Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves
singularityhub.com
singularityhub.com
Regime that interns its people in death camps? A system that engenders such poverty that people are forced into cannibalism? (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1875007335054132657#)
Couldn't possibly judge. Nope, not with all the similar problems here in the evil ol' US of A.
The U.S. system is not just "too-strict sentencing guidelines" either; the prevalence of rape makes it imo basically an inhumane system. The government will not usually actually rape you (though rape by prison guards is also a problem), but it will put you in conditions that it has known for decades are likely to cause you to be raped. It continues to maintain those conditions and knowingly forces people into them, in effect (probabilistically) sentencing them to be raped. And regular Americans on the street will joke about "pound-you-in-the-ass prisons" or "hope you like the butt sex!", apparently considering this an appropriate, perhaps even good, way to punish criminals, since it adds to the deterrence factor by making the prospect of going to a prison with such conditions a frightening one.
I guess we can make some hierarchy, where maintaining a prison system filled with starving inmates is worse than a rape-filled prison, which is in turn worse than a merely filthy/diseased prison, but it seems sort of pointless to justify things that way. I'd just go after the closest inhumane prison system, which I don't have to travel far to find. (It's also not purely a left-right thing; the left probably talks about it more, and the "tough-on-crime" right downplays the U.S.'s prison conditions, but it's also become a popular cause among Christian groups lately.)
Such politics of resentment lead Soviets in the 1910s-20s to hate the upper class and the "imperialist" West, Nazis in the 1930s to hate the British and the Jews, certain Islamist elements from the 1980s and onward to hate the U.S., and so on. I don't mind a sound criticism of power, but I cannot stand resentment. Because those who resent those in power the most are often those who unscrupulously desire said power for themselves the most.
TL;DR: stop resenting and get back to hacking.
I grew up in a former communist country. There, if you were a critical thinker with a strong personality striving for your own economic well-being, you would generally end up labeled as the enemy of the state. The modern capitalist economy tends to reward such people, yet some still feel resentment (hint: in any system, egalitarian or not, there will be those who feel resentment).
Few would dispute that there are still many ways in which America leads the world, but let's not delude ourselves here: the prison system is not one of them. DPRK is an extreme case compared to the US, but the US is an extreme case compared to much of the industrialized world, and invoking "America-hatred" trivializes an important dialogue.
In general, Europe has some of the best prisons, and some of the worst prisons. France, Italy, Turkey, and Russia have horrendous prisons where in many cases prisoners don't survive their sentences. France's prisons are so historically bad that they've spawned whole revolutions numerous times, and are a common factor in their history. The EU was supposed to improve these conditions but it remains to be seen given they have very little data on how they're run, let alone anything publicly accessible.
In Asia only Japan has decent well run prisons, but their prisons are harsh while still having a high success rate. In the rest of Asia prisons are typically horrible, and even S.Korea has some awful conditions. Last thing I read said they don't feed prisoners and keep them in tiny huts, requiring their relatives to come and feed them. Burma is a massive police state with actual slaves by law.
In Africa, if you remove countries that just don't even have working governments, you find the prisons are also horrible, with the exception of maybe South Africa, but even they've had a history of nasty evil and torture (read about Steve Biko). It's improved a lot, but not nearly as much as it should.
The US is similar to Europe, with some of the worst and some of the best prisons in the world. Now, we're not talking about American legal policy on things like wrongful imprisonment by the LA Crash unit, idiotic "3-strikes your out" laws, or minimum sentencing laws. I'm talking the actual conditions of the prisons in the US as labeled by organizations like Amnesty International. In our case, prisons are generally alright, with a few standout offenses like Sheriff Joe Arpaio in AZ, and most prisons in the south and California. The worst state is definitely California, which makes sense given they've had more complete city wide riots than any other state in the nation and their huge gap between rich and poor.
But, a significant difference between our prison system and many others around the world (even those in Europe) are our laws about open records on how they're run and our recent trend of civilian oversight groups and recitivism prevention. Starting in about 2004 there's been a huge push to increase monitoring of prisons, offenses, guard abuses, and to help parolees stay out of jail. I personally worked on systems that tracked guard abuses at Riker's Island and the NYC DOC, as well as finger print systems for prisons that do early release programs and job release programs.
