North Korea=Slave State

[NATO AIR]

Christopher Hitchens is absolutely right. Now how can America help these refugees?

http://www.slate.com/id/2117846/

Worse Than 1984
North Korea, slave state.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, May 2, 2005, at 10:48 AM PT

How extraordinary it is, when you give it a moment's thought, that it was only last week that an American president officially spoke the obvious truth about North Korea. In point of fact, Mr. Bush rather understated matters when he said that Kim Jong-il's government runs "concentration camps." It would be truer to say that the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea, as it calls itself, is a concentration camp. It would be even more accurate to say, in American idiom, that North Korea is a slave state.

This way of phrasing it would not have the legal implication that the use of the word "genocide" has. To call a set of actions "genocidal," as in the case of Darfur, is to invoke legal consequences that are entailed by the U.N.'s genocide convention, to which we are signatories. However, to call a country a slave state is to set another process in motion: that strange business that we might call the working of the American conscience.

It was rhetorically possible, in past epochs of ideological confrontation, for politicians to shout about the "slavery" of Nazism and of communism, and indeed of nations that were themselves "captive." The element of exaggeration was pardonable, in that both systems used forced labor and also the threat of forced labor to coerce or to terrify others. But not even in the lowest moments of the Third Reich, or of the gulag, or of Mao's "Great Leap Forward," was there a time when all the subjects of the system were actually enslaved.

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[waltky]

Child labor exploitation starts young in No. Korea...

Report: North Korea exploitation of workers begins in childhood
June 14, 2017 -- North Korea sends tens of thousands of forced laborers to work outside the country annually – and the system works because many North Koreans supply free labor to the regime as children.

Voice of America reported Wednesday Pyongyang has frequently claimed children in the country have "nothing to envy" but the reality is harsh for young people of less privileged backgrounds. A teenage defector who escaped to the South told VOA she was forced to provide manual labor as a young girl in elementary school. The defector, who goes under the pseudonym of Kim Ji-yeon, said as a third and fourth-grade student at an elementary school in South Pyongan Province, she had to carry gravel to road construction sites or bring sand to sports grounds – work that should be carried out by adults. "Small things a child could bring, I was required to carry without condition," Kim said, adding the biggest challenge was carrying rocks and sand on the coldest winter days or the hottest summer months.

North Korean youths are required to carry material to construction sites after school and in harsh weather conditions, a defector says.​

North Korea continues to deploy a low-wage adult work force to countries like Russia and China despite international condemnations, but work-related accidents are drawing attention to their plight. Human Rights Watch issued a report on Wednesday on working conditions at seven World Cup stadium sites in Russia, where researchers documented worker exploitation, non-payment of wages, wage delays and dangerous working conditions. A global trade union has reported 17 worker deaths at Russia's World Cup stadium sites, according to HRW.

North Korean laborers are included in the death toll, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported. A North Korean man was found dead while working on a football stadium in St. Petersburg earlier this year, according to Josimar magazine in Norway. Russia is one of the top destinations for North Korea forced laborers, who are sent to work in labor-intensive industries in the country to earn foreign currency for the Kim Jong Un regime. It's estimated about 40,000 North Koreans work in the country.

Report: North Korea exploitation of workers begins in childhood

See also:

Report: U.S. citizen was detained in North Korea for pro-West material
June 14, 2017 -- A U.S. citizen who is being held in North Korea on charges of "hostile acts" against the Kim Jong Un regime may actually have faced different charges at the time of his arrest, according to an eyewitness.

James Leigh, a Canadian visitor to North Korea, told Radio Free Asia he was in the same detention room as Tony Kim, aka Kim Sang Duk, who was detained April 22. Leigh and Kim may not have seen each other, as a room divider separated the two men, but Leigh said he heard North Korean security agents accuse "Professor Kim" of spreading "a pro-West curriculum" at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, a school that opened in 2010 as the first privately funded institution in North Korea. The North Korean side claimed they were detaining him because he had been teaching unauthorized material and engaging in inappropriate activities, Leigh told RFA.

The statement from Leigh contradicts the more serious claim North Korea made in May. "During his time in our country, U.S. citizen Kim Sang Duk attempted to overthrow the state, a hostile crime. According to our laws, he was arrested at Pyongyang International Airport at 8 a.m., April 22," KCNA stated in May, while providing no further information on his actions. Leigh said he was detained in the room at Pyongyang's Sunan Airport for four days on charges of spying on North Korea military facilities. Leigh also said North Korea security claimed he was spying on behalf of U.S. President Donald Trump, and that he had been sent to assassinate Kim Jong Un.

Leigh was eventually released while Kim remained in the country. The witness also said North Korea authorities did not use force against him, but were tough. During his detention, Leigh said he was provided with one meal a day, and slept on a blanket on the floor. North Korea released another hostage, Otto Warmbier, after 17 months of captivity on Tuesday. There are now three U.S. citizens being held in the country.

Report: U.S. citizen was detained in North Korea for pro-West material