Stalinist Hell: North Korean Political Prisons Starving 200,000 in Dachau-like Conditions

Did you catch any of this over there, Jimmeh?

Based on new satellite imagery and personal interviews of former inmates and guards, Amnesty International describes conditions in the Nork's political prison camps as "horrific".

And as the world's only heriditary communist dictatorship prepares for a transfer of power -and a potential period of instability- the Gulag-type camps appear to be growing in size...

Amnesty International believes the camps have been in operation since the 1950s, yet only three people are ever known to have escaped Total Control Zones and managed to leave North Korea. About 30 are known to have been released from the Revolutionary Zone at Political Prison Camp in Yodok and managed to leave North Korea. According to the testimony of a former detainee at the revolutionary zone in the political prison camp at Yodok, an estimated 40 per cent of inmates died from malnutrition .between 1999 and 2001.

Satellite images show four of the six camps occupying huge areas of land and located in vast wilderness sites in South Pyongan, South Hamkyung and North Hamkyung provinces, and producing products ranging from soy bean paste and sweets to coal and cement.

A comparison of the latest images with satellite imagery from 2001 indicates a significant increase in the scale of the camps.

In just one camp, Kwanliso 15 at Yodok, thousands of people are believed to be held as "guilty-by-association" or sent to the camps simply because one of their relatives has been detained.

The majority of prisoners, including some of those ‘guilty-by-association’, are held in areas known as ‘Total Control Zones’ from which they will never be released.

A significant proportion of those sent to the camps don’t even know what crimes they’re accused of...

Whatever you do- don't be the first to stop clapping

Of course, brutal treatment and meager food rations based on performance meant a lot of people starve to death.  Add to that frequent executions performed in front of all the camp and you can imagine how the bodies pile up. One former prisoner described death as a daily occurrence at the camp, but one that actually made him "happy" because burying the body got him an extra bowl of corn meal.

Sadistic North Korean authorities are also known to use a cube ‘torture cell’, designed so the forced-fetus-position prisoner cannot either stand or lie down. Troublemakers are thrown in for at least a week, but in one case a child thrown into the cell for eight months.

In most of the camps -hidden in frigid mountain ranges-  the prisoners face harsh winters wearing for years what they were arrested in... as NO clothing/footwear is provided whatsoever.

And as we all know,  food in the worker's paradise of the DPRK is always scarce: while the Army and Pyongyang elite pretty much get what they need, average citizens -particularly outside the capital- need to settle for what's left... you can only imagine what the prison camp supply looks like.  

Amnesty International has been told of several accounts of people eating rats or picking corn kernels out of fresh manure purely to survive, despite the risks to life and limb: it's not just the sanitation issue, as anyone caught risks solitary confinement or other torture. 

The Heritage Foundation Amnesty International Wikipedia

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South Korea has "Had Enough", Currently Planning Military Attack on the North

"...a South Korean government who does not react 
would not be able to survive..."

The United States and South Korean militaries have long had a plan (with multiple revisions over the years) for fighting and winning an all-out war with the Norks: OPLAN 5027. Regrettably, a copy of this was snaked by North Korean hackers last year. Following that debacle, a new strategy is of course in the works.

But these days -despite never-ending belligerence emanating from the DPRK- fear of war on that scale has diminished on the SK/US side: the penniless Stalinist hell of North Korea is on the cusp of a possible leadership crisis, while also painfully aware that they simply cannot win a full-scale continuation of the Korean War. Any serious attack on the South would promptly lead to the demise of the so-called 'hermit kingdom', according to most observers... and the nefarious Kim regime knows it. 

So after taking some serious political heat in the wake of the first attack on a South Korean civilian area since 1953 -Yeonpyeong Island- the conservative administration of Lee Myung-bak in Seoul has lost interest in absorbing unprovoked aggression from Pyongyang... they're drawing a line in the sand as a new hawkish defense chief takes office.

CNS News:

President Lee Myung-bak's government is suffering intense criticism that its response to North Korea's Nov. 23 barrage on a South Korean island was weak, and over the stunning revelation that the South's spy chief dismissed information in August indicating the North might attack the front-line island of Yeonpyeong. 

Lee's nominee, Kim Kwan-jin, told a parliamentary confirmation hearing that further North Korean aggression will result in airstrikes. He said South Korea will use all its combat capabilities to retaliate. 

"In case the enemy attacks our territory and people again, we will thoroughly retaliate to ensure that the enemy cannot provoke again,"...