The biggest problem in American prisons is the advocacy by law enforcement of inmate-on-inmate rape as a sanctioned form of punishment. There's been numerous cases of countries refusing to extradite criminals based purely on our joke that a man will get ass raped in prison. If you wanted to focus your activism and hatred on any one thing to improve our system, it would definitely be eliminating rape.
In general, through my research and my own need to improve prisons, I found that prisons are horrible poorly managed hell holes everywhere. They generally reflect the cultural fear of the dominant members of a region against the "unclean" citizens, outsiders, and the low class. The difference between American prisons and this one in N.Korea is the size of it and the blatant attempt to keep it secret from the rest of the world. Very few countries in the world try to hide prisons, and when they do it's considered horrible, but none of them are hiding a prison that's the size of Manhattan:
Compared to utopia, sure, America is a shithole. But compared to just about any other real place, on just about any other metric, we're doing pretty well. To argue that we somehow don't have the right to call other nations or people out for their atrocities, because we don't compare well to utopia, is ridiculous. We have a duty to call other people out on their bullshit.
It's been my experience that most of the wealthy/privileged in the U.S. are simply unaware of how horrible things are[1]; that it's nicer to believe convenient fictions than be faced with a moral/emotional imperative to "do something". For these and other[2] reasons, America's institutions are more deserving than N.K.'s of American/Western public attention and outrage, proportional to the degree that they violate American values.
[1] e.g. http://bit.ly/mwO0dP
[2] another important reason is that American outrage can actually do something useful in the U.S., but is almost completely impotent w.r.t. N.K.
I thoroughly agree with the first sentence of your second point. I would go further to say that, since almost all of America is wealthy and privileged (compared to the rest of the world), and add in the fact that only ~22% of our citizens have passports, most of us have no fucking clue how horrible things are in much of the world. That's why I think exposing this kind of stuff, and shaming those responsible, is worthwhile.
The gains to be had in America are, relatively, minor compared to the gains that could be achieved for hundreds of millions around the world. Look at the recent events in the middle east. How much of the was precipitated by worldwide outrage over human rights issues for the last 30 years? I don't know, but I can't imagine they didn't bolster the protestors' resolve to some degree.
That's not to say we should ignore the problems here, and obviously people aren't. There's a thousand different versions of the Innocence Project run by people trying to right the perceived wrongs in all segments of American society. But there's enough outrage to spread around. To say we don't, as individuals, have the time or energy to focus a miniscule amount of attention on the worst off of those around the world is ridiculous.
That's not to say what you mention about the legal system isn't screwed up, it's just to fix the penal system you have to focus on things the penal system can change. They can't change the 3-strikes laws, but they can change early release programs, surveillance, oversight, IT budgets, conditions, training programs, guard training, etc.
Say every American was upset at N.K.'s horrible treatment of prisoners. So what? What's going to happen -- the U.S. would need to go through China before it could touch N.K. And bombing a country on humanitarian grounds is a little absurd.
But if every American were upset about the penal system, or about "3 strikes laws", or prison rape, the problem would be solved almost right away (indeed, American complacency and populism caused some of these problems in the first place).
There's also the rape angle as discussed above. Here in Australia, there's no real mindset about rape in prisons, but when I see Americans discuss it, it's either joked about or implicitly/explicitly declared to be 'part of the prison experience' and that you somehow deserve it if you go to jail... and it seems no-one is interested in wondering if it really is justice for a person imprisoned due to carrying a small amount of personal drugs to be raped as part of their 'debt to society'.
I guess it's the old 'glass houses' situation.
Is there a country/region that does it "right"?
Ten years and 1.5 billion Norwegian kroner ($252 million) in the making, Halden is spread over 75 acres (30 hectares) of gently sloping forest in southeastern Norway. The facility boasts amenities like a sound studio, jogging trails and a freestanding two-bedroom house where inmates can host their families during overnight visits.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1986002,00.... / http://www.good.is/post/halden-prison-who-cares-if-it-coddle...
