of slave prison labor

Though the conditions of labor in China seem shocking to comfortable Americans, they are not, in general, "slave prison labor".

100tonmantis2• 15 years ago

Source for "slave prison labor" in China please.

bdunbar• 15 years ago

I don't know about the majority of manufacturing in mainland China.

I do know that the several thousand people my employer has in manufacturing there are not slave labor.

ry0ohki• 15 years ago

Visitors? Don't they only give out like 3000 visas a year?

MoreMoschops• 15 years ago

They turn down very few visas. They give out so few because there are so few applications.

maxxxxx• 15 years ago

the right way would be to stop trade with china since they are the ones holding up that regime. Of course that won't happen.

elliottcarlson6• 15 years ago

There was a very interesting discussion about North Korea a couple of months back that had great links to undercover videos and photos from within Korea:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152223

The most notable video was Children of the Secret State (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1875007335054132657) - I recommend everyone watch this...

InclinedPlane• 15 years ago

It's interesting. Everyone seems to know how screwed up North Korea is, but few people know all the details, and the media doesn't report on these things much. Largely I think because it's so hard to gain access there.

abrown284• 15 years ago

I believe this is a satellite view of the Yodok concentration camp based on an image in the article.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...

geuis• 15 years ago

Yes, you're right. I just found the same place independently. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...

bigwally3• 15 years ago

No way that camp could be holding 200,000 people.

Anyone who has studied any geography could see that would be near impossible.

ceejayoz• 15 years ago

There's more that one camp.

bigwally3• 15 years ago

If you watched the video they said it was all in 2 valleys.

200,000 in those two valleys? Impossible.

BrandonM• 15 years ago

Ohio Stadium[1] comfortably holds over 100,000 people in the bleachers alone. In 2003 nearby Lane Ave, two blocks north of the stadium, was closed to traffic on game days due to construction on a new bridge. That street easily held a half million people on the half-mile stretch between High St. and the Olentangy River.

[1] http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...

rorrr• 15 years ago

US prison population: 2.2 million

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/US_...

wcgortel• 15 years ago

This is a good statistic to raise, but it's not a direct comparison. The US prison population probably has much more in common with ordinary North Koreans than these individuals.

daten• 15 years ago

While I agree that it is a problem that the US has a large and growing prison population, I don't think it's a fair comparison to the conditions being described in these camps in NK.

US prisoners are afforded many more human rights than the prisoners in these camps. They are fed and housed humanely. They are also given a fair trial as defined by the constitution before they are incarcerated and they serve specific prison terms with options for parole.

roel_v• 15 years ago

What's your point? That US prisoners and their extended families are being starved, raped and tortured for being critical of a government official, or questioning the official propaganda? Look, you may not agree with US drug policy, I know I don't (I'm not an American), but comparing what is happening in North Korea to what happens in Western prisons (apart from an isolated incident here or there) is, to put it mildly, disingenuous.

bloggergirl6• 15 years ago

Okay, well, for those who would rather look at the problems with the US justice & prison systems than the NK camps... what are you doing to fix things here?--anything?

Or are you just deflecting so that you don't have to try to help anyone?

johnmossel2• 15 years ago

I'm sorry, but ... seriously, a nation that still hasn't closed Guantanamo Bay. Don't throw stones if you live in a glass house.

johnmossel2• 15 years ago

Ohhh... someone gonna cry?

elliottcarlson6• 15 years ago

No - it's just a ridiculous statement. A governments action does not reflect the opinion of the occupants of that country. Neither does it reflect that of an independent organization even if it is based in a country who has a different stance that may been seen as hypocritical.

Does your government and leadership reflect everything you stand for?

eropple• 15 years ago

I would advise you to stop huffing butane until the comparison you have made sounds as plainly preposterous to yourself as it does to people who are not suffering from an altered mental state.

HTH. HAND.

Jun86• 15 years ago

(This is a recurrent fantasy of mine) I think we should have an independent armed forces with the power to intervene in gross violations of human rights, something like the UN but with exponentially more authority (current UN peace keeping forces are a joke, e.g. see Srebrenica massacre, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre, for just one example of many). This force would have the initiative to wage war on authoritative regimes, like the Taliban, Kaddafi, and the one in North Korea.

