Testimony of Ms. Soon Ok Lee (2002)

http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=4f1e0899533f7680e78d03281fe18baf&wit_id=4f1e0899533f7680e78d03281fe18baf-2-1

by mckee1 • 13 years ago

79 81 13 years ago

judiciary.senate.gov

greenburger• 13 years ago

For a detailed analysis of where North Korean prison camps are thought to be located see http://freekorea.us/camps/

Some of the camps are massive, for example Camp 22 is estimated to be 225 sq. km and holding 50,000 people [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea#Int...

guyht• 13 years ago

For anyone who is interested on reading more about North Korean prison camps, Blaine Harden's 'Escape from camp 14' is an incredible read.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11797365-escape-from-cam...

hdevalence• 13 years ago

Indeed, although it's not an easy read, and it takes time for the horror of spending one's entire life, birth to death, in a concentration camp, starving and being tortured to really sink in.

eyeareque• 13 years ago

It is amazing account from someone who was born inside of a NK prison camp, escaping the camp, then NK, and finally making his way to California. I totally recommend it. I couldn't stop reading it once I picked it up.

BrandonMarc4• 13 years ago

A more depressing read is "The Story of Oh" [0] - a South Korean who chose to move with his family to North Korea ... then, upon realizing how the facts on the ground differed from the fiction he'd been taught about the place, managed to escape. Without his family, mind you. His wife demanded he escape, the better to prevent others from following in his footsteps.

----------------------------------------

[0] http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/07/16/the-story-of-...

BorisMelnik• 13 years ago

heartbroken, I wish we could do something over there.

leokun2• 13 years ago

Seoul is within artillery range of North Korea. It would destroy that city and the global economy to "do something over there".

wodenokoto• 13 years ago

"Something" doesn't have to be a full on attack.

downer91• 13 years ago

I am uncertain that it would "destroy the global economy." That sounds like hyperbole. Convince me.

It would be any unhappy event, assuredly, but if "the global economy" wasn't destroyed by the Iraq debacle, I'm pretty sure that a similar conflict in Korea would carry comparable consequences.

All the same, I do not advocate any sort of war. Not out of squeamishness, but mostly because even the victors are handed empty promises by war. War isn't as productive as people would like to romanticize.

deliminator2• 13 years ago

I have a fundraising page for LiNK (non-profit organization rescuing north koreans) and am matching donations: http://fundraise.libertyinnorthkorea.org/fundraise?fcid=2704...

middleclick• 13 years ago

Does North Korea have a future? Is it possible that someday that the current rule is overthrown and the rights and lives of people are restored? Can anyone with knowledge about this comment?

TrainedMonkey• 13 years ago

As long as China wants a buffer with South Korea, it will keep North Korea going. Without China's support it would have collapsed long ago.

owenmarshall2• 13 years ago

That's a bit of a simplification, I think. The status quo benefits South Korea as well - reunification means absorbing crumbling infrastructure, 25 million undereducated and hungry people, and trying to integrate that with a technologically advanced economy. It'd make the costs of the German reunification look like nothing.

It benefits everyone who isn't a citizen of North Korea for the current regime to stay in place.

woodchuck64• 13 years ago

Would it be a bad thing for China to covertly take over North Korea? One less headache for them, one less for us. I say we look the other way.

bcoates• 13 years ago

China doesn't exactly have a successful track record of bringing neighboring Communist states under control.

BrandonMarc4• 13 years ago

Could it be China already has covertly taken over NK, in as much as it feels it's worthy of doing? Maybe they have a big lever to control the place, or maybe they have a small one (that's still large enough to influence as needed).

rsynnott2• 13 years ago

I'm not sure that Kim Jong-un would take very kindly to it. Oh, China could win it, if they really wanted to, but it's not like NK would just capitulate; it would be a very nasty, bloody land war.

huhtenberg• 13 years ago

Recommended follow-up reading -

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

I know most of you heard of it, but, seriously, take a moment and look a bit closer.

Finster• 13 years ago

Really. You're trying to compare Gitmo to North Korean prison camps?

Certainly, Gitmo is no picnic, but I have to question if you actually RTFA.

271828182842• 13 years ago

The trend is what is disturbing. As time moved over the last 10 years they got closer rather than farther apart.

clamour• 13 years ago

You're right, the North Korean prison camps by all accounts seem worse, but the Wikipedia article actually contained a lot of information that was new to me. For example...

In 2004 Spc. Sean Baker, a soldier posing as a prisoner during training exercises at the camp, was beaten so severely that he suffered a brain injury and seizures.

How many deaths are swept under the rug at places like Gitmo or at CIA black sites? If they're beating people to the point of brain injury, I'm guessing it happens.

refurb• 13 years ago

I see one big difference...

