A gulag closes

Unconfirmed reports circulating since June of this year seem to be, at least, partially confirmed that a North Korean prison camp has been closed.

The Wall Street Journal Asia in a report referring to a report from The Daily NK ("a still slightly shaky report – but believable enough given the track record of the Web site," according to the WSJ) states that indeed, after "tracking down the rumor for months,"  "the camp was shut down in June."

Apparently precipitated by the repercussions of events involving the warden running off with another officer to China,  a source told the defector-staffed news site that, “At the start of March they started transferring the sick and malnourished, and then in April they moved all the healthiest ones.”

According to the source, it is "unclear" where the prisoners are now.

At the height of its usage in the 1990s, Camp 22 (Kwan-li-so No. 22) is believed to have held up to 50,000 people.  At 31 miles long and 20 miles wide, it was the largest of the six remaining "giant gulags" in North Korea.

Based on the guilt by association principle (Korean: 연좌제, yeonjwaje) prisoners were most often imprisoned together with the whole family, including children and the elderly - until death.

One down,  five to go, or perhaps not.

For every door that closes, sometimes it is not a window that opens, but merely another door.

In this case, the door is unlikely to be one to freedom.