Life Inside a North Korean Labor Camp

If you thought the era of the forced labor camp was over, think again.  Today, over 200,000 North Koreans face conditions and abuses similar to those of the Soviet gulag, the Nazi concentration camp, and the U.S. Japanese internment camp.

Official accounts from inside North Korean labor camps are few, and most have not been officially documented.  But reports from released and escaped inmates indicate that prisoners are forced to work 12-15 hour days, and are fed a measly portion of sugared corn as their only meal.  Women are raped with impunity and denied access to sanitary napkins.  Relatives of prisoners who commit suicide are punished.  The labor camp is one of the few forms of modern-day slavery sanctioned by a government.

For most people in the camps, there is no hope for an end to their slavery.  A few lucky individuals may undergo years of remedial socialist indoctrination, to be released under parole-like conditions.  The rest, however, will die working in hard manual labor.  And when the guards are taught to look at the inmates as pigs and prisoners are forced to view assassinations as lessons, death is sometimes welcomed.

International human rights and anti-trafficking activists have been trying to fight the North Korean slave camps for years, often with little help from foreign governments.  The fact that most of the world has ignored this form of slavery officially sanctioned by a government is inexcusable.  And yet, the U.S. and Europe remain so focused on issues of nuclear proliferation they forget entirely the suffering and slavery of the North Korean people.

If life is bleak for slaves in countries where there is political will and resources to combat slavery, how hopeless must it be for those forced to endure government-sponsored slavery as a prison sentence?  And more importantly, what can we possibly do to end such abuses?

Image from ri.net