The “Dear Leader” of the People’s Democratic Republic of Death Camps can count, among his accomplishments, mass starvation, imprisonment in horrific gulags, and systematic murder in gas chambers of his own people, bringing nuclear weapons to his country, and being ranked dead last in the freedom index year after year.

We do not rejoice at death. But for all of the nonsensical Godwin’s Law invocation out there, Kim Jong-Il is one of the few who can be aptly compared to Hitler or Stalin without it seeming the least bit like hyperbole. If anything, the horrors of his rule are under-reported, because of how sealed off North Korea is from the world.

And while Kim Jong-un,  his successor and son, appears to be cut from the same cloth, and North Korea’s dark days show no sign of ending anytime soon, I don’t think there’s anyone who could possibly argue that the world has suffered a loss with his passing.

The first person who writes a flowery obituary for this despot will make me want to puke. May he rot in hell.

Better hope that umbrella is big enough to protect you from the ensuing shitstorm, Hillary.

On a scariness scale of one to ten, this little tidbit of news ranks somewhere around a… zillion. Even though it’s not exactly news that North Korea has nuclear capabilities, the fact that it’s being openly defiant about it and making threats isn’t exactly what we refer to as “good news”.

Possibly the least reassuring quote in the subject comes from South Korean PM Han Seung-soo:

“Although we are at an impasse, I’m sure that China, together with the other partners, will be able to solve this problem eventually.”

Thanks. That’ll help everyone sleep more soundly, I’m sure.

A United Nations panel rebuked Myanmar, Iran and North Korea on Tuesday for human rights abuses, overcoming objections by developing nations that the move amounted to “demonization” of some states.

The resolution on North Korea expressing concern about systematic and widespread rights violations won the strongest support in the U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee, passing by 97-23, with 60 abstentions.

Another resolution strongly condemning the use of violence against peaceful demonstrators in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, was passed by 88-24, with 66 abstentions, in what Britain said was “a declaration of support for the Burmese people’s desire for change.”

A third vote expressing deep concern at rights violations in Iran was passed by 72-50, with 55 abstentions.

The non-binding resolutions will be sent to the 192-member General Assembly, which generally votes in the same way as the committee.

The representative from Uganda was among several members of the Non-Aligned Movement, which groups 115 mostly developing nations, who argued against singling out some states.

He said such issues were best left to the U.N.’s Human Rights Council and should be addressed through dialogue rather than what he called the “demonization” of some countries.

Demonization, eh? You mean, what is usually done to Israel in a typical U.N.’s day’s work?

A German pensioner who won a prize and worldwide fame for breeding his country’s largest rabbit — Robert, a 10.5kg (23lb) bruiser the size of a dog — has been offered an unusual opportunity to exploit his talents overseas.

Karl Szmolinsky has been given a contract by North Korea to supply giant rabbits to help to boost meat production in the reclusive Communist country, which is suffering severe food shortages. The only problem is that such huge rabbits consume vast quantities of food themselves as they grow.

Of course, if they ever get around that problem, we could be in for trouble. Today, it’s simply breeding large rabbits to feed starving people. Tomorrow, the supersized bunnies could be roaming the globe. They’re big… they’re furry… and they bite!

North Korea has committed “crimes against humanity” against its own people according to an independent report published on Monday that made a long-shot appeal for the U.N. Security Council to deal with the issue.

Released after North Korea’s October 9 nuclear test, the report describes Pyongyang’s brutal treatment of its citizens, from the beatings of pregnant women to force miscarriages to the abduction, torture and execution of political prisoners.

Commissioned by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, former Czech president Vaclav Havel and former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, the paper seeks to spotlight rights abuses that have been previously reported but are often overshadowed by concern about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

(Emphasis mine).

And that, after all, is the point. North Korea has been committing horrific crimes against humanity that beg the question of why, more than sixty years after swearing “never again”, the world sits back and allows them to happen.

The answer to that question can presumably be found in two little words: nuclear weapons. The theory is that, while in the midst of dealing with the nuclear crisis, there’s little that the world can do about anything else North Korea is doing.

So what’s our excuse, then, when it comes to (nuclear-less) Sudan?

As I’ve said before, I don’t take Nazi comparisons lightly, but in some cases they truly are warranted. This is one of those cases, without a doubt.

Except that we already pretty much all knew about them. And there wasn’t really anything anyone could do before, so what will really change here? The United Nations? Is anyone really delusional enough to think that this organization which is currently unable to do anything about the mass murder still ongoing in Sudan can do anything about North Korea? It’s not as though a UN threat of sanctions would be too scary to a country already suffering mass starvation. Or that anyone really believes anyone – US or otherwise – would use a military option. In short, a nuclear North Korea is pretty much a fait accompli, because the rest of the world has no options.

