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PDFNorth Korea’s labor camps are plainly visible, “but people do not want to see them,” wrote The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt.
Shin Dong-hyuk was born into the North Korean gulag and miraculously escaped from the notorious Camp 14 in North Korea, where he lived or, rather, survived for 23 years.
It is “a place so brutal and horrific it’s hard to believe it exists…..part of the largest network of political prisons in the world today,” according to 60 Minutes, previewing a riveting, must-see segment:
Some 150,000 people are believed to be doing hard labor on the brink of starvation in these hidden gulags. But it’s not just those who have been accused of political crimes; it’s their entire families — grandparents, parents, and children. A practice called “three generations of punishment.”
The story is also told by Blaine Harden, the author of Escape from Camp 14 (above).
Information about developments within the Hermit state is also emerging from a new generation of defectors and publicized via such outlets as Daily NK, a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group.
