I know we mentioned this shortly in class, but the prison system in North Korea continues to gain attention from NGO's around the world, most notably in this article, which mentions Christian Solidarity and other Christian human rights groups. These organizations have done research on prisoners' treatment in North Korean prisons, and their findings include startling accounts of forced abortions and summary executions. Although the article doesn't get into as much detail as I'd like regarding the prison issue, the end quote was what drew in my attention. Christian Solidarity released a statement that talked about the fact that although the United States and the world focus on North Korea as a nuclear threat, the real threat of North Korea is seen and felt by its people, who suffer the realities of the regime. The "dire human rights situation" in North Korea needs to be viewed as equally important to their acquisition and development of nuclear technology.
A New York Times article from 2002 published on freesrbia.net gives yet another disturbing account of infanticide in North Korean prisons. The article spoke about a human rights organization, Human Rights Without Borders, and their work on investigating infanticide and other human rights abuses in North Korean prisons by conducting interviews on survivors of the horrors of the prison camp system. I was interested in finding out more about the work done by the organizations I have mentioned in this piece. I was impressed by the homepage for Christian Solidarity Worldwide , because it is the first human rights organization website I have seen that actually does more than write the occasional report and hide it somewhere in their website 5,000 clicks and 4 search pages away. Christian Solidarity actually posted informationa about the North Korean situation and a link to their recently published report right on their homepage. The report has some really interesting information and factoids that would probably be a useful supplement for some of your papers...I know I'll consider including it in mine!
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I read the same article and also thought it interesting. One claim I found particularly striking was "... 3 million people died in the famine of the 1990s." If I recall a recent lecture on about this accurately, the aforementioned estimate from the story is on the high end of the spectrum.
this would have been surprising and disturbing to a point of being uncomfortable but I actually read the Human Rights White Papers prior to clicking this one... and really, no surprise - though I do have some skepticism about reports coming from a religious (especially Korean Christian groups) group however I guess reality indeed is that bad for North Koreans...
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