Personally, I think that prisons need to be both retribution and rehabilitation at the same time, and base their mode of operation on the Military, but that's my personal opinion. Based on that I'd say the Japanese probably come the closest, with the actual Military being second. I say this not because I don't care about prisoners, but because I know first hand that the way bootcamp operates is a fast efficient way to retrain people who are unwilling to be trained. It also doesn't do this with violence (anymore) so it would be humane without being "soft".
If however you think prisons should be about rehabilitation then, I believe Denmark or Sweden have the best. They also have a highly homogeneous society with only one main race to deal with, so that's why that works for them. In other words, it's easier to retrain people to fit into society if everyone is already from that same society.
Other than that, they just suck everywhere.
Right. And the calorie counts, and the min / max temperatures. And the habeas corpus, and the due process prior to incarceration. And the press freedom to investigate. And the public election of legislators making the laws defining criminality, and executives running prisons. Otherwise, no difference.
See, in North Korea, when you start a "push to increase monitoring of prisons", you go _into_ the prison, do not see a judge, do not pass Go. And your family. And you don't come out. This alone strikes me as a really important difference.
Maybe people aren't sufficiently exercised about US prison conditions. But suggesting those are the same as North Korea only flips the "not credible" bit for every further comment you make.
There are prisons in the United States where a significant percentage of the population are raped, and there are prisons in the United States where no inmates are raped. Prisoner sexual abuse isn't an inevitable consequence of incarceration, and we need to stop assuming it is.
Then start reading literature from Amnesty International: http://www.amnesty.org/
Despite what people think, AI isn't about any kind of "liberal agenda", they're just about wrongful imprisonment, torture, and basic human rights.
That'll get you started in statistics, and then you can start looking for the various Dept. of Correction websites in each state to see what initiatives they have, and you might even be able to get at their stats (although usually you have to ask or FOIA to get them).
Do you know if this is correlated with overcrowding of prisons (actual capacity vs. intended capacity)? You mentioned California prisons are some of the worst, to my knowledge they are also the most overcrowded?
What strikes me in a comparative analysis of the US penal system is not quality of treatment, but the perverse economic incentives promoting hoarding such a large percentage of the population in them. I would argue the biggest problem in the American penal system is public policy structuring unrehabilitated prisoners as assets:
1a. The standard contract for private prisons seems to be money per prisoner housed rather than money per prisoner rehabilitated.
1b. Each prisoner generates further revenue for the private prison as a labor source.
1c. Thus on a balance sheet, each additional unrehabilitated prisoner becomes an asset to be kept rather than a liability to be reduced.
2. Allowing drugs inside prisons becomes an efficiency gain, as prisoners failing drug tests results in assets being held longer.
3a. When prisoners are housed in prisons in rural districts, they count towards that districts population for purposes of calculating representation in state legislature. Even though prisoners cannot vote and are primarily from urban districts.
3b. Prisoners then also become an asset rather than liabilities for politicians in rural districts by giving them undue representative power. Politicians then are incentivized to increase this asset by supporting minimum sentencing laws.
Now there may be no direct agency or conscious intent to the above, but historically changing the underlying structure of economic incentives can have profound positive effects on individual behavior: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/09/09/129757852/pop-quiz... . I'd be interested to know if this perspective fits with your knowledge of the subject.
While the scale of this issue is completely different, the US does have the tendency to use secret prisons - in different countries. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site#Suspected_black_site...
What really bothers me about those sites is that they don't seem to be monitored by local government at all. The US is many times accused of torturing the prisoners in countries which don't allow such practice.
Are there bad prisons in the US? No doubt. Is the average US inmate experience anything like what is the RULE in these gulags? No. Does the scale between the two matter? Yes. Do the crimes (sometimes "crimes") and due process issues matter? Yes. Can we go on and on with specific, provable differences which make the NK citizen's experience far more horrifying? Yes.
