Overview of North Korea’s known, gulag-style prison camps

North Korean prison camps are split into two main types: Firstly the kwan li-so, translated as "political penal-labor colonies" which contain the political prisoners, and often their families, who are imprisoned without trial, usually for life. The other type of camp, the kyo-hwa-so, usually hold criminal offenders who are subject to a judicial process and fixed sentencing, after which they can be released. Kyo-hwa-so prisoners also do hard labor in mining, logging, textile manufacturing and more.

Kyo-hwa-so 1 – 6000 prisoners, Gaechun, South Pyongan province. Lee Soon Ok, who was imprisoned here until 1994, described prisoners dying from torture and maltreatment, their bodies dumped on the mountainsides "like animals".

Kwan-li-so 14 - 15,000 prisoners, near Kaechon, South Pyongan province, on the north bank of the Taedong River opposite camp 18. According to Kim Yong, who was held there from 1995-96, the main industries were mining and farming and that many people died due to malnutrition, disease and mining accidents.

Kwan-li-so 15 - 45,000 prisoners, Yodok in South Hamgyong province. Kang Chol Hwan, the author of Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, whose small village within camp 15 suffered about 100 deaths every year due to malnutrition and disease. Lee Young Kuk, a prisoner until 1999, witnessed numerous public executions and shootings in the camp.

Kwan li-so 16 - 10,000 prisoners, Hwasong, North Hamgyong province, adjacent to another highly secret location, the Mount Mantap nuclear testing site, and the Musudan-ri missile-testing facility.

Kwan li-so 18 - 50,000 prisoners, Bukchang on the south bank of the Taedong River, South Pyongan province. Kim Yong was transferred here in 1996 and escaped in 1998, said though less severe than camp 14, he still witnessed prisoners dying of malnutrition and being shot.

Kwan li-so 22 - 50,000 prisoners, Hoeryong in North Hamgyong province, the north-eastern tip of the country. Former guard Ahn Myong Chol described it as one of the largest prison camps, containing around within an area 31 miles long by 25 miles wide. Hoeryong is infamous for reports of chemical weapons experiments on humans, and glass gas chambers, revealed in a BBC documentary Axis of Evil in 2004.

Backpack journalism in North Korea

With reference to the two U.S. journalists in North Korean custody, a fellow female journalist writing in the Detroit Times comments:

Current TV’s "backpack" journalism method outfits reporters with portable, easy-to-use technology that allows movement through dangerous territory.

While guts, passion, tenacity and perseverance are desirable traits, especially in journalism, there is such a thing as having too much ambition, especially as idealistic, competitive young women out to get to the best story and put their mark on the world.

Somebody above them, a mentor or more seasoned journalist, should have weighed the risks involved in being anywhere near the terribly volatile North Korean soil, and too, the lack of safeguards applied by their employer, Current TV.

While nothing excuses the complete sham of the North Korean closed-door trial and the utterly cruel sentence, you can't help but wonder about the journalists' ill-conceived plan. In a Current TV promotional video, Laura Ling described her mission as investigating the "big issues really affecting our world. "We're trying to push the envelope here," Laura Ling said on camera, "and stay out in front of events, rather than regurgitate news headlines."

Laura Ling, 36, was said to be following in the footsteps of her celebrity older sister Lisa Ling. In an eerie precedent now three years old, many wonder how Ling’s elder sister and a Nepalese medical mission she teamed up with could justify pretending she was a humanitarian aid worker so that she could sneak into the country and make a 2006 National Geographic documentary.

Visit for U.S. Journalists Imprisoned by North Korea

The Swedish ambassador met today with Euna Lee and Laura Ling, the two imprisoned American journalists in Pyongyang, their first visit with him since a North Korean court handed down their 12-year sentence.

He last visited them June 1. The ambassador has requested more access to the journalists, but has not received it. (The Swedish ambassador represents U.S. interests in the country because the United States does not have diplomatic relations with North Korea.)

A veteran Asia correspondent, Bradley K. Martin, offers this opinion:

Two California senators have called upon President Obama to send a special envoy to secure the release of their constituents Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who are being held by North Korea and sentenced to 12 years for intruding illegally in order to film what the country’s official news agency termed a “slanderous” expose of the trafficking of women.

What would a special envoy offer in return for the women’s release? Money is one thing that North Korea, with its wrecked economy, would likely demand. The United Nations Security Council has just agreed — following Washington’s leadership — to choke off sources of funding.

