I Was a Political Prisoner at Birth in North Korea

http://www.northkoreanrefugees.com/2007-09-atbirth.htm

by followingell • 13 years ago

248 134 13 years ago

northkoreanrefugees.com

meric2• 13 years ago

It's different to this one http://www.utsalumni.org/news/how-one-man-escaped-from-a-nor...

The latter tells the story of how he betrayed his mother and brother. It is omitted from the posted link.

Also in the latter story, he discovered Park died before he escaped, not the other way around.

Osmium2• 13 years ago

I just read this whole story, and I can scarcely comprehend it's real. I just don't quite know what to say. What are you meant to do when you read something like that?

regnum• 13 years ago

His biography titled Escape from Camp 14 is well worth a listen to get more details.

http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B007MHIXJY&qid...

deliminator3• 13 years ago

One possibility is to inform yourself more.

FYI

The best resource I found so far is http://www.dailynk.com/english/ . At least one more story like the OP's can be found here http://www.dailynk.com/english/sub_list_last.php?page=1&...

There is an organization that tries to do something about this http://libertyinnorthkorea.org/ . They have some videos as well that are worth watching http://www.youtube.com/user/linkglobal

atsaloli3• 13 years ago

The wrong thing to do is nothing.

I encourage you to work out what you could do that could help this situation, anything, and do it.

bfe2• 13 years ago

I get that feeling every time I read about North Korea. At the very least, the ongoing tragedy there thrives in the absence of attention. Imagine how much outcry and public pressure for action there would be if there were video footage of these concentration camps on the news every day. At the very least, helping give it more exposure and awareness could help build momentum for more meaningful action.

belorn• 13 years ago

One reaction I get is a lack of fear of their nuclear tests. Rather, I welcome them as each time it might be enough to push larger countries to actually fix the situation.

atsaloli3• 13 years ago

"When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit to the glories of love. When evil men would seek to perpetuate an unjust status quo, good men must bring into being a real order of justice."

Martin Luther King

kiba• 13 years ago

All true stories become distorted through repeated retelling. So the true stories are the one that is told the earliest. Better is the one that is told on camera since computers do not have mechanisms for distortion.

That's not our fault, but simply how our memories work. Here's one article on memory distortion. http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/02/how-memories-are-distorted-...

saraid216• 13 years ago

> computers do not have mechanisms for distortion

Yet.

btilly3• 13 years ago

A decade ago I worked with someone with the most amazing personal story. He was born in a cattle car on the way to a concentration camp in WW 2.

He was a very, very religious Jew in all respects except one - he didn't believe in God. It was an interesting combination.

arcatek• 13 years ago

I don't understand, how is it even possible ?

btilly3• 13 years ago

How is what possible? The Germans put all Jews on, even pregnant ones. His mother gave birth in the cattle car.

He was lucky. They survived. Most of his relatives did not.

He is an observant Jew. Follows all dietary laws, goes to Temple, observes all religious holidays, etc. He does this as a strong assertion that he is a Jew, he will not let anyone take that away from him. Ever.

He just doesn't happen to believe in God.

jere• 13 years ago

I'm not sure which point is hard to believe, but hoping this helps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Judaism

vbtemp• 13 years ago

Judaism it not a religion. It is a complex mix of culture, religion, language, history, nationality, and ethnicity each to varying degrees. Being a Jew is never predicated on what you believe, athiests and believers - traditionalists and liberals - are both jews to equal measure. There is such a hodgepodge of viewpoints and movements that you will not have to dig long before you find observant Jews who are skeptical about the existence of god - or most likely just don't bother with that question.

jasonzemos• 13 years ago

I can't speak for his personal beliefs, but the reason one might so often encounter the "atheist jew" phenomena is simply an inherent compatibility. This is seated in the resistance to anthropomorphism of god, skepticism of false idolatry, etc. The past thousand years of rubbing with christianity has formalized what we now recognize as "religious" rite, but faith is the paradoxical belief in something that doesn't necessarily exist -- that's why it's faith.