Problems with the prison system in the US belong in their OWN THREAD, where they don't distract from THIS PROBLEM. The fact that some folks feel the overwhelming urge to bring them up here speaks a lot about what they think is important: Scoring points against the US. The US prison system is not relevant to the NK prison system. This isn't a game. NK doesn't get to pick out worst case practices from the US to justify its sweeping unchecked abuses. And it certainly doesn't deserve the aid of willing amateur PR people on random internet message boards.
NK is the same country that quietly let millions of its people starve while it spent a large fraction of its total wealth trying to build the tallest hotel in the world! That's the philosophy and those are the priorities of the organization behind these gulags. But you're telling me the REAL story here is the US prison system?
But this is why NK gets to go merrily about its way starving and torturing its citizens.
No it's not. There are 3 foreign policy "sticks" that could be used to end this situation:
1. Invasion
2. Sanctions
3. Shaming
Aggregation of frustration is not one of them.
They have differing requirements in order to be effective:
1. Requires a weak enemy military and existent domestic political opposition to the regime. Internal dissonance exists and your forces are not over-leveraged on other fronts.
2. Requires the entity to already be integrated in the global economy. There is something real you can withhold that will not cause additional mass starvation.
3. Requires high social proof. Those doing the shaming can easily deflect accusations of hypocrisy to rapidly build a global and regional (Chinese) consensus.
Notice that no conditions necessary for 1 or 2 are present. This leaves 3 as one of the most obvious routes to discuss. As the US currently has the world's largest population of prisoners, it makes it hard for the USA to end the prisoner problem in North Korea as effectively as it could. Discourse will necessarily gravitate towards how the US can improve its social proof by striving for exemplary domestic policies. It's not a matter of "moral equivalence", but of being open to moral improvement when others remind us of our faults. Unless we can think of a new kind of stick, this may remain the best way to help those in North Korea.
Just spend some time listening to NPR. Constant propaganda telling the listener to respect our government, its institutions, its parties, etc. Why does anyone take American political parties seriously? There is a lot of energy spent propagandizing us about their greatness.
Why should any American care about any foreign prison when rape is used as an unofficial form of punishment in US prisons?
The only purpose of this sort of story is to feed Americans' appetite for feelings of superiority and to allow us to ignore the horrific conditions facing American prisoners.
So unless you think that conditions for North Koreans would be improved by American bombs, I suggest you spend your energy worrying about problems that you can actually make an impact on, such as US prisons, and stop being self-righteous about problems in other countries.
Of course that says nothing about how bad the prisons are. But it probably does say something about the quality of the justice system as a whole.
just to clarify for others. The high conviction success rate in japan has to do with at least two things:
1. Only cases which have high chances of success are pursued (so you get cases where "people fell down a staircase".
2. Detainees have little expectation of talking to an attorney any time soon. Confessions, co-erced or otherwise, are sought after with vigor by the police. From Wikipedia "Confessions are often obtained after long periods of questioning by police. This can, at times, take weeks or months during which time the suspect is in detention and can be prevented from contacting a lawyer or family.[2] Thus, since the suspect is put through prolonged strain, stress and pressure, the reliability of such confessions can be questioned. To Japanese citizens and police, however, the arrest itself already creates the presumption of guilt which needs only to be verified via a confession.[2] The interrogation reports prepared by police and prosecutors and submitted to the trial courts often constitute the central evidence considered when weighing the guilt or innocence of the suspect.[3]"
Rape seems to be very prevalent in South Africa's overcrowded prisons, and South African society seems to actively condone prison rape.
Regarding your Biko point, he was murdered before he was sentenced. Although political prisoners under Apartheid were kept under harsh conditions, after visiting Robben Island, I got the impression that conditions for them, overall, were better than those of general prisoners (especially by the mid-late 1980's).
Overall, I think that prison conditions, for general criminal suspects/convicts, have not gotten much better, although there is greater transparency, than in the past.
See this article on a UK extradition request, where prison conditions are being used as an argument to block extradition of a murder suspect to SA: http://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/shrien-s-gay-risk-defence-1.1...