Currently this is done in a haphazard way, through NATO (e.g. Libya) or countries acting by themselves (e.g. France in Ivory Coast).

Thinking of the practical problems clearly shows that this is an impossible idea. But on a theoretical level, is it valid (e.g. where does this force take its authority from)? I think so.

lotusleaf19874• 15 years ago

I 100% agree, imagine if we had invaded North Korea rather than Iraq. Both had bad tyrants/dictators but North Korea makes Iraq look like Disneyland. Same as number of other countries, I think we should be tackling objectively worse humanitarian problems as higher priority.

run4yourlives5• 15 years ago

If we had invaded North Korea, it is highly likely that the death toll would be in the tens of millions and that several cities in Asia would no longer exist.

Add to that the fact that life expectancy around the world would probably dip sharply due to the widespread effects of radiation.

It is a known fact that North Korea has at least 6-8 nuclear weapons. It's also a know fact that China will defend North Korea if it feels the situation is not in its best interests, as they did the last time we invaded.

There are worse things than a prolonged limited regional conflict. Just because you have not experienced these within your lifetime does not mean they won't happen.

Duff• 15 years ago

It sounds good until you explore the details. At the end of the day, someone pays the bills, and whomever controls the checkbook tends to set the agenda. There is no such thing as independence.

Flashback to 1985. The Soviet puppet government was committing all sorts of atrocities against people in Afghanistan. Clearly the moral imperative was to stand up for the "freedom fighters", right?

Jun86• 15 years ago

Right, any human-governed force will be corruptible. Now combine this with another fantasy: A benign Skynet-like central authority for such a force, its prime directive being the maximization of welfare for humans (a utilitarian approach, that has its flaws). Or the authority can be made totally decentralized, i.e. "all people on the world with cellphones vote: should we attack North Korea"?

One problem with this would be the "saving fish from drowning" syndrome, e.g. intervening certain acts where the "victims" are all too willing. An example is France's draconian recent law (which I totally back) against burqas: evidently these women are doing this willingly (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/10/france-burqa-law...), so how can our force intervene?

The more you think about it, the more you realize that, although the current situation is unacceptable and despicable, there are no clear alternatives to it. This is indeed a sad thought.

run4yourlives5• 15 years ago

The most powerful military the world has ever known already exists; and it would not be capable of "fixing" North Korea or Libya without sustaining (and more importantly, inflicting) significant casualties. The best course of action, militarily speaking, would probably be to significantly nuke Pyongyang quickly and have S. Korea take over administration of the country. This is not politically or morally acceptable.

That's part of the problem: The moment you declare a regime as morally bankrupt, you are stating your own goals are somehow more enlightened and worthy. In some cases this works, like against the Nazis, but in most, like the Yugoslav war you cite, it's only a matter of opinion - For every Srebrenica there is a Krajina, unfortunately. The people involved in such generational hatred do not escape their own guilt, regardless of which particular side they may be on in any particular indecent. Getting involved in these quagmires often only intensifies the conflicting hatred for a later date. Even worse, who then protects us from the protectors?

Your desire is a noble one but unfortunately completely at odds with human nature.

Jun86• 15 years ago

I totally agree with your points (i.e. "who watches the Watchmen" and accumulative hatred) but I'm not happy to be so. Goethe said that "to be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state". Even if we're not pleased with the notion that no better solution exists (or can be found), still it makes one sad about humanity.

jacoblyles• 15 years ago

It's interesting to see reddit's America-hatred spread here. We can't condemn atrocities anywhere in the world without first holding America up as a paragon of all that is evil. The failure to recognize the good in America, indeed the many ways in which it still leads the world, and see the difference between a free country with perhaps too-strict sentencing guidelines and one which enslaves and kills its people for purely political transgressions, is indicative of the erosion of one axis of our moral compass and the early sign of a culture and a nation turning in on itself and destroying itself.

ajkessler3• 15 years ago

If I've learned anything, it's that we can't judge. Nope.

