The BBC has an article on North Korea’s slave labor system based on a report released recently by the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korea Human Rights:
Life of slaves, not human beings
Generations of South Korean prisoners of war are being used as slave labour in North Korean coal mines to generate money for the regime and its weapons programme, according to a report released by a human rights organisation. The BBC has taken a closer look at the allegations.
“When I see slaves shackled and dragged on TV, I see myself,” Choi Ki-sun told me. He was one of an estimated 50,000 prisoners seized by North Korea at the end of the Korean War in 1953.
“When we were dragged to labour camps, we were at gun point, lined up with armed guards around. What else could this be if not slave labour?”
Mr Choi (not his real name) said he continued to work in a mine in North Hamgyeong province alongside around 670 other prisoners of war (POWs) until his escape, 40 years later.
You can read the rest at the link, but the article goes on to discuss the songbun system and how someone’s class can sentence them to slave labor as well. For those that have closely followed this issue the fate of Korean War POWs, the songbun system, and North Korea’s slave labor camps is nothing new.
Clearly the NKHR is trying to remind people of the regime’s brutality likely because there is an effort by the engagement crowd to once again appease the Kim regime for little to nothing in return. If the engagers want to give Kim Jong-un his dream deal, than the American public should clearly understand the brutality of the regime they want to prop up.
Bonnie Kristian writing in Business Insider makes this one claim I can agree with in her article, that the Kim regime will not denuclearize:
Kim at what was said to be a missile test site at an undisclosed location in North Korea, May 15, 2017.
If Biden and his team are serious about making headway on their first two strategic goals – threat reduction and humanitarian gains on the Korean Peninsula – they must drop the third. For progress with North Korea, forget denuclearization.
I have been saying this for many years that North Korea will never completely denuclearize. The Kim regime has seen what happened to Saddam and Gaddafi after they gave up their WMD programs, plus nukes is one military advantage they have over the South Koreans to level the military playing field with them. Nuclear weapons are clearly extremely important to regime security.
With that all said the rest of Kristian’s article I do not agree with:
Working-level diplomacy by the Biden administration could accomplish a nuclear freeze, regular inspections of Kim’s arsenal, or even some reduction of his nuclear stockpile or missile systems. It could produce, seven decades late, a peace treaty to officially end the Korean War. It could bargain for concessions from Pyongyang by offering cessation of US sanctions that harm ordinary North Koreans. It could permit expanded, Korean-directed engagement between North and South Korea, including trade and reconnection of divided families.
A nuclear freeze does not cost the Kim regime anything and in return they get sanctions dropped, all the free money from South Korean engagement, and a Korean War peace treaty to advance their confederation strategy. This is Kim Jong-un’s dream deal!
This is where Kristian is totally wrong:
Working-level diplomacy by the Biden administration could accomplish a nuclear freeze, regular inspections of Kim’s arsenal, or even some reduction of his nuclear stockpile or missile systems. It could produce, seven decades late, a peace treaty to officially end the Korean War. It could bargain for concessions from Pyongyang by offering cessation of US sanctions that harm ordinary North Koreans. It could permit expanded, Korean-directed engagement between North and South Korea, including trade and reconnection of divided families.
A nuclear freeze costs the Kim regime nothing and they can end it at a time of their choosing. In return for essentially doing nothing they would get sanctions dropped, free money from South Korean engagement, and a Korean War peace treaty to advanced their Confederation Strategy; this is Kim Jong-un’s dream deal!
Kristian is willing to give Kim Jong-un his dream deal because she thinks this will happen:
It could take steps toward making North Korea a far more normal country, opening the “hermit kingdom” to the global culture and economy and giving its people a shot at deprograming themselves from their government’s sadistic brainwashing. And it could ultimately lay the groundwork for a new era in North Korean foreign relations, one which might mature someday, probably long after this administration is over, into a denuclearized and even democratic Pyongyang.
As long as the Kim regime is in power North Korea is never going to be normal no matter what deal is cut with them. The Kim regime is never going to be democratic either. The engagement crowd has for decades been making these claims.