My "minaway" is 10,000 again. Old timer? Have you tried this yet? It's a revelation. You will thank for me this advice. Noprocrast=yes, minaway 10000+. You might code instead, or drink whiskey and read a good book, or find some less exasperating place to rant at like-minded people online. Anything else you do will be better than HN on May 12, 2011.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
This is off-topic. There is essentially no chance that anything useful will shake out from the ensuing discussion. It's noise, and it crowds out the signal.
I'm glad that tptacek's post is currently the #1 post.
The conversation may have gone off-topic, but it didn't start that way.
Actually, no. If you ignore all the stories you don't want to see, you allow a site like this one to drift towards the lowest common denominator. Promoting what you like is one part of helping create a community you will enjoy, but actively discouraging the stories/comments you don't want to see is another part. An even more important part, if you want to see your community stay focused and true to the spirit it started out with in the face of an increasing (and increasingly varied/diluted) user base and funny pictures of cats.
Flag the thread like the rest of us and don't be an internet martyr about it.
If it is the first, this brings us back to the "what should be covered by HN" debate. I, for one enjoy discussing matters unrelated to C++, Erlang, VCs, YC, Apple, etc. every now and then. If you don't agree, there are tons of other topics on HN.
The second point is more self-evident: of course it is amateurish, we don't have foreign policy experts here (I think). Yet we are (mostly) intelligent people tackling a problem with the small number of facts at hand. Your statement then becomes self-referential, because by posting it to this thread, you add nothing to the discussion.
Even without understanding the language, just looking at all the goods would make people start wondering why they are being made to suffer so.
Sears catalog was full of every day practical stuff from clothing to household needs, tools, etc.
The US government should have bought millions of leftover catalogs as propaganda to drop on countries like this. No bombs needed.
Sadly it seems they stopped making it in 1993 (strangely well before internet shopping got started)
Here: http://www.sears.com/shc/s/nb_10153_12605_NB_Catalogs?adCell...
It looks like they separated it into a few distinct catalogs, which is kindof sad.
Yeah, naïve fantasy. But except for very slow strategies (like supporting the thin strands of journalism/information flow inside the country), I can't think of much else that can be done that doesn't include the look of military adventurism and the big risk of needing to rebuild one and a half countries. Even air dropping food directly to towns without the propaganda would risk Seoul.
Who's going to want to be a martyr when you're Tivo'ing something at home microwaving a Hot-Pocket?
Edit: To all downvoters: Perhaps this statement is at a wrong place, but yes, these countries (in the Middle East or Africa) might be much better off if the developed countries and China would not be after their natural resources.
I believe North Korea is facing another famine this year. Given the conditions in North Korea and the apparent iron grip its regime has on power is it better not to provide food aid? I can't decide for myself if it's better, for the long term, to let the nation starve and not help the people out or to feed them. I don't see a clear cut right or wrong way to view aid to North Korea. It's a disturbing case.
It's weird how we decide what people deserve "liberation" and what people we just shrug our shoulders at and keep supporting, in one form or another, the government that is oppressing them.
Though the conditions of labor in China seem shocking to comfortable Americans, they are not, in general, "slave prison labor".
Say you want to build a new building. The workers are brought to the construction site, and they live on the site 24/7, taking shifts to sleep in a small cot. When they are not sleeping they are working (7 days a week). They do not see their families for months during the job. They work on site for several months, and will only receive pay after the building is done. If you have to leave the site for some reason (say a sick or dying relative, or you get sick yourself) before the building is done, you forfeit all your pay. You could have worked 6 months on a job, and if you hurt yourself, you go home without even $1.
It's a deplorable condition being forced to live where you work. It's a prison, even if voluntary.
"Using their vast pools of free labour, China's prisons produce everything from green tea to coal, paperclips to footballs, medical gloves to high-grade optical equipment."
http://www.goiam.org/index.php/news/iam-news/2007-iam-news-a...
"Prison Labor is also being exploited in China, according to executive director of the Laogai Research Foundation Harry Wu, who said prison laborers make garments, electronic components, coffee mugs and toys that end up in U.S. stores. “The Chinese government continues to use forced labor to make goods, condones sweatshop conditions in its factories, and refuses to allow workers to create independent unions-- is it really any wonder that low-quality, harmful toys are being exported to the US and into the hands of our children?” said Wu, who spent 19 years in a Chinese prison.
