NORTH KOREA'S HELL

Back after World War II, there were a lot of recriminations about the Holocaust. Some said that the Allies didn’t do much because they didn’t know what was going on. Others said that they knew, but couldn’t do much anyway except try to end Hitler’s reign as soon as possible. Still others said the Allies knew, but didn’t care enough to do anything.

Where North Korea is concerned, the only choices are categories two and three above, because we can’t claim that we don’t know. As Anne Applebaum notes, a new report makes clear that what’s going on in North Korea is horrific:

The pictures that the committee has procured — and now published, together with a report called “The Hidden Gulag”— are satellite photographs of North Korean concentration camps. With remarkable clarity they show, for example, the contours of Yodok, one of the most notorious prison camps in North Korea: the barracks and “villages” inhabited by different categories of prisoners, including political prisoners; the mines, the flour mill, the farms where prisoners work; the cemetery. They also show the outlines of Bukchang, another vast camp, including its cement factory, its hospital, its punishment barracks, its school for prisoners’ children. Distinct objects, including the high walls that enclose the camps, are clearly visible.
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“Family members of traitors don’t even get food rations. They are starved to death,” said the wife of Soon Yong Bum, a fishing boat captain.... Lee, who asked that her given name not be used, was a clerk in a government office who notarized the deaths in her town. She is a pretty young woman, 29, with tumbling hair curling to her shoulders and smooth, flawless skin that belies the hardships she has faced and struggles to explain. “We started seeing cannibalism,” she recalled, pausing. “You probably won’t understand.”

She went on: “When one is very hungry, one can go crazy. One woman in my town killed her 7-month-old baby, and ate the baby with another woman. That woman’s son reported them both to the authorities.
“I can’t condemn cannibalism. Not that I wanted to eat human meat, but we were so hungry. It was common that people went to a fresh grave and dug up a body to eat meat. I witnessed a woman being questioned for cannibalism. She said it tasted good.”

So what is the world doing about it?

Not much. Human rights organizations treat North Korea as one of many offending countries. At least to judge from the amount of media attention, they’re more concerned with U.S. prisoners at Guantanamo (where prisoners are packing on pounds) than with the plight of North Koreans. The United States would like to get rid of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, but we’re not about to invade — nor could we, without the cooperation of South Korea and the People’s Republic of China, which is unlikely to be forthcoming. South Korea’s lack of interest in what’s going on up North is particularly hard to understand.

As we’ve seen with other genocides, the world seldom cares enough to do anything, and is usually all too happy to deal with the perpetrators so long as they have money. What sort of signal does that send?