IN LABOUR camps across its remote
northern reaches, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea detains an
estimated 150,000-200,000 political prisoners. The regime claims to hold
precisely none. Or rather, in the formulation of the late Kim Jong Il,
punishing the enemies of the state protects the North Korean people’s human
rights.
The gulag’s captives are not told of
their crimes, though torture usually produces a “confession”—which might admit
to defacing an image of the “Great Leader” or listening to a foreign broadcast.
There is no defence, trial, judge or sentence, though most inmates remain in
the camps for life, unless they escape. They are victims of forced
disappearances, in that neighbours, colleagues and distant family members know
nothing about the fate of those who vanish. Inmates are held incommunicado,
without visits, food parcels, letters or radio. Chronically malnourished, they
work in mines, quarries and logging camps, with one rest-day a month.
Infractions of camp rules, such as stealing food meant for livestock, damaging
equipment or having unauthorised sexual liaisons are punished with beatings and
torture. Guards rape women prisoners, leading to forced abortions for the
pregnant, or infanticide. Inmates are under pressure to snitch. Executions are
routine—and fellow prisoners must often watch.
Consider the case of Shin Dong-hyuk,
the subject of a new book (“Escape from Camp 14”). He was born of “model”
prisoner parents in Camp 14, Kaechon in 1982 and spent his first 22 years
inside. As punishment for dropping a sewing machine, his finger was cut off. He
was also suspended over a fire, and a hook was thrust through his belly, to
make him “confess” to joining an escape supposedly being planned by his mother
and brother. He was then made to witness their executions.
Whole families are incarcerated at a
time. Kim Il Sung, the state’s founding ruler, declared that: “The seed of
factionalists or enemies of class, whoever they are, must be eliminated through
three generations.” Just as guilt was heritable under the feudal Chosun
dynasty, so the Kim regime divides the population into hereditary classes of
the “loyal”, “wavering” and “hostile”. The gulag is filled with the third kind,
people perceived to be Christian, or from the wrong background, or thought to
have insulted the honour of the Kim dynasty.
The North Korean gulag has persisted
for twice as long as its Soviet counterpart did. Yet the world looks away. The
United States expends its diplomatic energies in negotiations over the regime’s
tinpot nuclear and missile programme, with little to show for the effort. South
Korean brethren have other things on their minds—the political left wants
better relations with the North, while others just wish it was not there. As
for China, an ally, it forcibly repatriates North Koreans who have fled across
the border, even though they face execution.
Rarely does the gulag intrude.
Perhaps the scale of the atrocity numbs moral outrage. Certainly it is easier
to lampoon the regime as ruled by extraterrestrial freaks than to grapple with
the suffering it inflicts (The Economist is guilty). Yet murder,
enslavement, forcible population transfers, torture, rape: North Korea commits
nearly every atrocity that counts as a crime against humanity.
Break with the inheritance
A world that places any value on the
idea of universal human rights should no longer overlook North Korea’s
enormities. China should end its shameful forced repatriation of North Koreans
and allow the Red Cross and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees into border
areas. It should also cease sheltering the Kims at the UN, which should launch
a commission of inquiry. America and South Korea, especially, must not hide
behind nuclear diplomacy, but press harder on human rights. On April 15th the
state’s young new ruler, Kim Jong Un, marked the centenary of his grandfather’s
birth. This third-generation seed of the Kim dictatorship must now be
confronted with his own murderous inheritance—a blot on humanity. The Economist
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