Regime that interns its people in death camps? A system that engenders such poverty that people are forced into cannibalism? (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1875007335054132657#)

Couldn't possibly judge. Nope, not with all the similar problems here in the evil ol' US of A.

AJ007• 15 years ago

North Korea: Homeless and those with homes starve to death. USA: Morbidly obese homeless chatting on cell phones

_delirium• 15 years ago

I'm mostly interested in looking at the problems with the U.S.'s prison system before North Korea's because it is: 1) exceedingly bad; and 2) nearby enough that there is some chance we (=Americans) can do something about it. "North Korea is really bad" by contrast, I already believe, and we have a ton of evidence for it. Is evidence that North Korean prisons are also big and inhumane surprising? Yes, we should do something about it if possible, but we've been at a loss for decades about what to do about it; it's not like we haven't already been trying to pressure the regime there, and get rid of it if possible.

The U.S. system is not just "too-strict sentencing guidelines" either; the prevalence of rape makes it imo basically an inhumane system. The government will not usually actually rape you (though rape by prison guards is also a problem), but it will put you in conditions that it has known for decades are likely to cause you to be raped. It continues to maintain those conditions and knowingly forces people into them, in effect (probabilistically) sentencing them to be raped. And regular Americans on the street will joke about "pound-you-in-the-ass prisons" or "hope you like the butt sex!", apparently considering this an appropriate, perhaps even good, way to punish criminals, since it adds to the deterrence factor by making the prospect of going to a prison with such conditions a frightening one.

I guess we can make some hierarchy, where maintaining a prison system filled with starving inmates is worse than a rape-filled prison, which is in turn worse than a merely filthy/diseased prison, but it seems sort of pointless to justify things that way. I'd just go after the closest inhumane prison system, which I don't have to travel far to find. (It's also not purely a left-right thing; the left probably talks about it more, and the "tough-on-crime" right downplays the U.S.'s prison conditions, but it's also become a popular cause among Christian groups lately.)

zyb09• 15 years ago

Well I agree with your point, but did you really had to drag reddit into this? I don't think reddit is at fault of these opinions here.

bluekeybox2• 15 years ago

There is a particular sentiment (I call it politics of resentment) that aims to portray anyone who is in power as evil, disregarding the question of whether a power change would really be productive. Those in power (whether good or bad) unavoidably have to play a power game to maintain said power, and the politics of resentment will always try to portray any such game as being played for an evil/unjust/immoral purpose.

Such politics of resentment lead Soviets in the 1910s-20s to hate the upper class and the "imperialist" West, Nazis in the 1930s to hate the British and the Jews, certain Islamist elements from the 1980s and onward to hate the U.S., and so on. I don't mind a sound criticism of power, but I cannot stand resentment. Because those who resent those in power the most are often those who unscrupulously desire said power for themselves the most.

TL;DR: stop resenting and get back to hacking.

guelo• 15 years ago

Real tldr: trust our dear leader, nothing to see here, move along.

mortenjorck• 15 years ago

I don't see anyone in the discussion here "holding America up as a paragon of all that is evil." I do see people holding the US to account for its own practices and patterns of incarceration.

Few would dispute that there are still many ways in which America leads the world, but let's not delude ourselves here: the prison system is not one of them. DPRK is an extreme case compared to the US, but the US is an extreme case compared to much of the industrialized world, and invoking "America-hatred" trivializes an important dialogue.

zedshaw4• 15 years ago

Having actually worked for the penal system collecting and analyzing statistics on prisoner abuses and policy enforcement, I can easily tell you that you are wrong (assuming your confusing deconstructionist prose means what I think it means).

In general, Europe has some of the best prisons, and some of the worst prisons. France, Italy, Turkey, and Russia have horrendous prisons where in many cases prisoners don't survive their sentences. France's prisons are so historically bad that they've spawned whole revolutions numerous times, and are a common factor in their history. The EU was supposed to improve these conditions but it remains to be seen given they have very little data on how they're run, let alone anything publicly accessible.

In Asia only Japan has decent well run prisons, but their prisons are harsh while still having a high success rate. In the rest of Asia prisons are typically horrible, and even S.Korea has some awful conditions. Last thing I read said they don't feed prisoners and keep them in tiny huts, requiring their relatives to come and feed them. Burma is a massive police state with actual slaves by law.

