North Korean Gulags for Extortion

As previously reported here, there exists an extensive, on-going North Korean system of gulags both North of the 38th parallel as well as in the former Soviet Union/Russia.

Jong-Il and Putin in 2002

Now it turns out that, according to a report just released by the East-West Center, the system of prison camps in North Korea are also being utilized to extract penance (and capital) from those brave, enterprising and starving souls who have dared to try to survive amidst the squalor of a bankrupt, inhuman system.

“The portrait that emerges is of a Soviet-style gulag characterized by an arbitrary judicial system, an expansive conception of crime, and horrific abuses,” write Haggard and Noland, who is also Deputy Director of the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics.

One particularly striking finding, they write, “is that the conditions that are frequently seen as characteristic of the country’s infamous gulag of political penal-labor colonies –such as extreme deprivation and exposure to violence – in fact pertain across the penal system, from the penitentiaries designed to house felons to lower-level jails [used to punish] a widening array of other economic and social crimes that are associated with the process we describe as ‘marketization from below.’” 

Even among the refugees imprisoned for relatively brief periods at lower-level penal facilities, a substantial number reported witnessing such abuses as forced starvation, deprivation of medical care, deaths due to beating or torture, and public executions.

Based on surveys of North Korean refugees, you can read more about the report here.

Or better yet, order a copy of the 39 page report, here for only $3.00.

The EAST-WEST CENTER is an education and research organization established by the U.S. Congress in 1960 to strengthen relations and understanding among the peoples and nations of Asia, the Pacific, and the United States.