WhaleBiologist• 13 years ago

My father was a holocaust survivor, and he was the exact same way. In fact, all of his surviving relatives were the same also. It seemed completely contradictory to me when I was younger (especially being raised as an atheist jew), but as I grew older I slowly understood. I think being persecuted like that made them hold onto their 'jewish identity' to an insane degree, despite the fact that all of them lost their religion.

danbmil992• 13 years ago

It's understandable. When someone tries to stamp out your identity, the natural reaction is to double down on that identity to emphasize that you will not submit to that sort of subjugation.

I think in fact this has a lot to do with the stickiness of religion -- it's completely mixed up with family identity.

rdl5• 13 years ago

It seems impossible to be anything but hyper-religious or an atheist after surviving a concentration camp.

deliminator3• 13 years ago

Google Tech Talk about Shin's story http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms4NIB6xroc

dfc• 13 years ago

Side Bar: Can anyone provide some context/background/explanation about the north korean name / south korean name?

jevinskie• 13 years ago

I wonder if the reason is related to the dialect differences between North and South Korean. I recall that the North Korean dialect is "older".

alxndr• 13 years ago

Not sure how much this explains about names in particular, but... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%E2%80%93South_differences...

DavidChouinard• 13 years ago

Shin recounts his experience in this incredibly touching and thought-provoking 60 minutes interview: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50136263n

Also, here are illustrations of a North Korean concentration camp by an escaped prison: http://imgur.com/a/648Mv. Incredibly alarming.

jbm• 13 years ago

I find it sad that after being basically treated like garbage by North Korean society, "defectors" (I hesitate to use that term due to the negative connotation, but can't think of anything else) like Shin wind up isolated within South Korean society. It reaches the point where more than 1/3rd want to leave SK.[1]

That one cannot escape an accident of birth is a huge blemish on humanity.

[1] http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20130207000854

kamaal3• 13 years ago

Well its sad but not surprising. I mean look at it from a young South Korean's perspective. There is a huge economic and many be now even a cultural gap between them and the folks from the north.

For somebody young in South Korea, a North Korean is somebody who shares his mother tongue in a different dialect- nothing much apart from that. By now North and South Korea are two very different countries, with many things being different and few things being common.

When a refugee arrives they may not think of him/her as 'one of us'. More like some troubled person from the neighboring country who will dilute/be a burden on our culture economy.

buro9• 13 years ago

> That one cannot escape an accident of birth is a huge blemish on humanity.

Succinctly summing up privilege, be it by skin colour, sex, disability, or inheriting wealth.

unicornporn• 13 years ago

Sorry, but I didn't know how to react when the second question the interviewer asked was: did you know america existed?

What kind of question is that considering this man's story?

bitdestroyer• 13 years ago

Especially considering the fact that they are bombarded with anti-American propaganda. So much so that they still celebrate the capture of the USS Pueblo, which is on display as a museum in Pyongyang.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Pueblo_(AGER-2)

guelo2• 13 years ago

It doesn't seem moral that the world doesn't invade North Korea and put an end to the insanity.

tptacek4• 13 years ago

More people would die if we did than if we don't. Seoul is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, and it's extremely close to the border.

guelo2• 13 years ago

That's what they've been saying for 60 years with no end in sight. The other consideration is that neither South Korea or China wants a flood of refugees. But I tend to think that if China wanted it could be done and over quickly and the rebuilding could be assisted by the whole world through the UN.

javajosh• 13 years ago

Yes. Only the South Koreans can make that call, as they have the most to lose. If they decided to invade, and asked for US assistance, I for one would support that, to the extent of volunteering to fight.

Alas, from an historical standpoint, North Korea is a relatively small aberration as long as it remains isolated and weak. The thing that I don't understand is how such a repressive regime could possibly have developed nuclear weapons. It seems somehow unfair, not to mention dangerous for the rest of us, that advanced science can be done in such an environment. I've always assumed that anyone smart enough to do such work would be smart enough to refuse to do it. But I guess I am wrong.

jrogers65• 13 years ago

It's OK to feel your emotions and make decisions based on them. Life isn't a business where everything comes down to a cost-benefit analysis. There are real people living in these conditions and I bet they're wondering why nobody is helping them. If you were in their shoes, how would you feel about our inaction?

What if Nazi Germany stopped short of trying to invade western Europe and Russia yet still had it's concentration camps? Would you have argued that it's not worth the cost of war to put an end to them?

Osmium2• 13 years ago

> More people would die if we did than if we don't.

