They call it "the Killing Compound", an area within Camp 22 in North Korea's largest concentration camp.
Most North Koreans are imprisoned simply because their relatives are believed to be critical of the regime. Many are Christians, a religion believed by Kim Jong-il to be one of the greatest threats to his power. According to the dictator, not only is a suspected dissident arrested but also three generations of his family are imprisoned, to root out the bad blood and seed of dissent.
Thousands of men, women and children are trucked to the nearby town of Haengyong. There they wait and the North Korean physicians single out those who will die in gas chambers, or in biological tests, or face death in the human dissection rooms.
Those not selected to immediately go to the Killing Compound will be kept in other compounds, surviving on minimum rations, to replace those who have died from inhuman experiments.
They are all branded as enemies of the state, "political victims" who have dared to speak out against President Kim Jong Il, the "Dear Leader" of North Korea. Their "offenses" may have been as little as to have allowed a portrait of Kim to get dusty – every home must display one. Or not having given the mandatory bow when passing his thousands of posters that line every street.
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