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Human experimentation in North Korea is an issue raised by some North Korean defectors and former prisoners. They have described suffocation of prisoners in gas chambers, testing deadly chemical weapons and surgery without anesthesia.
Hoeryong concentration camp was a prison camp in North Korea that was reported to have been closed in 2012. The official name was KwallisoNo. 22. The camp was a maximum security area, completely isolated from the outside world.
An estimated 84,532 South Koreans were taken to North Korea during the Korean War. In addition, South Korean statistics claim that, since the Korean Armistice Agreement in 1953, about 3,800 people have been abducted by North Korea, 489 of whom were still being held in 2006.
The human rights record of North Korea is often considered to be the worst in the world and has been globally condemned, with the United Nations, the European Union and groups such as Human Rights Watch all critical of the country's record. Most international human rights organizations consider North Korea to have no contemporary parallel with respect to violations of liberty.
Kang Chol-hwan is a North Korean defector, author, and the founder and president of the North Korea Strategy Center.
Yodok concentration camp was a kwalliso in North Korea. The official name was Kwan-li-so No. 15. The camp was used to segregate those seen as enemies of the state, punish them for political misdemeanors, and put them to hard labour. It was closed down in 2014.
The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag , by Kang Chol-hwan and Pierre Rigoulot, is an account of the imprisonment of Kang Chol-Hwan and his family in the Yodok concentration camp in North Korea.
Since the division of Korea after the end of World War II, North Koreans have fled from the country in spite of legal punishment for political, ideological, religious, economic, moral, personal, or nutritional reasons. Such North Koreans are referred to as North Korean defectors. Alternative terms in South Korea, where the defectors often end up, include "northern refugees" and "new settlers".
The Sŭnghori concentration camp was a labor camp for political prisoners which was located in North Hwanghae Province North Korea, about 70 kilometers from Pyongyang.
Battle Hymn is a 1957 American war film directed by Douglas Sirk and starring Rock Hudson as Lieutenant Colonel Dean E. Hess, a real-life United States Air Force fighter pilot in the Korean War who helped evacuate several hundred war orphans to safety. The cast also includes Anna Kashfi, Dan Duryea, Don DeFore, Philip Ahn, and Martha Hyer. The film was produced by Ross Hunter and filmed in CinemaScope.
The Onsong concentration camp was an internment camp in Changpyong, Onsong County, North Hamgyong, North Korea. It housed approximately 15,000 political prisoners. The camp was officially known as Concentration Camp (Kwan-li-so) No. 12.
Ahn Chol is the pseudonym of a North Korean freelance journalist who shot the footage for the film Children of the Secret State, a movie about the condition of orphans in North Korea. He won the Rory Peck Award in 2001 for his work.
Freedom of religion in North Korea is officially a right in North Korea. North Korea is considered an atheist state, where it is reported that the government continues to interfere with individual's ability to practice a religion, even though the Constitution guarantees "freedom of religious beliefs." The regime reportedly continues to repress the religious activities of unauthorized religious groups. Recent refugee, defector, missionary, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) indicate that religious persons engaging in proselytizing in the country, those who have ties to overseas evangelical groups operating across the border in the People's Republic of China, and specifically, those repatriated from China and found to have been in contact with foreigners or missionaries, have been arrested and subjected to harsh penalties. Refugees and defectors continued to allege that they witnessed the arrests and execution of members of underground Christian churches by the regime in prior years. Due to the country's inaccessibility and the inability to gain timely information, this activity remains difficult to verify.
Mike Kim is a bestselling author, inspirational speaker, consultant, NGO founder, and North Korea specialist. He is a Korean-American who, in 2003, moved to the China-North Korea border and founded Crossing Borders, a nonprofit dedicated to providing humanitarian assistance to North Korean refugees. He is the author of the Wall Street Journal featured book Escaping North Korea: Defiance and Hope in the World’s Most Repressive Country, a current events memoir published in 2008 by Rowman & Littlefield, about his experiences at the China-North Korea border when taking time off from business to help North Korean refugees and human trafficking victims through the modern-day 6,000 mile underground railroad in Asia. Escaping North Korea has been translated into Turkish and Polish. The book is being developed into a feature film with actor/producer Daniel Dae Kim.
On March 17, 2009, North Korean soldiers detained two American journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who were working for the U.S. independent cable television network Current TV, after they crossed into North Korea from China without a visa. They were found guilty of illegal entry and sentenced to twelve years' hard labor in June 2009. North Korean leader Kim Jong-il pardoned the two on August 5, 2009, the day after former U.S. President Bill Clinton arrived in the country on a publicly unannounced visit.
Felix Abt is a business affairs specialist on North Korea and Vietnam.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea is a 2009 nonfiction book by Los Angeles Times journalist Barbara Demick, based on interviews with North Korean refugees from the city of Chongjin who had escaped North Korea. In 2010, the book was awarded the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. It was also a nonfiction finalist for the National Book Award in 2010.
North Korean prisons have conditions that are unsanitary, life-threatening and are comparable to historical concentration camps. A significant number of inmates have died each year, since they are subject to torture and inhumane treatment. Public and secret executions of inmates, even children, especially in cases of attempted escape, are commonplace. Infanticides also often occur. The mortality rate is exceptionally high, because many prisoners die of starvation, illnesses, work accidents, or torture.
Yeonmi Park is a North Korean defector and activist whose family fled from North Korea to China in 2007 and settled in South Korea in 2009, before moving to the United States in 2014. Her family turned to black-market trading during the North Korean famine in the 1990s. Her father was sent to a labor camp for smuggling. They fled to China, where Park and her mother fell into the hands of human traffickers and she was sold into slavery before escaping to Mongolia. She is now an advocate for victims of human trafficking in China and works to promote human rights in North Korea and around the globe.
Ahn Pan-seok is a South Korean television director. Ahn directed the Korean dramas Roses and Bean Sprouts (1999), Ajumma (2000), Behind the White Tower (2007), How Long I've Kissed (2012), Secret Affair (2014), and Heard It Through the Grapevine (2015). He also directed the film Over the Border (2006).
References
- 1 2 "Suffer the children". The Guardian . October 19, 2000. Retrieved October 27, 2014.
- ↑ Lee Young-hwa (January 2001). "Humanitarian Aid, Resurrection of the Secret Police, and Inheritance of Power". Daily NK . Retrieved October 27, 2014.