North Korea: As Bad as the Nazis

From the UN:

The police and security forces of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea systematically employ violence and punishments that amount to gross human rights violations in order to create a climate of fear that pre-empts any challenge to the current system of government and to the ideology underpinning it. The institutions and officials involved are not held accountable. Impunity reigns.

The use of torture is an established feature of the interrogation process in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, especially in cases involving political crimes.

Persons who are found to have engaged in major political crimes are "disappeared", without trial or judicial order, to political prison camps (kwanliso).

In the political prison camps of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the inmate population has been gradually eliminated through deliberate starvation, forced labour, executions, torture, rape and the denial of reproductive rights enforced through punishment, forced abortion and infanticide. The commission estimates that hundreds of thousands of political prisoners have perished in these camps over the past five decades.

None of this is news to anyone who follows what goes on there. But it's tragic, and I suspect, very little will be done. 

North Korea News

So Kim Jong Un executed his uncle. Not a big surprise to anyone who follows/cares what's going on in the country that is holocausting its own citizens.

One big question is whether Kim acted out of strength, consolidating the power he has amassed over the past two years, or out of fear that his uncle was building a rival force inside the regime.

Kim already removed the country's top general last year, Cha noted. By taking down Jang, he's axed a powerful figure from the country's dominant Workers' Party.

"It makes you wonder: If he's consolidating his power, what is he building it around?" Cha said. "He's basically attacking the two most important institutions in North Korea, which is the party and the military."

He is a mad man, and you can never taken anything he utters at face value. He's young, entitled, and entrenched in a government that is Soviet-esque in its treatment of dissidents or mere mild threats to the ruling party. Any state that will deliberately starve its own citizens to to increase its own limited largesse cannot be trusted. And this move is meant not to just consolidate power but to inspire greater fear amongst anyone in either the party or the military who might think of a challenge.

The world is watching.

Escape from North Korea

I'm planning to go to a screening and discussion for this new documentary on North Korea after work. With all of the news lately, with Merrill Newman's detainment, new satellite images of North Korea's prison system, and Kim Jong Un's cutting off of his uncle, I think it will be a very timely discussion.

North Korea: Evil Hostage Takers

This story, about an 85 year old Korean War veteran taken hostage by North Korea, is the prime example of why this government is evil and the United States should never negotiate with that "country."

And it's mistaken identity, probably.

Merrill E. Newman was traveling with a group on a tour bus through North Korea, and was taken away after boarding an Oct. 26 flight out of the country, his family says.

"They had checked out of the hotel, gone to the airport, boarded the plane," his son Jeffrey Newman told ABC News. "We understand [they] were five minutes from taking off when the Korean official came aboard, asked to see his passport then asked the stewardess to ask him to leave the plane and he left the plane with apparently no incident or drama and he's been there ever since."

But the North Koreans may have thought they were detaining a highly decorated U.S. Korean War veteran who happens to have the same -- or almost the same -- name as him.

Merrill H. Newman, 84, was awarded the Silver Star for holding off a heavy Chinese attack during the war. Both men fought in the Korean War, have almost identical names and are around the same age.

"The thought did occur to me ... that maybe there's a case of mistaken identity," Merrill H. Newman, who lives in Beaverton, Ore., told Reuters.

Life in a Prison Camp

Frightening portrait of North Korea on 60 Minutes last night. He grew up in a North Korean prison camp and lived to escape and tell about it.

North Korean Holocaust

I've read a few books this year on North Korea, including Melanie Kirkpatrick's Escape from North Korea and Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader. Both dramatically bear testimony to the dire human rights situation in North Korea. Starvation, torture, forced sexual slavery, false imprisonment, etc.

Adrian Hong recently spoke at an event, and his remarks offered more urgency to addressing the desperation there.

Hong discusses the immense dangers that North Korean refugees face after crossing the border into China, where they can face imprisonment, sex trafficking and often a return home to much worse. “To go through that much risk, whatever you’re escaping from back home has to be pretty bad,” he says. “Extraordinarily bad. Far worse than whatever you’re facing to get out of that place. So North Korea is that thing. It is that bad.”

I'm going to keep on the look out for programs in DC about this, and I wish I had seen Kirkpatrick at a book event.  Yes, the media is laughing at China's party paper buying the Onion's portrayal of Kim Jong Un as "Sexiest Man Alive."  But there's nothing humorous about the situation over there. It truly may be a Holocaust with so many people dying, and so few caring.  That's the parallel to the most infamous 20th century Holocaust.