Over what time scale? I'm not advocating military action--I don't know nearly enough to have an informed opinion--but it seems to me that military action could cost lives now, but save countless innocent North Koreans in the generations to come. One can think back to the Second World War and consider what the cost of inaction would have been there. Concentration camps should not exist and if all other avenues have been exhausted, at what point does one have to accept the risk of dying to end them?

I don't live in South Korea, nor do I have family there, so I understand that words like this are easy for me and I don't pretend otherwise. This isn't our decision to make in the West. But there's something about standing by and doing nothing that just seems unconscionable to me. Are sanctions really going to stop this? And now they have nuclear weapons too? Can this ever get better without getting worse first?

phaus• 13 years ago

Things just as bad were going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, but lots of people think they were unworthy causes.

I know they were failures, but part of that stems from the lack of dedication and support we had for them.

martinced• 13 years ago

What is not moral is that there are still people willing to destroy the economical system of countries where people are, as of now, still free to talk and move. Once a state defaults it's typically followed by a more authoritarian regime.

I cannot begin to understand how there are so many people asking for "more state" when you see what too much state leads too. It first invariably leads to default. Then to a more authoritarian regime. Then a planned economy and from there it's the infernal spiral down to mediocrity and tyranny.

But of course people asking for more state will tell you that North Korea is not a good example of communism and that Argentina is not a good example of socialism.

How convenient.

The answer to our problems is not more state, but less.

rosser• 13 years ago

The answer to our problems is not more state, but less.

No, the answer is better state. In practice, that's seemed to correlate somewhat positively with less state, but it's by no means axiomatically so. Any assertion to the contrary is ideology.

For existence proofs, plural, consider the Nordic states. They're more state than many, if not most, yet they're widely regarded as among the "best", even by objective measurements. Contrariwise, consider Somalia. That's about as least-state as you can get, and yet it's somehow not the very model of civilization...

jhuni• 13 years ago

> But of course people asking for more state will tell you that North Korea is not a good example of communism and that Argentina is not a good example of socialism.

The Workers' Party of Korea attends the International Meeting of Communist and Workers parties along with the ruling parties of China, Laos, Vietnam, Nepal, Cuba and many other international communist parties. The DPRK definitely is affiliated with communists but its ideology isn't communism it is a combination of Korean nationalism, Juche, and self-reliance.

Since you equate communism with statism you don't know what it really means. Communism is a broad category of societies that do not have classes of social relations to the means of production. Three of the most important types of communism are primitive communisms which existed before the development of means of production, collectivist communism which is based upon common ownership of the means of production, and individualist communism which is based upon personal ownership of the means of production such as 3D printers and distribution on a free market.

newbie122• 13 years ago

The world did! 36,000 Americans died trying. The UN, led by the US, fought a brutal war in Korea from 1950-53 that nearly liberated North Korea...until Mao's Chinese army crossed into North Korea in overwhelming numbers in a surprise attack that resulted in the current stalemate. It was a global effort, over 1,000 Brits also died and hundreds from many other random countries gave their lives trying to free North Korea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War

yareally• 13 years ago

It would seem the UN/US's previous attempt to invade is what keeps us from trying it again. That is, fear of a reprisal from China once again. From watching documentaries on the Korean War from the point of China crossing the Yalu River into North Korea onward, it seemed like not one GI would want to face the seemingly endless waves of Chinese Infantry again. We definitely underestimated the motives and preparedness of the Chinese at the time.

Any future action on North Korea without China's approval would definitely not be a good outcome for the UN or the nations involved.

mtts• 13 years ago

That's one way of putting it.

Another, more correct way, would be to state North Korea invaded South Korea and the US (and its allies) stepped in to stop them. They did this not to "free North Korea" but to prevent "communism" from overrunning one of its allies.

(They were also so succesful at it they pushed back North Korea almost all the way up to the Chinese border, which got China very nervous, leading to them getting involved as well).

rdl5• 13 years ago

I personally have no moral problem with overthrowing corrupt states -- it is individuals who have rights, not states. I don't believe humans born in North Korea are less deserving of freedom than humans born in Norway.

From a purely practical perspective, it would be difficult for an external power (other than perhaps China) to force regime change in North Korea. "If you strike a king, you must kill him" -- attempting to change the NK government through force and failing is worse than doing nothing at all, since it puts Seoul at risk, and would also make life worse for North Koreans, including innocent conscripts to their military.