In Africa, if you remove countries that just don't even have working governments, you find the prisons are also horrible, with the exception of maybe South Africa, but even they've had a history of nasty evil and torture (read about Steve Biko). It's improved a lot, but not nearly as much as it should.

The US is similar to Europe, with some of the worst and some of the best prisons in the world. Now, we're not talking about American legal policy on things like wrongful imprisonment by the LA Crash unit, idiotic "3-strikes your out" laws, or minimum sentencing laws. I'm talking the actual conditions of the prisons in the US as labeled by organizations like Amnesty International. In our case, prisons are generally alright, with a few standout offenses like Sheriff Joe Arpaio in AZ, and most prisons in the south and California. The worst state is definitely California, which makes sense given they've had more complete city wide riots than any other state in the nation and their huge gap between rich and poor.

But, a significant difference between our prison system and many others around the world (even those in Europe) are our laws about open records on how they're run and our recent trend of civilian oversight groups and recitivism prevention. Starting in about 2004 there's been a huge push to increase monitoring of prisons, offenses, guard abuses, and to help parolees stay out of jail. I personally worked on systems that tracked guard abuses at Riker's Island and the NYC DOC, as well as finger print systems for prisons that do early release programs and job release programs.

The biggest problem in American prisons is the advocacy by law enforcement of inmate-on-inmate rape as a sanctioned form of punishment. There's been numerous cases of countries refusing to extradite criminals based purely on our joke that a man will get ass raped in prison. If you wanted to focus your activism and hatred on any one thing to improve our system, it would definitely be eliminating rape.

In general, through my research and my own need to improve prisons, I found that prisons are horrible poorly managed hell holes everywhere. They generally reflect the cultural fear of the dominant members of a region against the "unclean" citizens, outsiders, and the low class. The difference between American prisons and this one in N.Korea is the size of it and the blatant attempt to keep it secret from the rest of the world. Very few countries in the world try to hide prisons, and when they do it's considered horrible, but none of them are hiding a prison that's the size of Manhattan:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=90km+square

ajkessler3• 15 years ago

Very interesting take. I think one of the most useful things to ask, in many situations, is "compared to what?" To those who say things like "we shouldn't point fingers, look how bad we are", I ask, "compared to what?"

Compared to utopia, sure, America is a shithole. But compared to just about any other real place, on just about any other metric, we're doing pretty well. To argue that we somehow don't have the right to call other nations or people out for their atrocities, because we don't compare well to utopia, is ridiculous. We have a duty to call other people out on their bullshit.

pragmatic• 15 years ago

What society/nation has the best prisons overall?

Is there a country/region that does it "right"?

spenrose• 15 years ago

Thanks so much for taking the time to write this. Do you have recommended followup resources? Opinions on recent books such as New Jack or When Brute Force Fails?

chernevik• 15 years ago

"The difference between American prisons and this one in N.Korea is the size of it and the blatant attempt to keep it secret from the rest of the world."

Right. And the calorie counts, and the min / max temperatures. And the habeas corpus, and the due process prior to incarceration. And the press freedom to investigate. And the public election of legislators making the laws defining criminality, and executives running prisons. Otherwise, no difference.

See, in North Korea, when you start a "push to increase monitoring of prisons", you go _into_ the prison, do not see a judge, do not pass Go. And your family. And you don't come out. This alone strikes me as a really important difference.

Maybe people aren't sufficiently exercised about US prison conditions. But suggesting those are the same as North Korea only flips the "not credible" bit for every further comment you make.

gyardley3• 15 years ago

Anyone pondering Zed's comment on eliminating rape in prison should consider a donation to Just Detention International, formerly Stop Prisoner Rape: http://justdetention.org/

There are prisons in the United States where a significant percentage of the population are raped, and there are prisons in the United States where no inmates are raped. Prisoner sexual abuse isn't an inevitable consequence of incarceration, and we need to stop assuming it is.

bkj123• 15 years ago

Please suggest where I can find reliable facts and statistics regarding the conditions in US prisons including violence and rape. Thank you.

davidhollander2• 15 years ago

>The biggest problem in American prisons is the advocacy by law enforcement of inmate-on-inmate rape as a sanctioned form of punishment

Do you know if this is correlated with overcrowding of prisons (actual capacity vs. intended capacity)? You mentioned California prisons are some of the worst, to my knowledge they are also the most overcrowded?

