North Korean Concentration Camps (Research Paper Sample)

North Korean Concentration Camps
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Institution

North Korean Concentration Camps
` The state of affairs in North Korea has been extremely bad for many years on end. From developing hazardous nuclear weapons to abusing human rights, North Korea has been on the tongues of many human rights and nuclear activists. The terrible rapport created by North Korea is worsened by the torture and imprisonment of locals in concentration camps. The conditions and horrors that prisoners live under while in these concentration camps pale those of Stalin and Hitler regimes. The abuse of human rights has become synonymous with everyday life for many North Koreans who continue to suffer under the tyrannical rule of the Kim family (Meredith, 2013). This paper seeks to take an in depth analysis of living conditions in North Korea concentration camps and attempts to show how they are a distinct depiction of the abuses of human rights in the country.
The capture of prisoners by the North Korean government has been everything short of just and fair. This case also applies to repatriated citizens who are deported to North Korea from the foreign countries to which they had migrated. When suspects are captured in North Korea, they are not subjected to a fair trial, as is the right of every individual. Instead, they are given a biased and short trial that is, more often than not, simply a formality. As punishment, the suspect is taken to one of the many concentration camps in the country (Thornhill & Garratt, 2014). In these camps, the prisoners are subjected to inhumane treatment and unspeakable horrors in the name of punishment. They work akin to slaves before the abolition of slave trade. They are beaten and assaulted on a daily basis, and for very flimsy reasons. The guards working at the concentration camps are given the power to punish any prisoner as they deem fit. Most of the times, torture, beatings and even killings are the methods of choice for many of the guards.
The practice of ‘guilt by association’ has always been a steadfast approach practiced by the ruling Kim family in North Korea. In this approach, all family members of a suspect are also considered suspects due to their kinship ties with the accused. As a result, they are all taken into the concentration camps as punishment (Hassig & Oh, 2009). This method punishes the entire as well as subsequent generations for the crimes of one person. This is a gross abuse of human rights, seeing that many individuals are subjected to punishment without committing any crimes.
The North Korean government punishes its citizens for very insubstantial reasons, most of which are not considered crimes as interpreted by the universal law. Many of the prisoners are arrested for being suspects, and not necessarily for being criminals. The fact that the authorities suspect an individual of either true or false criminal activity is enough to have one arrested in North Korea. Some of the very few survivors of these concentration camps have confirmed the flimsy nature of their ‘crimes’ (Stanton & Lee, 2014). One such woman is Kim Young Soon. Kim spent nine harrowing years in a concentration camp. When asked about her alleged crime, she said that she had been arrested for gossiping about an affair that Kim Jong Il (the father to the current Supreme Leader) had with her friend. This is a testament of the extent, which the government can go in the name of justice. Many other individuals have been arrested over similar weak reasons. Some individuals have been arrested for watching soap operas (telenovelas), attempting to look for food and even for crossing to China, a neighbor of this ill-fated country. These are only a few of the many reasons for which innocent civilians are arrested and sentenced to imprisonment (read death), in the concentration camps.
The tortures that many individuals are subjected to in these concentration camps are unimaginable. In these camps, an individual is punished at the behest of the guard, the reason notwithstanding. For instance, an individual may be punished for looking at a guard, for disobeying a guard, for responding slowly to a guard’s commands, and so on-the list is endless (Fishel & Griffin, 2012). Witness accounts from former prison guards assert the torture claims and shed more light on the forms of torture many prisoners were subjected to at the camps (Kumar Sen, 2014). Ahn Myong-Chol and Kwon Hyok served in camp 22 as prison guards. These two individuals outline five main ways of torture that prisoners faced. First, there is water torture. In this approach, prisoners are immersed in a tank that is full of water up to the nose of the prisoner. The prisoner is then forced to stand on their toes to avoid drowning. This was conducted for 24 hours. Prisoners were also put into the ‘box-room’. This is a small box-shaped device that is so little that one cannot properly sit, stand or lie. This forces individuals to remain in high-stress positions for days or even a week on end. The result is that many individuals many end up crippled or deformed. Pigeon torture was also a ‘favorite’ among the guards (Park, 2014). In this method, individuals have their hands chained to a wall at two feet. The result is the prisoner remains squatting with their hands tied to the wall. Prisoners are also forced to kneel with a thick piece of wood in their knee hollows. This curtails blood flow to the legs, and the result is crippled individuals who die a few months later. These aside, prisoners are also subjected to intense beatings and hangings where they are stripped naked and beaten brutally.
Individuals in the concentration camps are poorly fed. They are given two meals per day, in the morning and in the evening. The meals are mostly corn without any meat or vegetables. Being fed a meager 180 grams per meal, it is not a surprise that many imprisoned children die before they are 10 (Varghese, 2014). The prisoners are also forced to work from sunrise to sunset, without breaks during the day. The starvation that many individuals endure forces a great deal of them to change their eating habits. Many individuals eat snakes, rats and many other wild animals that they happen upon in the fields during the day. Needless to say, these animals are eaten raw. In extreme cases of starvation, individuals have resorted to eating undigested food found in fecal matter of wild and domestic animals.
Rape and other forms of sexual violence are also rampant in many of the concentration camps in North Korea. Women out of fear that they will be killed should they show any resistance to the guards mainly face this form of torture. Within many concentration camps, guards have set up ‘guest houses’ where women are subjected to unimaginable sexual horrors by the guards (Behnke, 2008, p. 178). Many of the women in these ‘guest houses’ are die out of torture and exhaustion. Many prisoners are also taken to do construction work in parts outside their concentration camps. No known prisoner has returned from these ‘construction’ jobs (Baek, 2012). It is suspected that many of these prisoners are involved in the construction of nuclear sites, and they are killed to protect the locations of these sites.
Prisoners living in concentration camps are also considered test subjects for many of the government projects. Many prisoners, alongside their families, have been killed in the process of testing poisonous gases. These prisoners are locked in a glass chamber and exposed to poisonous gas fumes by government scientists. Nuclear material has also been tested on the prisoners for a long time. The level of human experimentation in North Korea is very sickening, even to the worst of brutes.
The concentration camps in North Korea are the modern day depiction of slavery. Just like slaves hundreds of years ago, the prisoners in these camps have completely no say in their lives. They are subjected to tortures and inhumane treatment on a daily basis. Ahn and Kwon attest that guards are instructed to treat prisoners as slaves, and not as human beings. This is a clear-cut depiction of abuse of human rights The lack of respect for human life in the concentration camps is proof of the dictatorial id...