Imagine having to work a 100 hour work week as a slave, being so desperate for food that you eat snakes, rats, and human corpses to stay alive, and being forced to witness public executions of your closest family members. This is the reality for the 176,000 political and associative prisoners living in North Korean prisons with no rights, no trial, and no reason. The world will have to regard the human rights abuses in North Korean as an important issue if we wish to stop the torture, murder, and starvation that it enforces on its people.
Recognition for our need for basic human rights is required to understand how North Korea deprives its people from the choices we as citizens of the USA take for granted. The United Nation’s office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights says that “human rights are rights inherent to all human beings”. These rights include the rights to life, liberty, property, movement, expression, and security. The United States has different rights engrained in its Bill of Rights, like the right to a speedy trial, freedom from harboring soldiers, and the freedom to a militia.
North Korea has had its prisons for more than 5 decades, and its background goes back to the Korean War, when they stored their Prisoners of War and the members of the opposition in the camps. They have continued to today, despite the fact that the North Korean government denies their existence. Those on the outside mainly get their information from prison escapees and satellite imagery, and by these testimonies we can only make educated guesses on the population, location, and size of the camps.
Shin Dong-hyuk has helped the rest of the world understand what prison life was like, for his story is haunting. He was born in a prison camp...
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Indeed, one of the biggest pitfalls that we as people have subsided from is publicizing the rejection of rights from the North Korean peoples, and we have forgotten that we can get out the word to top diplomatic officials on how and when we wish to combat the violations. Spreading the word is one of the most helpful things you can currently do to, as you, as an American, have the right to democracy and the people’s choice in matters, a right that North Korean citizens have been blatantly denied. Get educated on these matters through books, websites and documentaries, then go spread the information you have been given. As support for the prisoners grows, so will support for the human race as a whole, it will be only then that the issue of North Korea’s concentration camps will be brought to the diplomatic table for and by the people wherever they shall reside.
Blaine Harden, former national correspondent and writer for the New York Times, delivers an agonizing and heartbreaking story of one man’s extremely conflicted life in a labor camp and an endeavor of escaping this place he grew up in. This man’s name is Shin Dong-hyuk. Together, Blaine Harden and Shin Dong-hyuk tell us the story of this man’s imprisonment and escape into South Korea and eventually, the United States, from North Korea. This biography that takes place from 1982-2011, reports to its readers on what is really going on in “one of the world’s darkest nations” (back cover of the book), that is run under a communist state and totalitarian dictatorship that was lead by Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and currently lead by Kim-Jong un. In Escape from Camp 14, Shin shows us the adaptation of his life and how one man can truly evolve from an animal, into a real human being.
"North Korea: Human rights concerns." Amnesty Australia. Amnesty International, 28 Nov. 2006. Web. 2 May 2014. .
Despite there may be some commonalities between Korean Law and American Law in perspective of protecting individual’s rights, there still exist lots of differences, and one of the main cause for the disparity is based on their fundamental gaps in history. Looking into America’s history, freedom was not free. Obviously, the United States was built in objection of the Great Britain’s despotic monarchy, holding freedom, equality, and pursuit of happiness, which became the cornerstone of civil rights. As time passed by, America also went through the Civil War, and all those Civil Rights Movements by African Americans, paving the way for cultural and legal changes toward protecting more individual rights. On the other hand, Korea had a comparatively
(migrationinformation, 2008). Citizens of North Korea do not attain the freedom to leave and experience other states. North Korea’s lack of freedom not only affects their citizens but also individuals from other countries in a negative sense, cutting off social bonds as a result. Not having mobility rights is an infringement on their negative liberty on account of the option of immigrating or emigrating not being available to them due to the laws placed by the government. In actuality, citizens “caught emigrating or helping others cross the border illegally are detained” (migrationinformation, 2008).
No one would ever think that a small country could create a controversy known the world over, but North Korea has achieved this goal. The North Korean genocide has claimed 2000 people a day and these killings are from starvation and beating. Many people think communism is better than democracy, but it has its faults. For example, North Korea is Communist and whatever the leader’s beliefs, the Communist citizen has to believe. What is happening and what happened is genocide.
In North Korea life was incredibly different, and is still different, from life in America. The residents of North Korea live in extreme poverty, while Kim Jong Il and any member of Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea live as if they were kings; their meals filled with delicacies the citizens of North Korea can only dream of. Although it’s found strange to most in "normal" society, Kim Jong Il is revered as a God, because it is he who gave them all the “luxuries” in North Korea. When in actuality, he is the sole culprit of North Korea’s extreme poverty.
In total, there have been approximately twenty-five prisons in North Korea. However as of 2011 the number of prison camps are officially five. They are: number 22 Hweryong, number 14 Kaechon, number 18 Pukchang, number 16 Hwasong, and number 25 Chongjin. No. 14 Kaechon has between 14,000~ 50,000 prisoners, no. 16 Hwasong has ~ 15,000 prisoners, no. 18 Pukchang has ~15,000-68,000 prisoners, no. 22 Hweryong has10,000~50,000 prisoners, and no. 25 Chongjin has 5,000~5,160 prisoners. These numbers vary due to past testimonies but could also less or more today (Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, "Prisoners in North Korea Today."). According to Soon Ok Lee, a survivor from the Kaechon prison camp, testified in court “there are 200,000 political prisoners in North Korea ("A Survivor: Soon Ok Lee," Msnbc.com.) However the number of prisoners according to the State Security Agency ranges around 130,500 people; numbers are hard to predict due t...