Damian thinks the only option for North Korea has to come from within:

Ultimately, the only ways Kim will be removed from power are a potentially catastrophic outside invasion, or an uprising from within. The former is a non-starter; the latter could work. From here on out, we should redouble our efforts to support those brave North Koreans who oppose their government, and to get news and information to the most hermetically sealed society on earth.

Unfortunately, I have to disagree with Damian on this one, for a few reasons:

1) North Korea has no real viable, organized opposition of any form; it’s the world’s least free and most oppressive regime, where opposition is systematically stamped out in its infancy.

2) North Korea is also desperately poor, has no real economy, no rule of law, no independent institutions… in short, it’s much, much worse than even Iraq. We mustn’t assume that the removal of Kim Jong-Il would liberate a country just waiting for the opportunity to instill a flourishing democracy. There is no indication that the removal of the dictatorship would leave anything but total chaos and anarchy. And a situation where chaotic anarchy meets nuclear weapons might be the only thing scarier than the current situation. At least we KNOW which crazy guy has his finger on the button now. What will happen when it’s a free-for-all?

The question we should be asking is, why now? Granted, Kim Jong-Il is crazy, but by some accounts he’s also crazy like a fox. This test was an in-your-face to the West, an in-your-face to the United Nations, and an in-your-face to Bush. And its timing was no coincidence. Given the geopolitical factors in the rest of the world, namely the mess in Iraq and Iran’s ongoing game of nuclear chicken with the U.N., Kim Jong-Il probably decided the time was ripe to flex his muscle a little bit.

But does this mean we’re on the verge of nuclear disaster? That depends on your perspective. The worry about Iran going nuclear is that Ahmadinejad might be crazy enough to actually not care about the consequences of launching a nuclear strike, so deep is his hatred for Israel and the West. Is the same true of Kim Jong-Il? Or is North Korea just trying to prove a point?

These are questions that were always hard to answer about nuclear weapons, but if we think this is the worst of it, then we’re kidding ourselves. To date, nuclear weapons have only ever been in the hands of countries, ranging from democracies to despotic dictatorships with crazy leaders, but all countries nonetheless. It’s only a matter of time until a terrorist group or rogue organization gets ahold of nuclear weapons. What then? What happens when there are no diplomatic options to even attempt?

We’d better start thinking about it, and soon, because if you think that this week is scary, I fear we ain’t seen nothing yet.

My solution? Send in our ultimate weapons: Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

North Korea will upgrade its arsenal “in every way by employing all possible means and methods” and will greet any aggressors with “all-out do-or-die resistance and unprecedented devastating strikes,” Kim Il Chol said, according to the Korean Central News Agency.

The PDRDC isn’t even bothering to feed anyone stories about “power stations” anymore. Emboldened perhaps by the world’s staggering inability to do much of anything to stop his horrifying regime from going nuclear, Kim Jong-Il is taking this game of chicken to the next level.

Happy Friday, everyone!

North Korea promised to give up its nuclear weapons program on Monday, defusing a high-stakes crisis, but skeptics said the deal hammered out in Beijing was long on words and short of action.

South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China — the other players in the six-party talks — in exchange expressed a willingness to provide oil, energy aid and security guarantees.

Washington and Tokyo agreed to normalize ties with the impoverished and diplomatically isolated North, which pledged to rejoin the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The People’s Democratic Republic of Death Camps probably sees this as a golden opportunity to milk the West for all they’re worth, while pretending to give up weapons it has no intention of parting with. Or – worse – continuing to develop such weapons and then selling them to terrorist groups all over the world.

It’s important to give diplomacy a chance here, especially since there doesn’t seem to be any alternative. So I’ll try to be cautiously optimistic for now… or at least fake it. But with an unstable dictator like Kim Jong-Il at the helm, though, who knows what North Korea will do next?

It looks like there might not be an election after all, as the Conservatives’ polling numbers slip and Harper looks increasingly like a vengeful opportunist each day. The Conservatives are going to have to come up with a better argument than “we’re not the Liberals” if they want a turn in power. In the meantime, Martin’s gamble seems to be paying off, and his shaky government might get its life support extended a little longer.

More idiocy on parade as the annual workers’ event of May Day results in “clashes with police”. That’s the media’s non-judgmental way of saying that a bunch of idiots smashed things and then reacted violently to police who tried to get them under control. Oh yeah, and they really really don’t like Jean Charest. Just in case we didn’t know that already.

