Life Inside North Korea's Vast Labor Prisons

[Are_grits_groceries]

When North Korea sentenced American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee to 12 years of hard labor Monday, they were condemned to a brutal gulag where inmates are expected to perform heavy work like logging trees or quarrying stones.

The prisons are vast and gloomy work camps in which inmates are routinely beaten, starved, executed – or forced to watch family members executed, according to eyewitness accounts.

The deeply secretive dictatorship does not release any information about the size of its labor camps or the conditions inside, but reports from former inmates and human rights organizations reveal a stark portrait of inhumanity in which inmates are forced to work as slaves, routinely tortured, humiliated and starved.

The total number of political prisoners is unknown, but the U.S. State Department estimates there are some 150,000 to 200,000 political prisoners toiling under hellish conditions in dozens of camps.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/Story?id=7785836&page=1

It didn't sound good before. I hope somebody can do something. I'm not sure who is really in charge in NK now. Lord knows what could happen in a government spat.

[votingupstart]

1. no one will be able to do anything

No country is ready at this moment to do anything about NK's labor camps. the only way to get these people out of the prisons is to have a regime change - Who wants to pony up 1 million trained, equipped, supplied and ready men and women - short answer NO ONE.
I have personally gotten to talk to some escapees and defectors from NK, i remember one lady who came to talk to us put this small piece of wood on a stool and told the story of how her uncle had been a party member but had gotten in a dispute with an uncle of kim jung il, the uncles family was sent to a labor camp and "confessed" to being in a plot to subvert the government of NK and said her family was in on it. at the time she was taken away she was 13, when she arrived at the camp she was raped, beaten repeatedly and during one of the rapes had her jaw broken. there were no Dr's or medicine and eventually she had to pull the broken piece of bone out herself. her entire family was eventually killed off over the 15 years she was kept in prison, and during that 15 years guess how she ate. she broke a small piece of wood off and would put it in her jaw where the bone was supposed to be so she could chew what little food she was given.

the regime is one of the worst things on the planet - all humanitarian aid goes to the military first (there is rarely anything left)all resources are dedicated to the military, the people's normal diet usually has less calories in one week than a big mac meal. Unfortunately there will be no loosening of the reins of power while the military and government is still breathing.