About the only places I could see raising enough private force to successfully execute regime change against a corrupt government are in Africa: Equatorial Guinea, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, etc. But it's also immoral to force private citizens in a place like the US to support a state effort to regime change (and, it's proven to be politically and militarily inefficient or ineffective in Iraq and Afghanistan...)

Maybe anonymous currency will give us kickstarter for coups ("Assassination Politics"), someday soon. Combine that with drones and private special operations forces and things can change.

meric2• 13 years ago

It'll be difficult even for China.

"Give us X million tons of food before X date or we will launch an artillery strike against Seoul".

unimpressive2• 13 years ago

This is a cool version. If the simple English was changed a little and the illustrations swapped for watercolor, this bone chilling tale could be packaged as a sort of pseudo-childrens book.

scrumper• 13 years ago

Something like 'When the Wind Blows' by Raymond Briggs (most famous for writing 'The Snowman'.) It's extremely powerful. Your idea is excellent.

patdennis• 13 years ago

How did he know to escape to China? How did he know how to get there? I'm genuinely curious.

unimpressive2• 13 years ago

http://www.utsalumni.org/news/how-one-man-escaped-from-a-nor...

Another version that explains more.

SPOILER: Park told him about China. He didn't know how to get there.

deliminator3• 13 years ago

He answers that question from someone in the audience at about 55:25 in this Google Tech Talk. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms4NIB6xroc

B0Z• 13 years ago

Absolutely nothing I've read in the last decade exacerbates a feeling of complete helplessness as much as this article (and 60 minutes video mentioned) does.

notdrunkatall• 13 years ago

The fact that these exist today are a giant pockmark on the face of humanity.

Ygg2• 13 years ago

Usually tyrannies have a way of collapsing in on themselves. They weaken social fabric, breeding dissent and allowing other states/factor to jump in and conquer them.

cabalamat• 13 years ago

> Usually tyrannies have a way of collapsing in on themselves.

Really? Pharonic Egypt lasted for 3000 years.

reiichiroh• 13 years ago

Contrast this to the brit tour guide who went to North Korea over 100 times: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18g7z1/i_have_been_to_...

tterrace• 13 years ago

The book is available from amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670023329/ It's been on my list since I saw his interview on CNN.

qschneier• 13 years ago

Those who escaped from North Korea to China will be sent back by the Chinese government if found and possibly executed. They are literally the most miserable people on this planet. China could have become some west "North Korea" (China is at the west of North Korea) if American hadn't killed Chairman Mao's son during Korean War. For that I am really grateful to the US. Life is not easy but it could have been much worse.

runn1ng• 13 years ago

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/books/escape-from-camp-14-...

“In writing this book, I have sometimes struggled to trust him,” Mr. Harden writes understandably in “Escape From Camp 14.” Mr. Harden tries to fathom a cryptic, troubled and not entirely sympathetic young man whose circumstances lend themselves to exaggeration.

What’s more, the new book uses dialogue borrowed from Mr. Shin’s disingenuous 2007 version. “Escape From Camp 14” also includes simple line drawings (as Mr. Shin’s book had) that give the most traumatic parts of his story — torture, imprisonment, maiming, executions — the look of action comics. The most benign of these pictures carries this caption: “Children in the camps scavenged constantly for food, eating rats, insects and undigested kernels of corn they found in cow dung.”

(...)

Mr. Shin did not spend his imprisonment missing love, joy, civilization or comfort, because he had never experienced such things. As the spawn of a “reward marriage” — considered “the ultimate bonus for hard work and reliable snitching” — he had no real family ties.

The book says that he regarded his mother as a rival for food and was right to do so; she once beat him with a hoe for eating her lunch. As a young child, he saw schoolmates maimed or even killed for minor transgressions and he learned to obey the camp’s totalitarian rules.

(...)

But “Shin’s misery never skidded into complete hopelessness,” Mr. Harden writes in typically plain, forthright style. “He had no hope to lose, no past to mourn, no pride to defend. He did not find it degrading to lick soup off the floor. He was not ashamed to beg a guard for forgiveness. It didn’t trouble his conscience to betray a friend for food. These were merely survival skills, not motives for suicide.”