Yesterday former US Naval intelligence officer Dennis Blair confirmed that Seoul indeed sees no potential benefit in mantaining a failed strategy of appeasement with North Korea... and is preparing to deliver a long-overdue push-back.

Breitbart:

The former chief of US intelligence has warned that South Korea has lost its patience with provocations by North Korea and "will be taking military action." 

Retired admiral Dennis Blair, who was director of national intelligence until May, said he did not think that hostilities would escalate into a larger war with artillery attacks on Seoul because North Korea knows it would lose. 

"So I don't think a war is going to start but I think there is going to be a military confrontation at lower levels rather than simply accepting these, this North Korean aggression, and going and negotiating," he said on CNN's State of the Union. 

Blair said the North had gone beyond its usual pattern of brinkmanship with an artillery barrage on a South Korean island that killed four people November 23, and the sinking in May of a South Korean warship, which killed 46 sailors. 

"So South Korea is beginning to lose patience with the North, which there was a great deal of patience," said Blair, who just returned from South Korea. Asked what that meant, the retired admiral said, "It means they will be taking military action against North Korea." 

His comments came as South Korea was preparing to go ahead with live fire drills off its coasts, but not near the contested maritime border with the North in the Yellow Sea.

And where are Kim Jong-il's traditional supporters -the Chinese- on all this? Shooting themself in the foot, basically-

While WikiLeaks-exposed cables last month indicated Beijing was also frustrated with the Kim regime's unpredictable brinkmanship -and would possibly acquiesce to a Korean unification under SK control- all we've seen in public is a diplomatically-clumsy Chinese leadership acting like nothing has changed at all... an ill-advised and wholly-irresponsible approach that is starting to inflict some serious damage on China's aspirations as a world power...

Robert Haddick writing in Foreign Policy:

Beijing's ham-fisted approach to the North Korean issue is causing other countries in East Asia to rally around the United States in alarm over Chinese intentions, a result exactly contrary to China's long term policy goals in the region. 

With no change in its policy toward North Korea, China should prepare for more diplomatic isolation and a stepped-up security response by the United States and its neighbors. 

On Dec. 6, the Washington Post's John Pomfret described Beijing's clumsy approach to South Korea in the wake of the North's hour-long artillery bombardment of Yeonpyeong Island. Four days after the attack, China sent State Councilor Dai Bingguo to Seoul, without an invitation or advanced notice. Upon landing, Dai demanded that South Korean President Lee Myung-bak abandon his schedule for the rest of the day in order to meet with him, which Lee refused to do. 

When the two met the following day, Dai told Lee to "calm down" and then delivered a history lecture on China-South Korean relations. Dai's diplomatic bungling was startling. 

After his departure, Lee and his new defense minister adopted a policy of military retaliation against the North. Lee then sent his foreign minister to a policy coordination meeting with his U.S. and Japanese counterparts. The United States proceeded with large military training exercises with South Korea and Japan. Soon after that, the U.S. and South Korean governments unveiled a completed free-trade agreement. 

China's actions regarding North Korea have done wonders to bring together the United States and its Asian allies...

And although plenty predictable, the official North Korean news agency's somewhat less-than-nuanced take is always good for a few chuckles:

The war confab of the U.S. imperialists and the south Korean warmongers is, in fact, little short of a declaration of an all-out war aimed at the escalated skirmish, declared a spokesman for the National Peace Committee of Korea in a statement released on Saturday. 

He went on to say: The U.S. imperialists and the puppet warmongers held a meeting of the chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of south Korea and the U.S. in Seoul on December 8 at which they discussed a very dangerous war scenario calling on the puppet forces and the U.S. imperialist aggressor forces to mount a military attack on the DPRK under the pretext of "deterring provocation" of someone. 

The U.S. imperialists openly approved the puppet forces′ plan to attack the DPRK by mobilizing all fighters and warships, etc. not bound to the existing "rules and regulations for battles," touting "their right to self-defence." 

They, at the same time, declared they would consider the proposal for supporting the puppet forces with "information about north Korea" and with "F-22 Raptors" advertised by them as the "most sophisticated fighters in the world" in case of a war between the north and the south of Korea.

Looks like one pugnacious pygmy dictator with a funky-looking Elvis 'do may be soon be getting an abject lesson in just how sophisticated the F-22 Raptor actually is: they'll never see it coming until things just start blowing-up.

UPDATE: Norks now threatening nuclear war...