Starting 16 November 2009, as enabled by the Supreme Court ruling in Boumediene, dozens of detainees began to use habeas corpus petitions in U.S. courts to seek freedom from the Guantánamo Bay prison. In some cases, they testified by video from the U.S. naval base in Cuba. Fifteen Federal judges have found the government's evidence against 30 detainees wanting and ordered their release. That number was expected to rise as the judges were scheduled to hear challenges from dozens more prisoners.

How many North Korean prisoners get any kind of hearing?

NoPiece2• 13 years ago

There are two many big differences to enumerate, but a couple more important ones:

Guantanamo: "As of August 2013, 164 detainees remain at Guantanamo"

North Korea: "When Shin worked in the garment factory and accidentally dropped a sewing machine, the foreman hacked off his right middle finger just above the first knuckle as punishment"

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

strlen2• 13 years ago

I am all for closing Guantanamo (as well as stopping the horrible brutality in US prisons -- which is a much more pressing, but more "hidden" problem) but it's counter productive to compare US to a totalitarian regime. You are still free to leave United States, to hum a tune from a counter-regime movie, etc... without being thrown in Guantanamo. Many prisoners are also released from Guantanamo. It is legal to openly run a presidential campaign -- and win -- promising to close Guantanamo (but alas, it is not illegal to fail to follow through on this core promise).

In fact, the danger of United States becoming totalitarian is low: creeping authoritarianism, police state tactics, "law and order" used to justify horrid prison conditions and insane sentences, "reasons of state" blackholes (like aforementioned Gitmo), are real dangers. Plurality of the world is governed by either hybrid or authoritarian regimes (which most usually serve to satisfy their rulers' thirst of money and power); North Korea, a few former USSR republics, and perhaps areas of failed states controlled by totalitarian factions are the only unambiguously totalitarian states.

However, by hinting at moral equivalence between United States and North Korea, you end up serving those advocating this creeping authoritarianism: they can now present outlandish arguments that since those opposed to Guantanamo "apologize" for North Korea (note, I am not accusing you of this -- you are not saying North Korea is justified in what they do, but this could easily be spun as such!), advancement of their goals is advancement of North Korea's, Taliban's, etc... goals.

I'm saying this as somebody who feels very strong about torture being an unconditional and absolute moral wrong, sees Guantanamo as representing a very evil and dangerous tendency, and also sees current prison conditions in US as something that -- in the future -- will be seen in the same light as the breaking wheel and the torture rack. Comments like this do not help; just don't do this -- instead, speak up for human rights of all individuals (whether or not their testimony looks like it "serves US agenda" or "helps the terrorists").

[Edit: the big reason I feel strongly about this is that I came from former USSR myself. I remember many Americans, especially those who were unhappy with US behaviour during Cold War would always speak about how US was slighting "my guys", "my country", and being sorry for break up of USSR. They were surprised why I would speak so negatively about "my country" -- as if government and country were equivalent, Cold War was a morally neutral football match, and as if my country wasn't one my family willing adopted and chose to make their home, that is the US.]

cup• 13 years ago

In fact, the danger of United States becoming totalitarian is low.

You live in a country where the NSA knows every single thing about you, where the government has killed US citizens without a trial and where your government has tortured the children of prisoners.

Anyone who has ever lived in a totalitarian state before knows that the US joined the club a long time ago. We're just waiting for you Americans to realise it.

nether• 13 years ago

Big difference between US and DPRK is that we have heard of it, and are free to criticize it without repercussions.

strathmeyer• 13 years ago

Some of aren't satisfied with just the illusion of freedom. We care about not just the American citizens that Obama is killing with drones, but human life all over the world.

fennecfoxen2• 13 years ago

Also, unlike North Korean camps, they generally don't send young children to Guantanamo Bay because of their parents' political crimes (real or invented).

bananacurve• 13 years ago

Your whataboutism ends up defending NK, but at least you get a lot of up votes.

scotty792• 13 years ago

Guantanamo is actually sign of USA becoming more civilised. Less than 50 years ago US military armed formations partied harder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program More akin to their North Korean counterparts. Then again NK is developmentally delayed by about 50 years... Maybe around 2063 they will have their Guantanamo an will be abhorred by it.

On more serious note... When could we deploy few hundred thousands microdrones there and assasinate everyone who gives the orders?

adamio• 13 years ago

What about never again? Are Jewish orgs doing anything to help this situation, given the human rights violations similar to the Holocaust?

edit: Note, I'm genuinely asking here, not implying anything should/isnot being done

maaku• 13 years ago

Are Jewish orgs doing anything to help this situation, given the human rights violations similar to the Holocaust?

Probably the same things they were doing to help out in Rowanda and Bosinia.

w1ntermute3• 13 years ago

Are Jewish orgs doing anything to help this situation

They're too busy recreating the Holocaust with the Palestinians as the victim. Every couple of months we hear about the Israelis expanding their lebensraum by building some new settlements on Palestinian land.

swordswinger122• 13 years ago

Israel != the international Jewry. Assuming as such is thinly-veiled anti-Semitism.

deliminator2• 13 years ago

Also interesting is this interview with prison guards who have defected. Camp 14 - Total Control Zone [Abridged]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb1iwo4txE4

DanBC• 13 years ago

That's from 2002. See also http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/10...

from 2013.

