If you've ever wondered why George Bush lists North Korea as part of the Axis of Evil check out this report from the U.S. Commission on Human Rights in North Korea. Following is just a small portion of the total report:
There are between 5,000 and 50,000 prisoners per kwan-li-so (prison compound), totaling perhaps some 150,000 to 200,000 prisoners throughout North Korea. Both perceived wrongdoers and up to three generations of their extended families are "arrested," or, more accurately, abducted by police authorities and deposited in the kwan-li-so, without any judicial process or legal recourse whatsoever, for lifetime sentences of extremely hard labor in mining, timber-cutting, or farming enterprises. The prisoners live under brutal conditions in permanent situations of deliberately contrived semi-starvation.
The encampments include self-contained, closed "village" compounds for single persons, usually the alleged wrongdoers, and other closed, fenced-in "villages" for the extended families of the wrongdoers. Some of the camps are divided into sections called wan-jeon-tong-je-kyuk (total-control zones), where the sentences are lifetime, and sections called hyuk-myung- hwa-kyuk (best translated as "revolutionizing zones"), so-called "re-education" areas from which prisoners eventually can be released. In the total-control zones, if the families are together, only privileged prisoners are allowed to marry and have children.
With the only known exception of Camp No. 18, prisoners have no correspondence or contact with the world outside the political penal-labor colony, except for news provided by newly arriving prisoners. The kwan-li-so are also sometimes referred to as teuk-byeol- dok-je-dae-sang-gu-yeok, which translates as "zones under special dictatorship." The most strikingly abnormal feature of the kwan-li-so system is the philosophy of "collective responsibility," or "guilt by association" - yeon-jwa-je - whereby the mother and father, sisters and brothers, children and sometimes grandchildren of the offending political prisoner are imprisoned in a three-generation practice.
[P]risoners are not arrested, charged (that is, told of their offense), or tried in any sort judicial procedure, where they would have a chance to confront their accusers or offer a defense with or even without benefit of legal counsel. The presumed offender is simply picked up and taken to an interrogation facility and frequently tortured to "confess" before being sent to the political penal-labor colony. The family members are also just picked up and deposited at the kwan-li-so, without ever being told of the whereabouts or wrongdoings of the presumed wrongdoer.
The most salient feature of day-to-day prison-labor camp life is the combination of below-subsistence food rations and extremely hard labor. Prisoners are provided only enough food to be kept perpetually on the verge of starvation. And prisoners are compelled by their hunger to eat, if they can get away with it, the food of the labor-camp farm animals, plants, grasses, bark, rats, snakes - anything remotely edible.
Persons who try to escape and other major rule-breakers are publicly executed by hanging or firing squad in front of the assembled prisoners of that section of the camp.
Former prisoners - mostly those from the "revolutionizing zone," at Kwan-li-so No. 15 Yodok - and former prison guards report that upon arrival, they were struck by the shortness, skinniness, premature aging, hunchbacks, and physical deformities of so many of the prisoners. They also report that there were large numbers of amputees and persons disabled from work accidents, and persons with partial amputations owing to frostbite of the toes, feet, fingers, and hands.
The report goes on to say that these conditions go back to the 1950s, and that most of the prisoners receiving the harshest treatment are political opponents of the regime.
Of course, these atrocious conditions are ignored by the Left around the world. They are perfectly content to pretend that they don't exist while working themselves into a lather over Americans photographing humiliated Iraqi terrorists at Abu Ghraib and shackling other terrorists at Guantanamo. We can imagine what they would say if they took the trouble to read this report:
"If one wishes to see real abuse one need only look at the Americans who use methods like sleep deprivation and sexual insults, for heaven's sake. They actually threaten people sometimes and, if you can imagine it, deny them access to their Korans if they misbehave. Before we condemn the North Koreans for their unfortunate system we better first remove the log from our own eye." And so on.
Thanks to Hugh Hewitt for the tip.