Some people, like us, live in a democratic society, where we are allowed to express our opinion and to fight against our rights and freedoms. But other societies such as North Korea are a lot different, you do not have a say, the government breaks all basic human rights and they murder, rape, torture, imprisonments, and so on. People in these societies are sad, poor, and do not realize the full potential of life. North Korea is a great example of a dystopian society that has significant social problems, much like other dystopias in movies and books. The book Fahrenheit 451 and the movie The Matrix have lots of similarities when it comes to dystopian features and the control of the government . A similar dystopian feature is that the government
Numerous international organizations that advocate for basic human rights have accused the North Korea government for some of the most horrible human rights violations on record for any developed nation in recent years. The reports by Amnesty International state that due to the very strict limitations on the freedom to associate, express, and move, that North Koreans are subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, and other mistreatme...
Imagine all of one's life being taught, being controlled into believing that the way they live is perfect, but in reality, it is just the opposite. Shannon L. Alder once summed this statement up by stating, ”your perspective on life comes from the cage you were held captive in.” Shannon L. Alder is a present day Goodreads author, which she specializes in inspirational pieces and lessons. This quote directly explains the situation in North Korea, and how helpless the North Korean population is to this. To add to this, there are two sources that back up her statement fully, one of which is The Girl With Seven names, written by Hyeonseo Lee. The author wrote this about her life growing up in North Korea and mainly her escape into freedom. Another
North Korea has absolute control over everything it's people see on a daily basis. If it’s the people somehow step out of line they punish them much like an abuser would by causing them physical, financial or even emotional damage. It is very similar to abuse victims in the sense that they don't know that they are being abused. Shin doesn't realize that there's more to life until he meets Park, at his prison camp job, and eventually escapes with him. One of the only ways that an abuse victim can get out of the situation safely is by telling people around them including the police, family members, friends and coworkers that they are being abused before they leave their abuser. This is also how Shin escaped the clutches of North Korea he told people in China that he was from North Korea and a refugee it eventually that led to him getting diplomatic immunity in China that would help him get to South Korea. This matters because his main motivation for writing this book was so that people would understand and try to stop North Korea and what it was doing to its own people and help get other people out of the situation that they were
Did you know that at this moment, numerous innocent prisoners are being forced to work for no pay and are held captive as punishment for crimes of their relatives? This is because of North Korea’s labor camps, also known as political prisons. In these camps, prisoners are denied all of their basic rights and are given the minimal amount of food, clothing, and other necessities. Shin Dong-hyuk was born in one of these camps, and he tells his story in his biography, Escape From Camp 14. The book talks about the horrible living conditions inside the camp. It also talks about the harsh punishments, distrust, and snitching. Of North Korea’s three social classes, the prisoners in these camps are at the bottom. Accordingly, these prisoners are treated
Relations between the United States and North Korea have been unstable since the second world war and with each passing decade the relations have become more tense. The U.S has never have formal international relations with North Korea , however the conflict has caused much controversy in U.S foreign policy. North Korea has been the receiver of millions of dollars in U.S aid and the target of many U.S sanctions. This is due to the fact that North Korea is one of the most oppressive regimes on the planet, that uses unjust techniques such as murder, torture, and starvation to get their citizens to be obedient. They restrict contact from their citizens to the outside world, through censorship of technology and rarely allowing visitors to the country. The root of the US-North Korea conflict however ,has been on the basis of nuclear weapons and North Korea threatening to use those weapons against the U.S and neighboring South Korea. The U.S and other nations have been working for the last few decades to stop the regime from purchasing and utilizing destructive nuclear weapons.
All basic freedoms have been severely restricted under the Kim family’s political dynasty”(Michalski, Web). Kim Jong Un misuses his power by taking away simple rights of the people, such as leaving the country, not letting them have freedom of speech, no freedom of information, no religious freedom, not allowed to watch certain television programs. Obsessed with his power, Kim Jong Un, is set on keeping his power for as long as he can. “[Kim Jong Un] include extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, and other sexual violence. North Korea operates secretive prison camps where perceived opponents of the government are sent to face torture and abuse, starvation rations, and forced labor.
For many who return to society after inhabiting these conditions for so long are unable to function as a normal person, and require resources, such as halfway houses, that are able to slowly integrate them back into the real world. Even though many believe that incarcerating more individuals and holding them in these conditions will result in more prisoners learning their less, it does just the opposite. Having to high of a prison population decreases the quality and rationale for the institution itself. Rather than truly helping the detainees, this method will lead to the use of prisons merely to inflict pain on the wrongdoers, which just gets them angry with society.