VexXtreme• 13 years ago

What is happening in North Korea can only be summed up as epic fail at human rights and people's right to free from an oppressive regime.

Maybe I don't quite understand how mass psychology works, but I know that the population of the country is 24 million people and that the current system probably doesn't benefit 99.9% of that population (the other 0.1% being the regime members, for whom the whole thing works out just fine). Sorry for pulling the numbers out of my ass, but I am trying to convey an idea here.

If that's the currently the case, then why wouldn't those 99.9% rise up and overthrow the regime that oppresses them? Even the soldiers are most likely normal people who have been conscripted at some point, why would they kill their own neighbors, friends and family members in the case of such an uprising? The people of North Korea have EVERY reason on this planet to overthrow their "government", what's preventing them from doing so?

Like I said, I may be totally misunderstanding how mass psychology works in dictatorships, but this kind of thing seems pretty logical to me, even a no-brainer. Is it the lack of critical thinking? Critical mass? Inability to build up that critical mass? If so, why? Do people there really rat on their neighbors and family members like we often hear?

If I were a more dismissive person I would just say "They're just getting what they're asking for", but I really want to understand how this works better, so someone please enlighten me.

skrebbel• 13 years ago

The people of North Korea have EVERY reason on this planet to overthrow their "government", what's preventing them from doing so?

Communication and organization, I guess?

jswinghammer• 13 years ago

North Korea is the nation most like Oceania in 1984 than any other on Earth. People are hungry and brainwashed from birth to love their leader and the state. That's basically why no one is trying to overthrow their government. US military intervention is sort of out of the question as well due to the immense lose of life involved (mostly in South Korea).

oskarth• 13 years ago

Reading up on the Milgram experiment [1] could provide some insight into how such a social dynamic can be maintained.

Another thing to keep in mind is that most people (most notably the soldiers) probably don't feel like they are being oppressed, or can even identify that they have a "shared enemy", i.e. the state. Revolutions are hard, and it's easy for us from more democratic countries to think of how they all should act united. As an example of that - imagine 300 years from now there are probably a lot of things that will be seen as obviously wrong with the world we are living in right now. Hindsight (or in the case of NK, a different perspective) is 20/20.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiments

crusso6• 13 years ago

The account brought a tear to my eye as I read it. It's very sad.

fail at human rights and people's right to free from an oppressive regime.

You can try to blame the regime; but really, this is the life that the generation in control during the Korean war chose. They fought with their lives to live under tyrannical communist rule.

It's such a shame that their progeny have to live with the consequences of those decisions in perpetuity.

talaketu• 13 years ago

> You can try to blame the regime; but really, this is the life that the generation in control during the Korean war chose

You are contradicting yourself.

nirvana• 13 years ago

North Korea is at the end state of socialism. Hayek wrote a famous book called "The road to serfdom", and this prison camp, and the way the rest of NK citizens live is the serfdom he's talking about.

Once you accept that you're owned by "society", and that everyone is "responsible for the greater good" this is inevitably what you end up with.

You ask if they lack critical thinking or a critical mass. Both of these are true, they've been indoctrinated to believe in this system, except maybe the ones like the writer of this story who were born in a camp and got less indoctrination.

The sad thing is, you can see this very same thing play out repeatedly in history. The way the germans let the nazis take over, even after it was clear they were up to no good. The way there was no revolution to overthrow the soviet state in the USSR.

You see these same mechanisms happening here in america today-- people claiming that "health care is a right" which is essentially saying they have the right to enslave everyone else for their own benefit.

And there's the error- they think "the rich" or "everyone else" is going to be forced to pay for their wellbeing, never realizing that they are calling for their own enslavement.

Pair the idea that you have a "right" to make others pay for healthcare (and other things) with the claim by these same people that you don't have a right to self defense (eg: own guns.) The latter is even in the constituttion.

You'd think this would cause a dissonance in their head, but the party ideology is so strong they never connect the two.

And when americans are being herded into camps, long disarmed, and forced to work "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs".... they will wish they still had guns.

Schools teach people to be compliant little sheep and have done so for over a century, there's a distinct connection between government control over schools and lack of critical thinking in the populace.