North Korea’s getting bolder as the Dear Leader of Death Camps slowly realizes that the rest of the world can’t or won’t do anything to stop them. Canada won’t sign onto the US’s missile defense plan, but Japan certainly sees the value in it.

Violence is on the rise again in Egypt, as suicide attacks on tourists by Islamist terrorists sent a chill through the region. This pretty much rules out any hope that last month’s attacks at Taba were isolated incidents. One thing we can pretty much count on: if Egypt’s tourism industry suffers, they’ll find a way to blame Israel somehow.

And last but certainly not least, Passover is over and I’m back to eating real food again. It’s great to have a meal that doesn’t taste like cardboard!

North Korea is to strengthen its “atomic potential” in response to Washington’s hostile policies, Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency quoted the president of its parliament as saying Thursday.

The article then continues to expand on the quotes from the Dear Leader of Death Camps for – count them – ten paragraphs, before bothering to mention that “Washington’s hostile policies” don’t really exist except in Kim Jong-Il’s mind:

On Feb. 10, North Korea said it possessed nuclear weapons and was dropping out of six-party talks aimed at ending its atomic ambitions. It blamed U.S. hostility for the decision to pull out.

About six weeks later, the North said it was forced to increase its nuclear arsenal because it saw the U.S. military as a serious threat.

U.S. officials have repeatedly said Washington has no plans to invade the North.

Frankly, I’ve given up expecting fair media coverage from Reuters.

Kim Tae Jin, a North Korean who was imprisoned by the government before defecting in 1997, told the commission that “there is absolutely no freedom in North Korea.”

“In a political prison camp in North Korea, one must forget that he or she is a human being,” said Kim, who spent five years in a camp and endured eight months of torture and interrogation.

“There were numerous people who spent 20 to 30 years in the prison camp simply because of some ludicrous crime their grandfather allegedly committed,” said Kim.

Mr Rammell said that the European Union will sponsor a resolution at the commission to condemn North Korea’s record of abuses, adding that he expects it to be passed by a large majority.

I’m absolutely shocked… not that North Korea’s human rights record is unimaginably bad, but that the UN Human Rights Commission would consider taking a 5-minute break from its full-time Israel-bashing activities to actually comment.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

“We … have manufactured nukes to cope with the Bush administration’s evermore undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the DPRK,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Sadly, the international media is playing right into the horrifying regime’s hands, painting this as more of a political issue for Bush than a legitimate threat to the security of the world:

The statement also poses a challenge to Bush, who has long backed a diplomatic solution to the crisis but now faces two nations he once named as part of an “axis of evil” being openly defiant about their nuclear programs — North Korea and Iran. He went to war with the third axis nation, Iraq.

While most people have known for years that North Korea was building up its nukes, this official announcement signals that the “Dear Leader” has been emboldened by the world’s refusal to do anything about Iran or really anything about much of anything lately. Even if North Korea has had the nukes for a while, the announcement is a signal that they might be willing to use them.

This is not good news, to put it mildly.

If we can go so far as to attribute logic to a madman, we might suggest that Kim Jong-Il knows full well that the United States is the only country who might even try to do something and that the rest of the world hates the U.S.’s guts. He’s probably banking on the fact that most people will assume that America is more dangerous than a regime that sends children to prison camps that have gas chambers reminiscent of Auschwitz, that starves its own population en masse, and that ranked dead last in the Index of Economic Freedom for the umpteenth year in a row.

But never mind all that, of course the world would be safer if we just got rid of Bush. Suuuuuuuure.

FreeNorthKorea.net has plenty of reading material about the kind of things that are going on in North Korea even as we speak. I challenge anyone to read it and not be legitimately terrified at the idea that this country could launch nuclear warheads.

Today, a group from North Korea made it to the Canadian embassy in Beijing:

Forty-four North Korean men, women and children scaled the walls of the Canadian embassy in Beijing in a likely bid for political asylum, an embassy spokesman said.

It was one of the largest groups ever to burst into a diplomatic compound in the Chinese capital in a desperate attempt to escape poverty and oppression in their Stalinist home country.

Officials are still sorting out exactly who is in that group. Until then, it is unclear what their fate will be, as China has not been sympathetic to refugees from the People’s Democratic Republic of Death Camps:

China treats North Koreans as illegal immigrants and has an agreement with Pyongyang to deport those it catches. But it has allowed Koreans who succeed in getting into foreign missions to leave for South Korea via a third country.

Those returned can face harsh punishment by the Stalinist government.

If it is determined that these people are legitimate political asylum-seekers, one hopes that they will be granted asylum someplace safe… and allowed to speak whatever tales they may have to tell, to provide even a tiny insight into the vast darkness that is North Korea.

