(Image from Fox News Article North Korea’s Kim Jong Un uses terrifyingly creative methods to kill enemies )
In the recent coming of events, the name North Korea has been buzzing in phones, tweets, and even on TV. However, all social media talks relate to politics or nuclear weapons. Where are the human rights issues? Here are some facts that everyone should know about the citizens of North Korea.
Since taking power in December 2011, leader Kim Jong-un has executed 70 high-ranking officials. The abrupt changes in the government of North Korea have caused for the most part disorder in the country due to the extreme policies that government imposes; citizens are forced into political camps, obligated to exile themselves from the world and deprived of being associated with South Korea, making it the responsibility of other neighboring countries to help the refugees adapt into the life in South Korea and protect them from being deported.
Rebelling from the government can be as simple as watching a South Korean show, however, committing a political crime—such as exposing the government’s secret to the outside world— is far more worst than death. People who live in the camps face often deadly conditions that involve near-starvation, no medical care, lack of proper housing and clothes, regular mistreatment including sexual assault and torture by guards, and executions. Around 150,000 to 200,000 people from North Korea live in prison camps for rebelling against the government.
For instance, there are camps such as Camp 22 that are as big as the city of Los Angeles. In the camps, nearly 40% of the prisoners die from malnutrition while doing agricultural work, logging, mining and other labor under extremely harsh conditions. Prisoners are usually forced into labor 12 or more hours a day, seven days a week and those who refuse to end up dead or disabled.
Inside the camps there are two “legal” ways to kill prisoners, the first one is to torture them to the point of death and the second one is to starve them. There is no “legal” way to kill someone who is not even guilty, this is just a way that the North Korean government justifies mass murder. As a matter of fact, the three generations of the family related to the prisoner are tortured without even knowing what they did to deserve it, therefore taking away the right of security. The government of North Korea has denied the existence of human rights abuses in the country, however, the fact that foreign countries are acting upon this issue shows the initiative to change the government in North Korea.
While the capital of North Korea still refuses to admit that camps operate in the country, in October 2014 a North Korean UN diplomat publicly said for the first time that “reform through labor” communities do exist in North Korea. The diplomat stated that this was where people improved through their mentality and looked at their crimes. Even ahead of a United Nations panel stated that the atrocities in North Korea against their people in the prisoner camps were “strikingly similar” to the ones the Nazis committed against the Jews.
Through the influence of foreign organizations, the political prisoner camps can expose in the world, therefore, bringing awareness of the urgency to act upon the human rights that are being deprived.
Sources:
http://freekorea.us/camps/22-2/
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/north-korea
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/life-north-korean-labor-camp-no-thinking-just-fear-n32076
International Relations: A Student Perspective 