Reeducation through labor, primarily through sentences at forced labor camps, was a common punishment and consisted of tasks such as logging, mining, or tending crops under harsh conditions. Reeducation involved memorizing speeches by Kim Jong-il. …

NGO, refugee, and press reports indicated that there were several types of prisons, detention centers, and camps, including forced labor camps and separate camps for political prisoners. Defectors claimed the camps covered areas as large as 200 square miles. The camps appeared to contain mass graves, barracks, worksites, and other prison facilities.

Conditions in camps for political prisoners are even harsher and feature such pleasantries as “prolonged periods of exposure to the elements; humiliations such as public nakedness; confinement for up to several weeks in small ‘punishment cells’ in which prisoners were unable to stand upright or lie down; being forced to kneel or sit immobilized for long periods; being hung by the wrists; being forced to stand up and sit down to the point of collapse.” Variations on these themes occurred at CIA secret detention facilities, Guantanamo Bay, and, in certain cases, in Afghanistan and Iraq as the result of the Bush administration’s interrogation and detention programs — which, at their root, were modeled on methods taught to U.S. troops to resist torture of the sort practiced by, among others, the North Koreans. So former Vice President Dick Cheney, for instance, can’t call what Euna Lee and Laura Ling may face “torture” on pains of inconsistency. Moral clarity in action.

It’s unclear to me if the distinction between conditions in forced-labor camps and conditions in political reeducation camps is an ironclad one.

Meanwhile, what’s gotten somewhat lost in the justified outrage over Lee and Ling’s conviction is the story that took them to the Chinese border with North Korea in the first place: the plight of North Korean women trafficked into China. This is from that same State Department report, and it hints at the importance of Ling and Lee’s reporting:

There were no known laws specifically addressing the problem of trafficking in persons, and trafficking of women and young girls into and within China continued to be widely reported. Some North Korean women and girls who voluntarily crossed into China were picked up by trafficking rings and sold as brides to Chinese nationals or placed in forced labor. In other cases, North Korean women and girls were lured out of North Korea by the promise of food, jobs, and freedom, only to be forced into prostitution, marriage, or exploitive labor arrangements. A network of smugglers facilitated this trafficking. Many victims of trafficking, unable to speak Chinese, were held as virtual prisoners, and some were forced to work as prostitutes. Traffickers sometimes abused or physically scarred the victims to prevent them from escaping. Officials facilitated trafficking by accepting bribes to allow individuals to cross the border into China.

A different State Department report, this one about human trafficking, found that when the Chinese government obtains women smuggled into the country from North Korea, it treats them “solely as economic migrants” and routinely repatriates them “back to horrendous conditions.”

–

TWI is on Twitter. Please follow us here.

Under international criminal law, defendants have the right to access diplomatic officers of their own state. But American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, detained for nearly two months, haven’t been allowed contact with Western officials since March 30. A South Korean man known only by his surname, Yu, also has been kept from any contact with officials from his country, according to the South’s Unification Ministry.

The Journal contextualizes the Lee/Ling detention within a pattern of recent belligerence from the North after the illness of dictator Kim Jong-Il. Here’s a statement from Reporters Without Borders demanding Lee and Ling’s release.

Take a look at the most recent State Department human rights report on North Korea, updated in February. Under the section forthrightly titled “Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,” it lists that among other tortures, the North Koreans prefer “prolonged periods of exposure to the elements”; “confinement for up to several weeks in small ‘punishment cells’ in which prisoners were unable to stand upright or lie down”; “being forced to kneel or sit immobilized for long periods”; and “being forced to stand up and sit down to the point of collapse.” If these aren’t exactly the “confinement box” or “stress positions” or the “cold cell,” they’re close cousins. Shall we get into a debate about whether stripping someone naked and placing him in a cell chilled to 50 degrees and dousing him with cold water is materially different than “prolonged periods of exposure to the elements”? 

And I wonder how this sounds in Korean: “With respect to physical pain, we have concluded that ‘severe pain’ within the meaning of Section 2340 is pain that is difficult for the individual to endure and is of an intensity akin to the pain accompanying serious physical injury. … We conclude that none of these proposed techniques inflicts such pain. … Section 2340 defines severe mental pain or suffering as ‘the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from’ one of several predicate acts [such as]… (1) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (2) the application or threatened administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; (3) the threat of imminent death; or (4) the threat that any of the preceding acts will be done to another person. … [I]f the methods that you have described do not either in and of themselves constitute one of these acts or as a course of conduct fulfill the predicate act requirement, the prohibition has not been violated.” After all, the SERE techniques that formed the basis for the CIA interrogation regimen emerged from “Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean war,” says the Senate Armed Services Committee, so we’re coming close to full circle here.

Has Kim Jong-Il written his thank-you note to Dick Cheney yet?

Disappointingly, obvious puns were largely absent from the headlines in the major news outlets. Even the wordplay-prone New York Post resorted to a prosaic, if a bit cryptic, title — Kim in Health Mystery. Here’s what the fourth estate had to say:

Kim Had Surgery After Stroke, South Koreans Say (The New York Times)

North Korean Leader’s Illness Not Critical, Official in Seoul Says (Washington Post)

N.Korea denies Kim Jong Il health ‘conspiracies’ (CNN.com)

Kim in Health Mystery (New York Post)

North Korea’s Kim Jong Il may be gravely ill (Los Angeles Times)

Pyongyang Faults Report that Kim is Seriously Ill (The Wall Street Journal)

South Korea says North Korea’s leader believed to be recovering from stroke (Chicago Tribune)