Unless things turn around soon, the US will end up in some sort of terrible state. Not likely like North Korea or Nazi germany or the USSR, but we already are suffering from the economic destruction of these kinds of policies (and like NK citizens told to blame the US for their poverty, we're told to blame wall street, germans were told to blame jews, russians were told to blame "hoarders", etc. etc. etc.)

philbarr2• 13 years ago

> people claiming that "health care is a right" which is essentially saying they have the right to enslave everyone else for their own benefit.

No, it's saying that as a society we're not going to let people suffer and die in the street when we have the technology and resources to help them. Probably you'll believe in society a bit more if you're ever in a position where you can't solve your problems yourself.

king_jester5• 13 years ago

> North Korea is at the end state of socialism.

North Korea isn't even close to socialist. Workers in NK do not have control over their output and the gov't is controlled by a core group of insiders.

> Once you accept that you're owned by "society", and that everyone is "responsible for the greater good" this is inevitably what you end up with.

Socialism doesn't say that you are owned by society at large and stating there is a responsibility for individuals to their society does not mean that you end up with a totalitarian police state.

> You see these same mechanisms happening here in america today-- people claiming that "health care is a right" which is essentially saying they have the right to enslave everyone else for their own benefit.

This makes no sense, no advocate for health care reform, even universal health care advocates, are saying that people should be enslaved.

> Pair the idea that you have a "right" to make others pay for healthcare (and other things) with the claim by these same people that you don't have a right to self defense (eg: own guns.) The latter is even in the constituttion.

Gun control advocates do not argue that you do not have a right to self defense or even gun ownership, but rather that there can be reasonable regulation on gun ownership.

> And when americans are being herded into camps, long disarmed, and forced to work "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs".... they will wish they still had guns.

I'm assuming the americans you are referring to are white americans, considering the history of herding people of other races into camps and removing their rights to self determination.

> Schools teach people to be compliant little sheep and have done so for over a century, there's a distinct connection between government control over schools and lack of critical thinking in the populace.

While I agree that public school systems in the US have issues with being politicized and propagandist, some people from the school system do learn critical thinking skills or have those skills enhanced from going to school, so you'll need to offer more argument/evidence to say there is a direct link.

> Unless things turn around soon, the US will end up in some sort of terrible state. Not likely like North Korea or Nazi germany or the USSR, but we already are suffering from the economic destruction of these kinds of policies (and like NK citizens told to blame the US for their poverty, we're told to blame wall street, germans were told to blame jews, russians were told to blame "hoarders", etc. etc. etc.)

The US is suffering economic destruction not from socialist policies, but rather capitalistic policies that seek to dismantle social safety nets and increase wealth disparity. That those policies are now affecting the (mostly) white middle class more compared to people of color (who have been affected by these policies for decades, if not centuries) doesn't mean that we've taken the same path to ruin as NK or the USSR.

kyllo• 13 years ago

Because people are self-interested to the extreme, and powerful, domineering sociopaths can easily manipulate them by setting up incentive structures that play to that self-interest. Individuals and small groups of North Koreans have certainly tried to subvert the leadership--but they simply ended up in the prison camps that the article describes, because everyone else would rather stab them in the back for a reward than assist them and face certain death or imprisonment. This isn't to say that the North Korean populace is stupid or immoral. They are merely powerless. The rules of the game are so perverse, that the players don't even matter. Put any humans in that society and they will behave the same, because there is no other choice--you either play by the rules or you die.

This incentive structure is so firmly entrenched that the death of Kim Jong-Il did precisely nothing. The hydra simply sprouted a new head. (And I'd argue that a Hitler assassination would likely have had the same outcome.)

There is not going to be a North Korean revolution to overthrow the Kim regime. Even if the younger Kim trips up politically and is backstabbed and supplanted by another ambitious psychopath from among the political elite, he will also find the current structure beneficial. But if that person cannot cement their power and the elite descends into infighting and schism, there could be a reform as the factions compete for power (this is what happened in the USSR and PRC).

The only other way the Kims will ever be deposed is through outside military action, and they know it--that's why they are armed to the teeth.

epidemian2• 13 years ago

Well, you put it in a much more succinct and clearer way than i did. Thanks for the clear explanation.

epidemian2• 13 years ago

Maybe you're underestimating the pressure society can put on individuals. And overestimating the "freedom of choice" individuals really have.