Wal-Mart was singled out for their role in allowing the exploitation of cheap Chinese labor. “Wal-Mart bears a lion’s share of responsibility for pushing the toy industry into a region where product safety and worker safety inspection is virtually nonexistent,” said Bama Athreya, executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum."
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa45502.000/hf...
1998 FORCED LABOR IN CHINA - HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITEE ON INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS
I do know that the several thousand people my employer has in manufacturing there are not slave labor.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152223
The most notable video was Children of the Secret State (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1875007335054132657) - I recommend everyone watch this...
It's amazing that such a thing can exist, and when I really think about it the existence of something like North Korea raises disturbing questions about the nature of human consciousness.
How can we claim to have free will or to even have consciousness at all if something like North Korea can actually exist?
I admire America's prominence in infrastructure and technology, it's continuing domination on a global scale, but what good is all that power when over 40,000 people and rising are murdered because of a drug war for which they are complicit next door?
It's great to try to solve problems that seem so fruitless and terrible, but isn't it akin to pointing your finger at a mirror?
How about pointing the finger at the offending country, rather than at it's bordering ones?
Do we need to excoriate and condemn the Kim regime and his policies and call for a revolution within their borders? Absolutely. Should we shame bordering countries into liberating them in the name of "freedom" (of which, said bordering country's people are themselves not free)?
I believe the US is firmly (and some would say inexorably) ensconced in two wars (and on the ragged edge of 3 or some would say 4) trying to "liberate" the Middle East. How's that going for us?
The US has a very generous amnesty and refugee program, and if you can prove in court that you will be killed or prosecuted in your home country then you're granted residency. I personally know 3 people who have undergone this process. If they tried the same in China, they would have been swung right back over the border.
... unless you're a little boy from communist Cuba who wanted to live free in America but was repatriated at gunpoint in the middle of the night[1].
Elian Gonzales faced no such risks.
You're easy ;)
In the 80s around a million fled violence (from repressive governments, civil wars and paramilitary groups) in central America seeking asylum in the US. They were largely turned away due to political considerations (i.e. the administration wanted to maintain ties with the governments of those countries). You can read about it in this wiki entry about the sanctuary movement that developed to help some of those people in spite of the US government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_movement
EDIT: s/sin/stone/
Whereas, China has a long history of supporting North Korea despite it being a ruthless dictatorship.
Would the drug problem exist without the CIA?
a) Yes.
b) Yes but slightly less bad.
c) No.
'c' is unreasonable 'a' and 'b' are reasonable answers.
Now:
Would the concentration camps exist with or without the North Korean Government's help?
'c' is the only reasonable answer.
Well governments have been putting people in concentration camps long before North Korea decided to do it.
In 2005 when the assualt weapons ban was lifted the cartels were able to get their hands on a cheaper and better source of weapons. The balance of power shifted more to the cartels as they were able to get better weapons. We should be helping Mexico because the cartels are beginning to look like an insurgency.
Edit: If you're downvoting me can you at least try to explain why it's not our fault that our weapons sold in the US are being used to murder civilians and contribute to a narco-state? Felipe Calderon even said this as recently as yesterday on Bloomberg.
Eventually the regime will collapse, and NK will become a humanitarian project that will dwarf anything that has come before it.
Currently this is done in a haphazard way, through NATO (e.g. Libya) or countries acting by themselves (e.g. France in Ivory Coast).
Thinking of the practical problems clearly shows that this is an impossible idea. But on a theoretical level, is it valid (e.g. where does this force take its authority from)? I think so.
Add to that the fact that life expectancy around the world would probably dip sharply due to the widespread effects of radiation.
It is a known fact that North Korea has at least 6-8 nuclear weapons. It's also a know fact that China will defend North Korea if it feels the situation is not in its best interests, as they did the last time we invaded.
There are worse things than a prolonged limited regional conflict. Just because you have not experienced these within your lifetime does not mean they won't happen.