They continue to make these claims even when dropping sanctions and engagement deals with South Korea have been done before and all the Kim regime did was use the money to modernize their military and advance their nuclear & ballistic missile programs. The regime is not interested in greatly increasing the living standards of the North Korean people other than the regime elite in Pyongyang. They want to keep the general population poor and reliant on the regime and indoctrinated with their propaganda.
I believe any deal with North Korea should focus on the removal of their frontline artillery systems and troop deployment along the DMZ. This should be followed by scrapping their intermediate and intercontinental ballistic missile programs. There are many other concessions I think the regime should make, but these two are both real concessions by the regime that improves both ROK and American security.
This shows how little President Trump understands the Kim regime. Having an American President taking him home makes Kim look weak and goes against the carefully crafted image that Kim projects in North Korea. There is just no way he could have accepted that offer:
The three-part series, titled “Trump Takes on the World,” discloses new details about Trump and Kim’s ultimately unsuccessful negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear program.
It looks like Kim Jong-un is trying to make himself look more legitimate to English readers:
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is now using “president” as his official title in English, instead of “chairman” as he has used in the past, according to the North’s state media.
The English service of the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) has been using president rather than chairman since Feb. 12 a report about Kim’s attendance at a Lunar New Year performance with leading members of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK).
Since then, the KCNA has been referring to him as the “general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea and president of the State Affairs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).” The DPRK is North Korea’s official name.
In the North Korean case, it is more accurate to ascribe its population’s poverty to the regime’s policy choices. It chooses to underinvest in health care and infrastructure; to allow the military to eat up something like 1/3 of GDP; to reject aid offers bc of conditionality
It has been speculated that North Korea would likely test the Biden administration at some point with a provocation and this March may be when they do it:
U.S. Forces Korea Commander Gen. Robert Abrams, third from left, inspects a joint military exercise between South Korea and the United States in this October 2019 photo. / Korea Times file
While North Korea is expected to respond strongly to an envisaged combined military drill between South Korea and the United States, including a show of force, Seoul has few options to properly tame Pyongyang’s anger which will likely lead to heightening tensions on the Korean Peninsula, according to diplomatic observers, Monday.
However, they say it is a silver lining that the North’s possible provocation would not be enough to spoil the South Korean government’s peace initiative as the totalitarian state also remains cautious about its acts negatively affecting the new U.S. administration’s review of policy toward it.
The allies are now discussing holding the annual springtime drill, which will be proceeded under the form of computer-simulated command post training, in the second week of March, with them fine-tuning the details such as how to program it, according to military officials.
However, given that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned against the “war game,” it is highly likely that the North Korean regime will stage a military provocation. The Kim regime denounced the joint exercise as a rehearsal for an invasion.
#DPRK celebrates the 79th anniversary of the birth of its second ruler, #KimJongIl, Feb 16. I guess "Mr. Il" (per "Hans Blix" in #TeamAmerica) shall forever be remembered as the "Father of the Bomb."
4 years ago today, Feb 13, #KimJongUn had his half-brother, Jong Nam, killed with VX nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur Int'l Airport. On Feb 15, 1997, Kim Jong Il had his nephew, Ri Han Il, shot in SK for writing a book on the Kim family. #DPRK terrorism extends far beyond its borders. pic.twitter.com/TDjwgGUkPo
A poster is displayed on a street in Pyongyang marking the 73rd anniversary of the foundation of the Korean People’s Army in this Feb. 8 photo. AFP
North Korea ranked the lowest in a world democracy index last year for the 16th consecutive year, according to a recent report.
The reclusive regime placed at the bottom among the 167 countries reviewed, with an overall score of 1.08 out of 10, according to the Democracy Index 2020 published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research division of the British weekly The Economist.
The North has ranked the lowest in the EIU index since the agency began compiling related data in 2006.
The agency classified Pyongyang as an “authoritarian regime” out of four designations, which included “full democracy,” “flawed democracy” and “hybrid regime.”
