NORTH KOREAN PRISON CAMPS ARE NOT FUN

By VBS Staff

A couple years back, Vice interviewed three North Korean refugees who made it to Seoul and asked them to describe what they had to go through in order to get out. The stories they told us melted our ears.

From their accounts, various government reports, and the annual catalogue of horrors presented by Amnesty International, we’ve pieced together that being a prisoner of the DPRK is roughly equivalent to being thrown in a medieval dungeon during the plague. Medical care is nonexistent, hygiene is borderline impossible, beatings are commonplace for such infractions as being sick, being dirty, being too exhausted to keep working, or failing to sing the correct patriotic songs while working. They make Japanese POW camps look like some sort of minimal-security Swedish luxury jail.

Check out this footage of prisoners at the Yodok work camp hauling human shit in the middle of winter for a small taste of Laura Ling and Euna Lee are in store for if the State Department can’t work out a deal*. If that hasn’t made you depressed enough, here are some stills from a hidden camera documenting the beating of a North Korean woman who was caught defecting to China.

*Speaking of Sweden, we just found out that since the US has no official diplomatic mission in the DPRK we have to go through the Swedes in order to pass notes between the two govs. It’s like America and North Korea are two passive-aggressive parents, only with thousands and thousands of lives hanging in the balance.

By VBS Staff 2 years ago

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