Fleeing North Korea

Independent:

Two survivors of a North Korean concentration camp have spoken out about the grim conditions in the gulag where inmates are left to die in tiny cells, in the latest accounts to shed light on the human rights atrocities carried out in the world's most isolated country.

A 27-year-old North Korean, Kim Eun Chul, was one of a group of seven fleeing their country in 1999 who were intercepted in Russia after they scrambled through barbed wire on the border with China.

The Russians sent them back to China despite a UN decision to grant them refugee status. China, which remains North Korea's staunchest ally, allowed the seven to be handed back to North Korea which subsequently informed the UN that the majority had been returned to their homes and factory jobs.

But it was a lie. Instead, they faced torture and imprisonment for "betraying their homeland" by trying to flee the famine-hit North Korean "socialist paradise" in search of food. least five of the seven were dispatched to North Korea's Camp Number 15, known as Yodok in the West, where inmates labour 15 hours or more a day on meagre rations for such deeds as criticising the government or trying to escape because of famine, Mr Kim told the International Herald Tribune.

The only woman among the seven - Pang Young Sil - "shrivelled to the size of a dog" by the time she arrived in Yodok in July 2000 after months of torture by North Korea's notorious National Security Agency and died in the camp two months later, Mr Kim said.

Ms Pang fled North Korea because her parents would not allow her to marry her boyfriend Heo Young Il, according to another Yodok survivor, Kim Gwang Soo, 44, who spent three years in the camp located 70 miles north-east of Pyongyang. Mr Heo had been dishonourably discharged from the military and could not join the ruling Workers Party.

"Pang arrived in Yodok on a stretcher. The day she died, we buried her together. Heo cried a lot. He blamed himself for her death," said Kim Gwang Soo. "After his woman died, he got strange and tried to escape," Mr Kim went on. "I had to report him to the guards for my own safety, since I was in charge of looking over him and his escape would mean trouble for me.

"For a month, they locked him in a cell so small he had to stand or sit upright 24 hours a day, eating little food. Usually that meant death, but he came out alive."

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Before being sent to Yodok, he said he was tortured at the National Security Agency, the government's intelligence and secret police organ. He was forced to kneel on a hot steel plate, and when he twitched, he was punished by kicks and punches. "After giving me nothing to eat for three days, they had my family bring some food," he said. "While I was watching, they fed it to another inmate. I wanted to tear the man apart and eat him."

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According to survivors from Camp 22, horrific chemical experiments have been conducted on inmates in gas chambers where entire families have been placed to die while scientists take notes.

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Is it just me, or does this sound worse than Gitmo?

How did a terrorist rights group like Amnesty International miss this? Has the Bush administration done this stuff to anyone? It is interesting that they would want these escapees returned. The only reason that makes sense is to use their torture as a deterrent to others who might want to escape the communist hell hole.