What strikes me in a comparative analysis of the US penal system is not quality of treatment, but the perverse economic incentives promoting hoarding such a large percentage of the population in them. I would argue the biggest problem in the American penal system is public policy structuring unrehabilitated prisoners as assets:

1a. The standard contract for private prisons seems to be money per prisoner housed rather than money per prisoner rehabilitated.

1b. Each prisoner generates further revenue for the private prison as a labor source.

1c. Thus on a balance sheet, each additional unrehabilitated prisoner becomes an asset to be kept rather than a liability to be reduced.

2. Allowing drugs inside prisons becomes an efficiency gain, as prisoners failing drug tests results in assets being held longer.

3a. When prisoners are housed in prisons in rural districts, they count towards that districts population for purposes of calculating representation in state legislature. Even though prisoners cannot vote and are primarily from urban districts.

3b. Prisoners then also become an asset rather than liabilities for politicians in rural districts by giving them undue representative power. Politicians then are incentivized to increase this asset by supporting minimum sentencing laws.

Now there may be no direct agency or conscious intent to the above, but historically changing the underlying structure of economic incentives can have profound positive effects on individual behavior: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/09/09/129757852/pop-quiz... . I'd be interested to know if this perspective fits with your knowledge of the subject.

viraptor• 15 years ago

> The difference between American prisons and this one in N.Korea is the size of it and the blatant attempt to keep it secret from the rest of the world.

While the scale of this issue is completely different, the US does have the tendency to use secret prisons - in different countries. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site#Suspected_black_site...

What really bothers me about those sites is that they don't seem to be monitored by local government at all. The US is many times accused of torturing the prisoners in countries which don't allow such practice.

ellyagg• 15 years ago

It's so frustrating and terrible to see the situation in NK trivialized by comparing the US's prison systems unfavorably to it. No initiative, no activism, no outcry can be raised because its wind is immediately sucked out by foolish people screaming moral equivalence. How do you think refugees from these gulags would feel to hear you compare the average US prison inmate's experience to their own? Do you acknowledge that some concentration camps can be objectively and morally worse than others?

Are there bad prisons in the US? No doubt. Is the average US inmate experience anything like what is the RULE in these gulags? No. Does the scale between the two matter? Yes. Do the crimes (sometimes "crimes") and due process issues matter? Yes. Can we go on and on with specific, provable differences which make the NK citizen's experience far more horrifying? Yes.

Problems with the prison system in the US belong in their OWN THREAD, where they don't distract from THIS PROBLEM. The fact that some folks feel the overwhelming urge to bring them up here speaks a lot about what they think is important: Scoring points against the US. The US prison system is not relevant to the NK prison system. This isn't a game. NK doesn't get to pick out worst case practices from the US to justify its sweeping unchecked abuses. And it certainly doesn't deserve the aid of willing amateur PR people on random internet message boards.

NK is the same country that quietly let millions of its people starve while it spent a large fraction of its total wealth trying to build the tallest hotel in the world! That's the philosophy and those are the priorities of the organization behind these gulags. But you're telling me the REAL story here is the US prison system?

But this is why NK gets to go merrily about its way starving and torturing its citizens.

fauigerzigerk• 15 years ago

One additional piece of information seems important though. The US has a prison population of 756 per 100,000 inhabitants. France has 85 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants. (that's according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison#Population_statistics)

Of course that says nothing about how bad the prisons are. But it probably does say something about the quality of the justice system as a whole.

lshepstone• 15 years ago

Speaking as a South African, you do not want to go to prison there. People try to avoid it at all costs. Corruption is rife, and reports have surfaced of guards selling sexual access to prisoners amongst other unpleasant activities.

mc32• 15 years ago

>In Asia only Japan has decent well run prisons, but their prisons are harsh while still having a high success rate.