Flashback to 1985. The Soviet puppet government was committing all sorts of atrocities against people in Afghanistan. Clearly the moral imperative was to stand up for the "freedom fighters", right?
One problem with this would be the "saving fish from drowning" syndrome, e.g. intervening certain acts where the "victims" are all too willing. An example is France's draconian recent law (which I totally back) against burqas: evidently these women are doing this willingly (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/10/france-burqa-law...), so how can our force intervene?
The more you think about it, the more you realize that, although the current situation is unacceptable and despicable, there are no clear alternatives to it. This is indeed a sad thought.
That's great until you replace "North Korea" with your unpopular region. Asking that same question right now about the US would probably come close to passing.
The western world is founded on the rights of the individual above that of the collective. Your suggestions are counter to this philosophy.
That's part of the problem: The moment you declare a regime as morally bankrupt, you are stating your own goals are somehow more enlightened and worthy. In some cases this works, like against the Nazis, but in most, like the Yugoslav war you cite, it's only a matter of opinion - For every Srebrenica there is a Krajina, unfortunately. The people involved in such generational hatred do not escape their own guilt, regardless of which particular side they may be on in any particular indecent. Getting involved in these quagmires often only intensifies the conflicting hatred for a later date. Even worse, who then protects us from the protectors?
Your desire is a noble one but unfortunately completely at odds with human nature.
Of course these are just extensions of our own personal hatreds and prejudices. The best way to change them is to change these feelings within yourself.
I believe in cultural relativism only weakly, I firmly believe there are well-defined wrongs: female circumcision is wrong (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/opinion/12kristof.html?_r=...), putting your own citizens in concentration camps is wrong, etc. To say that these acts are unequivocally wrong has nothing to do with "our own personal hatreds and prejudices".
In other words: the best way to change the world is to change the person looking back at you in the mirror. The extension of your hatred, your desire for revenge, your jealousy, your moral outrage is all these things you are complaining about.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2011/04/north-kore...
makes for very interesting reading about attempts to help the common people of North Korea know what is going on in their own country and in the outside world.
We allow these horrors to occur. That's not a judgment on anyone; I'm definitely part of the problem because I'm not part of the solution (to borrow a cliche).
But what can we do? That's a real question. I want to know what we can do. Yes, we can sign Amnesty International petitions, which is a step, but what else?
The HN community is a problem-solving community. Human rights violations of all sizes and shapes (including and especially the North Korea concentration camps) are a major problem to solve. What can technology do to help? Can we solve fatigue re: "prolonged exposure to blaring 24 hour news streams that fry sensibilities with their constant emotional appeals"? Can we mobilize people and keep them engaged in helping people they don't know?
Making the whole problem somehow relevant economically to US or international community might be helpful, although I have no idea how to do that.
“There are growing concerns that North Korea could be selling the development rights of mineral resources to China at a very cheap price as the relationships between the two Koreas worsen and North Korea has no other market to turn to,” said Yoon Hong-gi, an official with Korea Resources Corp.
- Keep sharing the link for a week/month on Facebook, hopefully making it viral
- Setup a Facebook page for this, asking the same question "What can we do?"
- It has to start from within, see Tunisia, Egypt etc.
- Making sure folks inside North Korea can access info via proxy servers if it's blocked
Anyone who has studied any geography could see that would be near impossible.
200,000 in those two valleys? Impossible.
This town/prison/concentration camp/detention center (or two valleys) would be lucky to have 10,000 people.
We better not let the facts get in the way of chance to bash North Korea.
For a slave labor camp, it would be easy to fit 100 people in each unit with two story bunk beds. That's already 50,000 people. The units may be more crammed than I imagine, and I may have missed miscounted these housing units. 200K sounds like an upper limit but it's not impossible.
Does your government and leadership reflect everything you stand for?
HTH. HAND.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/US_...
US prisoners are afforded many more human rights than the prisoners in these camps. They are fed and housed humanely. They are also given a fair trial as defined by the constitution before they are incarcerated and they serve specific prison terms with options for parole.
Or are you just deflecting so that you don't have to try to help anyone?