Chosunilbo   Breitbart   The Guardian  Hannity

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Fresh North Korean Artillery Fire Heard Near Shelled Island: "Brink of War"

Shrill DPRK propaganda threatens "shower of fire"

The ever-belligerent Norks fired more large guns today in the vicinity of the South Korean island shelled on Tuesday. To most observers it appears that a fading Kim Jong Il is happy to blow up a few Southern fisherman in order to impress the military with his choice of under-achieving 27-year-old son Kim Jong Un
-reportedly not the sharpest knife in the drawer- as his designated successor in the world's only hereditary communist dictatorship. 

He's already made the kid a four-star general, and after visiting the artillery site on Monday the younger Kim is rumored to have ordered the attack himself...

AP-

Fresh artillery shots were heard Friday on the tense South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, three days after it was devastated by a North Korean attack and hours after Pyongyang warned that the peninsula was on the brink of war. 

The blasts happened just after the top U.S. commander in South Korea, Gen. Walter Sharp, toured Yeonpyeong Island in a show of solidarity with Seoul and to survey damage from Tuesday's hail of North Korean artillery fire that killed four people. 

An official at the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said several new rounds of artillery fire were heard Friday on Yeonpyeong, which is just 7 miles (11 kilometers) south of the North Korean mainland. The military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said several distant explosive sounds came from the direction of North Korea. There were no immediate reports of damage.

Seems the Kims are doing their best to frighten their enemies much as a rattlesnake would... and with a comparable moral code- (Yonhap News Service:)

Threatening "a shower of dreadful fire," North Korea said Friday it will wipe out its enemies if its sovereignty is violated, warning that the Korean Peninsula is inching to the "brink of war." The warnings by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea and the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) are the latest threats Pyongyang has issued since South Korea and the U.S. agreed to hold joint drills near the communist country in a show of force. 

The rhetoric raises already high tension after the communist country exchanged deadly artillery barrages with South Korea on Tuesday, killing two marines and two civilians here in one of the most violent clashes on the peninsula since the 1950-53 Korean War. North Korea, officially called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), denies initiating the clash, warning it will mount additional attacks if its territorial waters are violated. 

"The army and people of the DPRK are now greatly enraged at the provocation of the puppet group while getting fully ready to give a shower of dreadful fire and blow up the bulwark of the enemies" if they violate the North's sovereignty, the committee said. 

In the Korean version of the statement released through the KCNA, the North said it is "ready to annihilate enemies' stronghold," a possible reference to major military bases and civilian facilities in the South. 

It also said its forces "precisely targeted and struck" South Korean artillery units on Tuesday in what can seen as an admission of a deliberate attack on the South. 

"Gone are the days when verbal warnings are served only," the committee said in the English statement. "The group should not run amuck, clearly understanding the will and mettle of the highly alerted army and people of the DPRK to wipe out the enemies." 

If the Chinese are serious about being a world leader, now might be an appropriate time to act like it and control their brats before somebody loses an eye... or worse.

Yonghap   AP  Gateway Pundit

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North Koreans Attack South Korean Island: One Dead, 70 Houses Burning, Dozens Injured (photos, video)

South Koreans return fire- scramble fighter jets

Some houses in South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island
in the Yellow Sea are ablaze as scores of rounds of artillery,
fired by North Korea at 2:34 p.m. on Nov. 23, hit the island. 

As revelations of secret advances made in Pyongyang's ability to enrich uranium come to light, some have suggested arming the South with nuclear weaponry... looks like Dear Leader didn't care for that prospect much...

North Korea on Tuesday fired dozens of rounds of artillery toward South Korean waters and an island near the tense west sea border, the South's military said, leaving at least four South Korean soldiers wounded. The North's artillery shells started falling in the South's waters off the island of Yeonpyeong from around 2:34 p.m., some of them landing directly on the island, said Col. Lee Bung-woo, spokesman for the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). 

The South's military fired back some 80 rounds, he said. The military is on its highest peacetime alert, he said. The Air Force has deployed fighter jets to the island. 

One marine was critically wounded and three others sustained minor injuries, according to Lee... Island residents said people are being told to evacuate. 

Officials said the North's shelling was intermittently continuing and that the South was also responding with return fire. The presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said it was looking into the possibility that the North's firing was in protest to an ongoing South Korean military drill on the western coast. 

The "Hoguk Exercise," one of South Korea's three major annual defense exercises, began Monday with some 70,000 troops participating. The North had sent a message to Seoul denouncing the exercise earlier in the day, Cheong Wa Dae said. The president convened an emergency meeting of security ministers and instructed the government to ensure that the situation is contained. 

The western sea border was the scene of bloody gun battles between the navies of the two Koreas in 1999, 2002 and most recently in November of last year.

Yonhap News Agency   Reuters

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