Stephan Haggard Quoted on N. Korean Work Farms
North Korean Prison Camps Massive and Growing
05/04/2011
Mark McDonald,
The New York Times
SEOUL, South Korea — New satellite images and firsthand accounts from former political prisoners and former jailers in North Korea have confirmed the enormous scale and bleak conditions of the penal system in the secretive North, according to a report released Wednesday by the human rights group Amnesty International.
Former inmates at the political labor camp at Yodok said they were frequently tortured and had been forced to watch executions of fellow prisoners, the report said, noting that North Korea’s network of political prisons, known as “kwan li-so,” is estimated to hold about 200,000 inmates.
“North Korea can no longer deny the undeniable,” said Sam Zarifi, the Asia Pacific director of Amnesty International. “For decades, the authorities have refused to admit to the existence of mass political prison camps. These are places out of sight of the rest of the world.” The report says that almost all of the human rights protections that international law has tried to set up” for the last 60 years “are ignored.”
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Stephan Haggard can provide commentary on current developments in the Asia-Pacific, including particularly Korea, and on the politics of economic reform and globalization.
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