(just a line of reasoning, not my endorsement or something)
And there wouldn't be millions of US losses, we would never put ourselves in that situation. It would be relentless airstrikes aiming at disabling air defenses/artillery positions and decapitation of the regime. The problem would be mass civilian casualties in south korea.
Perhaps you should check history before being sarcastic next time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War
Not defending North Korea. But I'm a strong proponent of "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" mentality. Let's take a good hard look at ourselves before deeming others violent, ignorant, dictatorial, or cruel.
Perhaps if they were 200,000 people you knew... or even one you knew.
Our prison system is far from perfect but it doesn't compare to what these people are going through.
In both cases, people are being denied their freedom and taken away from their families, for engaging in activities that hurt no one, not even themselves.
It's certainly true that American prisons are better. But given the OP's definition: "enduring starvation, torture, and rape while performing hard labor", we do hit a couple of checkboxes. My understanding is that prison rape, with guards just looking the other way, is still a real problem in America. And take a look down at Guantanamo for (an admittedly small number of) people who are imprisoned and tortured "without legal recourse", as the OP says.
So it's just a matter of degree. There's certainly a good deal of ground for comparison.
But why do we automatically view ourselves on the correct side of that line? I've we're engaged, as a matter of policy, in activities that many or most Americans believe to be evil, doesn't that put the drawing of the line into question?
So yes, lets not go ranking countries by evilness - but North Korea is so beyond that that your equivocating is offensive.
It's not nearly so simple. If we drew the line according to what portion of our population we imprison, then the USA would be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with North Korea, with the rest of the world nearly an order of magnitude lower.
Consider https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23pr...
The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, ...
China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. ...
The United States comes in first, too, ... in order of the incarceration rates. It has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. (If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.)
The only other major industrialized nation that even comes close is Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The others have much lower rates. England's rate is 151; Germany's is 88; and Japan's is 63.
The median among all nations is about 125, roughly a sixth of the American rate.
Why do you think the situation is different in North Korea?
Yes, it's not simple. A single metric will not draw a meaningful line.
Compared to the average person in North Korea (imprisoned or not) American prisoners are very well treated. They have balanced diets, and can read anything they please. Even if everyone in America was imprisoned, I think America would still come out as a more humane dictatorship than North Korea if half of what I've read about that country is true.
Amnesty International estimates there's around 200,000 "political prisoners" in North Korea, out of a population of 25 million.
I think I'd rather be in North Korea.
That so many people in this thread are trying to suggest that the United States is somehow worse than North Korea or that people from the United States can't criticize North Korea saddens me. The United States' prison system has obvious problems. All of North Korea is a totalitarian hellhole.
Due to their own culture. At least they have a choice. They aren't forced to rob, steal, and kill their way through life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...
North Koran Population: 23,906,070
Estimated "Prisoners": 200,000
Percentage in Custody: 0.83%
United States Population: 307,006,550
Estimated Prisoners: 2,292,133
Percentage in Custody: 0.74%
When "Thou" is plain fucking evil, it's perfectly acceptable to be holier-than-thou.
The percentage of people in prison in the U.S. is grotesquely large. It's much larger than any other nation with comparable economic/religious/political freedoms. The U.S. judicial/prison system is quite bad in my opinion but the exact point that fijall was making was lost on me. Hence my request for a clarification.
I will add that the entire nation of North Korea should be viewed as a giant prison. This makes North Korea incomparable to other nations. It's unique in this respect.
1. It is only hypocritical for the speaker if he supports America's prison-happy justice system. If he opposes it, or has misgivings, or is undecided, it is not hypocritical to oppose North Korea.
2. Even if it is hypocrisy, that doesn't diminish his words in any way, just your personal opinion of him. If his criticism is invalid, it can be disputed directly. If his criticism is valid, he could be as flawed and terrible a human being as we can imagine and his criticism would still be valid.
#2 is the key point. Arguing that his words are hypocritical is a kind of Ad Hominem Abuse, something generally discouraged on HN as a kind of intellectual laziness, a rhetorical appeal to emotion rather than an analysis of the argument being debated.