Bob Edwards, formerly of NPR, now of Sirius Radio brings attention to a Washington Post report by Blaine Harden on the gulags in North Korea. The fairly lengthy report ran more than a month ago.
Ever interesting Bob reflects that, "When I first read it, I felt certain that the story would get picked up internationally and make headlines, especially coming soon after the Euna Lee and Laura Ling saga. Alas, the story ran and there’s been little follow-up. There are believed to be 200,000 prisoners being held at the forced labor camps. Most die of malnutrition by the time they are fifty-years old. There is no public outcry partly because there are no pictures and no outsiders have ever visited. Harden explains that the issue is on the “diplomatic back burner."
My own sober reflection on the state of that is a bit more introspective. Why does such a story (and others like it) continue to get so little outcry, indignation or even serious attention?
Perhaps, just possibly, simply because people don't really care enough.
For some of us, we're "too busy." For others, we can't relate to such cruelty, such absolute inhumanity so far away. And for a certain, apparently ever festering, (and growing?) group among us, human beings are just so much chafe and inconvenience.
What are a few hundred or thousand bodies here and there (preferably there) anyway?
Meanwhile, some are simply born in the gulags, (under that country's bizarre, totalitarian "three-generation policy") such as Shin In-kun (South Korean name: Shin Dong-hyuk).
And actually, amazingly, escape.
"Google Earth makes us all witnesses."
Some have been and continue to try to do something about the problem:
LiNK
Others
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