just to clarify for others. The high conviction success rate in japan has to do with at least two things:

1. Only cases which have high chances of success are pursued (so you get cases where "people fell down a staircase".

2. Detainees have little expectation of talking to an attorney any time soon. Confessions, co-erced or otherwise, are sought after with vigor by the police. From Wikipedia "Confessions are often obtained after long periods of questioning by police. This can, at times, take weeks or months during which time the suspect is in detention and can be prevented from contacting a lawyer or family.[2] Thus, since the suspect is put through prolonged strain, stress and pressure, the reliability of such confessions can be questioned. To Japanese citizens and police, however, the arrest itself already creates the presumption of guilt which needs only to be verified via a confession.[2] The interrogation reports prepared by police and prosecutors and submitted to the trial courts often constitute the central evidence considered when weighing the guilt or innocence of the suspect.[3]"

buyx• 15 years ago

In Africa, if you remove countries that just don't even have working governments, you find the prisons are also horrible, with the exception of maybe South Africa, but even they've had a history of nasty evil and torture (read about Steve Biko). It's improved a lot, but not nearly as much as it should.

Rape seems to be very prevalent in South Africa's overcrowded prisons, and South African society seems to actively condone prison rape.

Regarding your Biko point, he was murdered before he was sentenced. Although political prisoners under Apartheid were kept under harsh conditions, after visiting Robben Island, I got the impression that conditions for them, overall, were better than those of general prisoners (especially by the mid-late 1980's).

Overall, I think that prison conditions, for general criminal suspects/convicts, have not gotten much better, although there is greater transparency, than in the past.

See this article on a UK extradition request, where prison conditions are being used as an argument to block extradition of a murder suspect to SA: http://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/shrien-s-gay-risk-defence-1.1...

totalforge• 15 years ago

All North Koreans that are not in the elite inner circle are slaves. China, though annoyed, cannot act, since NK is a fellow Communist nation, though they are the goofy pseudo-Stalinist type.

Eventually the regime will collapse, and NK will become a humanitarian project that will dwarf anything that has come before it.

metatronscube2• 15 years ago

Well America, are you going to spread "Freedom and Democracy" there? It sure needs it.

Estragon• 15 years ago

Do they have primary resources for us to mine?

code_duck• 15 years ago

They have a strategic location, how's that? Great to keep an eye on China and Russia. Well, I know we already have S. Korea in our pocket, but why not go for the whole peninsula?

(just a line of reasoning, not my endorsement or something)

brandong• 15 years ago

Not until there is the political will to accept millions of US losses. Our current engagements are a walk in the park compared to what "bringing regime change" to North Korea entail. I'd wager that there hasn't been another large populace so thoroughly brainwashed in modern history- Nazi Germany isn't even comparable to "the hermit kingdom."

metatronscube2• 15 years ago

Perhaps, however I think its hard to brainwash starving masses turning to cannibalism fleeing the country in thousands across the border to China. The German Nazi regime was well fed and well equipped.

jhamburger7• 15 years ago

I think you're totally wrong, there's no idealogical support for the regime there. The military support him because he makes them 1st class citizens and they know it's the only way they can eat. The civilians are just scared to death and trying to survive.

And there wouldn't be millions of US losses, we would never put ourselves in that situation. It would be relentless airstrikes aiming at disabling air defenses/artillery positions and decapitation of the regime. The problem would be mass civilian casualties in south korea.

marshray2• 15 years ago

We did, but only got as far as what is today known as South Korea before being blocked by China and USSR. A lot of US soldiers died in that effort.

Perhaps you should check history before being sarcastic next time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War

tptacek• 15 years ago

157 votes so we can have an amateur North Korea/US comparative studies class. Respite from 3-year-old LKML security flame war, also on the front page? Maybe. Still sad. See you in a week or so.