Perhaps it is useful first to contemplate the extent to which the two journalists might have brought this situation on themselves. Start with the fact that we are not hearing denials from the women’s family and supporters that they illegally intruded into North Korea, crossing a frozen border river. Rather, we’re hearing apologies for any inadvertent offense the two might have committed.

Assuming the North Korean authorities were able to use the women’s captured notes, their testimony and the contents of their camera and cell phones to identify opponents of the regime who had helped the reporters on the Chinese side of the river, those helpers could now be in grave peril from North Korean agents who are tasked with hunting them down. That’s the sort of thing conscientious journalists would not like to have on their consciences.

We will hear protests that the two, besides being fearless, were simply naive. While that may be true of one of them, Lee, who reportedly was on her first overseas assignment, Laura Ling, the Current TV vice president in charge of organizing coverage of dangerous places, should have had ample warning of the risks of sneaking into North Korea — risks not only to herself but to others.

Imagine: Kim Jong Il to visit the USA

Now here’s a novel idea: Peter Carlsen, writing in the Contra Costa Times, offers his opinion that President Obama should invite Kim Jong Il to the United States and let him wander around for a couple of weeks, sipping cocktails with capitalists, visiting a home economics class in Iowa and mingling with Hollywood stars.

Fifty years ago, in similar circumstances, that's what President Dwight Eisenhower did, and it worked — sort of. In 1959, Nikita Khrushchev, the eccentric and unpredictable Soviet dictator, was misbehaving, rattling his nukes and threatening West Berlin. Negotiations over the city's fate proved fruitless, so Ike tried a different strategy: Khrushchev, who loved to travel, immediately accepted, replying that he'd like to ramble around the country for "10 to 15 days." When Khrushchev arrived at Camp David for a weekend of talks with Eisenhower, the two leaders did not sign any epoch-making agreements, but they agreed to convene a four-power summit with the British and the French to solve the sticky problem of Berlin.

The trip didn't quite transform Khrushchev into an Eisenhower Republican, but it did change his attitude toward the United States. He learned that this country wasn't the capitalist nightmare portrayed in Soviet propaganda. In fact, he kind of liked the place.

It's hard to tell whether a similar trip would have a similar effect on Kim Jong Il — so let's invite him and find out. It just might help. After all, he has a well-documented fondness for American pop culture.

Kim loves basketball so let's get him some good seats to an NBA game. Kim loves pizza. So why not let him eat his way through New York's Little Italy, then fly him to Chicago to sample some deep-dish? Kim loves monuments. So let's take him to Mount Rushmore and let him see what you get when you carve a monument out of a mountain.

But what Kim loves most — aside from absolute power — is movies. Let's take him to Hollywood, let him lunch with Liz Taylor and maybe some younger starlets, too, like Angelina Jolie, Jessica Alba or Beyonce. That kind of company can change a man's outlook on life.

After all, it really is a small world. As Ike realized 50 years ago, nuclear war would not be good for it.

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North Korea’s much advertised effort to become a nuclear power

Michael Parenti offers his projection on the thinking that motivates North Korea and its nuclear threats:

The Pyongyang leadership seems to know something about US global policy that our own policymakers and pundits have overlooked. In a word, the United States has never attacked or invaded any nation that has a nuclear arsenal.

The countries directly battered by US military actions in recent decades, along with numerous other states that have been threatened at one time or have one thing in common: not one of them has wielded a nuclear deterrence--until now.

In December 2001, two months after 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney referred chillingly to "forty or fifty countries" that might need military disciplining. A month later in his 2002 State of the Union message, President Bush pruned the list down to three especially dangerous culprits: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, who, he said, composed an "axis of evil."

Rather than passively await its fate sitting in Washington's crosshairs, nation #3 on the US hit list is trying to pack a deterrence. From its lonely and precarious perch the North cannot help feeling vulnerable. Consider the intimidating military threat it faces. The DPRK's outdated and ill-equipped army is no match for the conventional forces of the United States, South Korea, and Japan. The United States maintains a large attack base in South Korea. As Paul Sack reminds us in a recent correspondence to the New York Times, at least once a year the US military conducts joint exercises with South Korean forces, practicing a land invasion of the DPRK. The US Air Force maintains a "nuclear umbrella" over South Korea with nuclear arsenals in Okinawa, Guam, and Hawaii. Japan not only says it can produce nuclear bombs within a year, it seems increasingly willing to do so. And the newly installed leadership in South Korea is showing itself to be anything but friendly toward Pyongyang.

The DPRK's nuclear arsenal is a two-edged sword. It can deter attack or invite attack. It may cause US officials to think twice before cinching a tighter knot around the North, or it may cause them to move aggressively toward a confrontation that no one really wants.