Amidst the slow progress of the United States’ diplomatic efforts to bring North Korea into the community of the world’s civilized nations (previous posts on North Korea are here), this recent W$J op-ed by Shin Dong-Hyok — who lived the first 23 years of his life in a North Korean gulag — reminds us of the stakes to humanity involved in finding a way to release the North Korean government’s death grip on North Koreans:
I was born a prisoner on Nov. 19, 1982, and until two years ago, North Korea’s Political Prison Camp No. 14 was the only place I had ever called home. [. . .]
I was a slave under club and fist. It was a world where love, happiness, joy or resistance found no meaning. This was the situation I found myself in until I escaped to China, and then South Korea. There, I was told why I was imprisoned by my distant relatives, who had escaped to the South during the Korean War.
In the midst of that conflict, two of my father’s brothers fled to freedom. Because of this “traitorous” crime, my grandparents, father and uncle back in the North were found guilty of treason and crimes against the state, and were arrested. My father and uncle were separated from each other and my grandparents, and were stripped of all identification and property.