My "minaway" is 10,000 again. Old timer? Have you tried this yet? It's a revelation. You will thank for me this advice. Noprocrast=yes, minaway 10000+. You might code instead, or drink whiskey and read a good book, or find some less exasperating place to rant at like-minded people online. Anything else you do will be better than HN on May 12, 2011.

elliottcarlson6• 15 years ago

I respect most of what you post on HN - you have great insights and offer a lot of knowledgeable information to most of the threads you participate in - but I can't say this post was one of them. Wouldn't it be far more productive to skip threads that might not interest you? Otherwise you are, IMHO, adding a rant just like everyone you are criticizing.

davidw• 15 years ago

It's way easier to post stories about current events and politics than it is to find genuine, high quality, on-topic material. The possibilities for rants are endless. They need to be ostracized, lest a trickle develop into a stream, river and then flood.

kwis• 15 years ago

HN Guidelines:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

This is off-topic. There is essentially no chance that anything useful will shake out from the ensuing discussion. It's noise, and it crowds out the signal.

I'm glad that tptacek's post is currently the #1 post.

patrickyeon• 15 years ago

> Wouldn't it be far more productive to skip threads that might not interest you?

Actually, no. If you ignore all the stories you don't want to see, you allow a site like this one to drift towards the lowest common denominator. Promoting what you like is one part of helping create a community you will enjoy, but actively discouraging the stories/comments you don't want to see is another part. An even more important part, if you want to see your community stay focused and true to the spirit it started out with in the face of an increasing (and increasingly varied/diluted) user base and funny pictures of cats.

kmfrk• 15 years ago

Remember how pg outlined grumpiness as one of the biggest problems HN is facing? Yeah.

Flag the thread like the rest of us and don't be an internet martyr about it.

Jun86• 15 years ago

What exactly are you objecting? That this topic is covered in HN or that it is being discussed in an "amateurish" way.

If it is the first, this brings us back to the "what should be covered by HN" debate. I, for one enjoy discussing matters unrelated to C++, Erlang, VCs, YC, Apple, etc. every now and then. If you don't agree, there are tons of other topics on HN.

The second point is more self-evident: of course it is amateurish, we don't have foreign policy experts here (I think). Yet we are (mostly) intelligent people tackling a problem with the small number of facts at hand. Your statement then becomes self-referential, because by posting it to this thread, you add nothing to the discussion.

api• 15 years ago

North Korea is effectively an abusive cult in the form of an entire nation.

It's amazing that such a thing can exist, and when I really think about it the existence of something like North Korea raises disturbing questions about the nature of human consciousness.

How can we claim to have free will or to even have consciousness at all if something like North Korea can actually exist?

TheloniusPhunk• 15 years ago

Yeah, National Geographic mentioned this in a documentary a few years ago. This is where you end up if you try to flee to China, which is, in and of itself, indicative of the state of affairs in North Korea.

cjoh• 15 years ago

This stuff gets me really excited for private space technology. The future is bleak for the anti-democratic states if there's eyes in the sky for everyone, and global connectivity.

maxwin• 15 years ago

The real problem is Communist China. Without China's support, Countries like North Korea and Burma would have changed a long time ago. If China catches up in military power, it can be scary considering its relationship with Japan,Taiwan etc and its support for dictatorship. (Disclaimer:there's a difference between criticizing chinese communist regime and chinese people)

ungerik• 15 years ago

Standard procedure in communism... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAxKAzpGmVA

kloncks• 15 years ago

About 2.3 million people are incarcerated in the United States. Recent figures say more than 12% are raped or endure sexual assault. Twelve-percent of 2.3m is 276,000 and 276k > 200k.

Not defending North Korea. But I'm a strong proponent of "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" mentality. Let's take a good hard look at ourselves before deeming others violent, ignorant, dictatorial, or cruel.

tokenadult• 15 years ago

Atlantic article, "North Korea's Digital Underground,"

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2011/04/north-kore...

makes for very interesting reading about attempts to help the common people of North Korea know what is going on in their own country and in the outside world.

mml• 15 years ago

Nobody seems to be mentioning that in NK, you go to prison, and your entire extended family, for 3 generations (yes, your great grandkids) will all die there. Comparison to us prisons is laughably pathetic.

lwat• 15 years ago

Source?

carussell2• 15 years ago

TFA

hartror• 15 years ago

This is a highly important dreadful story but what is it doing on Hacker News, let alone the front page?

Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

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