EDIT: Corrected year typo, thank you kohanz!

kohanz• 13 years ago

June 21, 2002

I'm guessing "2012" was a typo for "2002".

firstOrder• 13 years ago

Hopefully someday we'll see hearings on Americans massacring South Korean civilians some day ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_Massacre ). We even have written orders and memoes showing it was U.S. policy to fire upon civilians.

Or maybe supporting the dictatorship in South Korea, and it's massacre against members of the democratization movement in 1980 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Democratization_Movemen... ). General Wickham sent troops from the DMZ so that the South Korean army could commit the massacre actually.

We could go on about Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib torture, the NSA spying on all e-mails, phone calls and web site browsing and saving it forever etc.

But no, let's hear more about a US Senate hearing on human rights in North Korea - from 11 years ago...what a farce.

roel_v2• 13 years ago

It's quite offensive by itself that you're even suggesting the things you are listing are within 2 or 3 orders of magnitude within what is happening in North Korea.

DominikR3• 13 years ago

What exactly makes you believe that this testimony is accurate, and not just manufactured by the US government.

It wouldn't be the first time they did that.

droopyEyelids• 13 years ago

In my opinion, regular people will always be struggling agains the power structures that control their lives.

Just because we're subject to or even party to a government that commits atrocities doesn't mean we should give up trying to fight against other injustices.

I don't feel there is any inconsistency in using our government to expose or stop other government's problems even when we have our own, so long as we're working against our own country's injustices, too.

I do recognize that people could read this and think it's only 'others' that are bad, but I believe there will always be a percent of people that misinterpret or warp anything to suit their own ends, and that fact doesn't mean we should stop trying to make things better.

dba7dba3• 13 years ago

firstOrder, It was also a written policy of the communists to infiltrate rear of UN forces by mixing in with refugees. Maybe there were no communist soldiers in the particular group fired upon, but it's well known communists mixed in with fleeing refugees to get advantage on the battle field.

1980, what year was that? Yes, in the middle of the Cold War. Both sides on fingers to possibly launch hundreds of nukes. I'm sure the US held their nose as they 'supported' the newly emerging military dictator in SKorea. Simply, US had no choice.

And guess what the testimony from 11 years isn't the only related story. It's even more relevant as there are lots more, depressing stories coming out of NKorea.

http://www.npr.org/2012/03/29/149061951/escape-from-camp-14-...

zoba• 13 years ago

George Clooney has a satellite he uses to keep track of a warlord. Individuals have capabilities which were previously accessible only to nations. I wonder if it is possible that an individual might intervene in North Korea, instead of a nation... but the parallels of a individual intervening in another nation's affairs sound a lot like terrorism. Some more thinking to do here...

astrodust• 13 years ago

That's actually an interesting project. Here's a link for the lazy: http://www.satsentinel.org/our-story/george-clooney

He doesn't have his own satellite, obviously, but buys satellite imagery to document war crimes and to warn against incursions.

rz2k• 13 years ago

The Logan Act[1] might be a place to start, though it's more often used as a theatrical threat, in the same way that people accuse each other of treason whenever they disagree.

[1]http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/953

dba7dba3• 13 years ago

To those trying to somehow link Guantanamo to labor camps in NK, please, stop. You are only making yourself look foolish. Such comparisons don't help your cause at all.

500 or so prisoners in Guantanamo versus 200,000+ in NKorean camps. The NKorean prisoners don't get medical help, freedom to worship religion of choice.

The 500 are NOT there along with their wife, kids, grandkids, on both sides of the family. In NK, once a person is taken to one of the camps, it usually means 3 generations of his family is taken there. Think about it, 10+ or more people (including little kids) are dragged away to labor camps because of actions (or perceived actions) of 1 person in the family.

Please, stop comparing Guantanamo with NKorean labor camps.

scotty792• 13 years ago

Yes. It fits better to Phoenix Program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program than Guantanamo.

olefoo• 13 years ago

What about comparing Corrections Corporation of America and it's privatized prisons to DPRK labor camps?

Perhaps a bit of a stretch given how clean and sanitary private prisons are known to be. But since American prisoners are forced to labor at wages that are a fraction of the market rate for the same work and are charged for their incarceration at a rate higher than it is possible for them to earn in prison... perhaps it is not so different.

richardlblair2• 13 years ago

The lack of formatting on that page is driving me insane. It's so hard to visually parse.

richardlblair2• 13 years ago

God damn, this is so hard to read. Not because of the formatting, but because the stories told are so terrible.

Testimony of Ms. Soon Ok Lee (2002)

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