If you look at it from the outside it's easy to fall in the conclusion that very few people people benefit from the regime (let's say ~0.1%). But that's only looking from a very global perspective. From each individual's perspective, some people have more privileges than others. In that sense, the people on DPRK are really not that different from you and i. We also try to live better in the the way we know and we believe that we can live better. For example, maybe if i lived in a society where the people are used to raise against corrupt governors then i'd believe that that would be the way to live better, and i'd act accordingly; but i don't, so i look for other ways to live better... ways that might not be the best for society as a whole (e.g. try to raise enough money to pay for privileged private education; even though it would be better for the whole t have a good public education system). The circumstances around us and the people at DPRK can vary a lot, but that essence, i think, still holds. We can't choose to do what we don't believe in.

To put things into perspective, imagine what a non-imprisoned person at DPRK knows and what could she believe in. She knows that she is not as bad as the people in the concentration camps, that's for sure. She probably also knows that outside NK people live better, but how could she believe that she could escape, or change the society she lives in? She knows that the government would put her in those concentration camps if she tried to do anything suspicious. Not revealing attempts of escape/treason is considered enough to put you in those concentration camps, and she knows that. So she will act according to her knowledge and what she believes she can do. If she sees someone trying to escape, the best thing to do, for her life, is to tell the authorities about it. And let's go a bit higher in order of thought: she knows that the people around her will probably think the same way, so she knows she has little chances of escaping/changing something without getting caught.

That is, i think, in a very simplified way, the thought process behind those dysfunctional societies. And, sadly, it's, in essence, the same thought process that prevents other (maybe less dysfunctional) societies from doing something to really help.

lotsofcows• 13 years ago

"by the grace of God" Mind. Blown.

scoot2• 13 years ago

This version was posted a month ago, and discussed at length: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5091962 It contains some important details that are missing from the version above, although any version of the events is unverified.

followingell• 13 years ago

Apologies, I didn't realise that a more detailed version had been posted at an earlier date.

Thank you for sharing the in depth link.

scoot2• 13 years ago

No apology required; it's clearly a story of interest, or it wouldn't have made the front-page again. I posted the link to the other version of the story more for people to make a comparison of the two versions of events, and see the related commentary.

stretchwithme• 13 years ago

I wanna say "too sad; don't read". I can't read it right now. It was bad enough scanning through the torture and executions.

One day, these people will be free. And we may develop the technology to do it sooner than you think. I see the first wave of robots disabling their nukes. And the second wave disabling every fence and gun.

rangibaby• 13 years ago

Recently, I went on a bit of a North Korea-related reading binge. One thing I read really stuck with me:

The first time I took the DMZ tour from the South, and on some tours since, the US soldier leading the tour would tell everyone we weren't looking at a real building. Instead the North's building was "a facade designed to look large and impressive, but is in reality only a frame a few feet (one meter) thick."[1]

...followed by a photo of the author sitting inside the very real, functional building during his trip to the North Korean side of the border.

It woke me up to the reality that North Korea is so opaque, that there is really no way of knowing the truth of what you read or hear about the country; the official line from both "our" and "their" sides is not much other than a steady stream of propaganda.

That being said, I believe Shin's experience (I originally wrote story, but felt that it was disrespectful) is authentic, and the continuing existence of concentration camps in this 21st century is yet another black mark on Humanity's record.

[1] Highly recommended: http://1stopkorea.com/index.htm?nk-trip6-dmz.htm~mainframe

bane• 13 years ago

One thing that's fun in this day and age is that you can actually check out the buildings from space!

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Panmunjeom,+Kaesong,+North+Ko...

krschultz• 13 years ago

I recently read Escape From Camp 14, I would highly recommend it.

nightbrawler• 13 years ago

This guy was eventually adopted by a US family: http://www.northkoreanrefugees.com/2013-01-adopted.htm

altoz• 13 years ago

Horrific story with what happens when you cross slavery and the holocost. That said, don't be so sure we're much better. Here's North Korea's perspective of what we're like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NMr2VrhmFI

white_devil• 13 years ago

Humans are such fucking sickening scum. It saddens me to be part of the same human race as the monsters running North-Korea.

I Was a Political Prisoner at Birth in North Korea

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