The predicted North Korean response is: “Oh yeah? And if we don’t agree, what are you gonna do about it?” The predicted U.N. response is, well, silence.

In the meantime, the U.N. couldn’t be seen slouching on its regularly scheduled programming, so it resumed calls for a “nuclear weapons-free zone” in the Middle East – a call clearly aimed at Israel:

Israel has always said that it does not oppose signing the NPT, though only after there is stable peace in the Middle East.

It is an annual ritual at the IAEA annual conference that Arab and Muslim states try to get a resolution on the table that calls on Israel to give up its alleged nuclear weapons arsenal.

The last time they succeeded in getting such a resolution adopted by the IAEA General Conference was in 1991. Since 1987, the IAEA conference and U.N. General Assembly have passed 13 such resolutions. Israel has ignored them all.

Israel, by any normal standards, cannot be considered a threat to world security, and its neither-confirm-nor-deny policy is a necessity in a world that won’t let it defend itself from destruction by any means. Of course, since when are U.N. standards normal standards?

No, U.N. standards are more like these:

“Israel’s unsafeguarded facilities is a real threat to international peace and security,” Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. in Vienna, Pirooz Hosseini, told the conference.

Excuse me for laughing. Iran, which has openly threatened to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons, claims that Israel, who would never dream of using the nuclear weapons they allegedly posses, is the threat to world security? But Iran knows that the best way to divert attention from itself is to attack Israel, the eternal scapegoat.

Mah nishtana?

I have a feeling that most of the world expects and secretly hopes that Israel will deal with Iran’s nuclear program the same way it dealt with Iraq’s ambitions in 1981. Of course, everyone will condemn Israel for it and bluster and threaten. But none of them want to see a nuclear Iran either, and they know that Israel’s the only country that will actually do something about it.

Hypocrites.

Just another typical day.

Update: Both the US and South Korea are saying it’s unlikely to be nuclear. Which, of course, begs the question of what it was.

Update #2: North Korea says it was for a hydroelectric project. But this is North Korea we’re talking about, so the credibility of that statement is somewhat suspect. Just look at their statement:

Paek, who was providing the first North Korean word on the explosion, said it was part of a construction project to build a hydro-electric dam in the remote mountainous region of Ryanggang on the Chinese border.

The BBC said that when Paek was asked why North Korea had not explained earlier about the blasts he told Rammell Pyongyang had not done so because all foreign journalists were liars.

I suppose that’s a good reason… if you subscribe to the North Korean version of logic.

North Korea has described US President George W Bush as an “imbecile” and a “tyrant that puts Hitler in the shade”.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman was responding to comments President Bush made last week in which he described the North’s Kim Jong-il as a “tyrant”.

This pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? Kim Jong-Il, the “Dear Leader” of gas chambers and concentration camps, who has killed and tortured countless members of his population and prompted comparisons to Auschwitz and outrage by Yad Vashem. The “Dear Leader” of child prisoners and sex slaves. The “Dear Leader” who prefers to starve his entire population rather than accept outside aid. The “Dear Leader” of nuclear weapons factories who refuses to even talk about disarming.

But no. In this upside-down world, Bush is clearly the person who merits comparison to Hitler. The “Dear Leader” must be just misunderstood. Or something.

The European Union (EU), backed by countries including the United States, expressed concern on Thursday at reports of grave and systematic abuses in North Korea, including “infanticide in prison and labor camps.”

The EU, in a resolution presented to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on behalf of 37 countries, also called for appointing a special U.N. investigator for the first time to go to the reclusive, Stalinist country.

I’m wondering if they actually expect the UN to get off their asses and do something?

North Korea built [a gulag system] on the Chinese model and added a new depravity — child political prisoners. Neither the Soviets nor the Chinese sent children to the concentration camps but the Dear Leader sends the entire family. One of the best accounts of the North Korean gulag is written by someone who was sent to the camps at the age of nine, because his grandfather had offended the system. His sister was only seven; she was also sent to prison. In North Korea, the children of political prisoners are called “seedlings.” Official propaganda proscribes the proper treatment of these children, “desiccate the seedlings of counterrevolution, pull them out by their roots, and exterminate every last one of them.”

The camps are designed to exploit the prisoners’ labor until they die. Prisoners are given difficult and dangerous labor such as mining under unsafe conditions. Children are assigned heavy work as well, such as logging. Even before the famine of the mid-1990s, prisoners, including children, were on rations that would not sustain life in the long run, much less allow for any sort of normal growth. Since the political prisoners are never released, there is no danger of them divulging military secrets; they are assigned to work on missiles and other special weapons. One camp, Camp #14, is notorious for its use of prisoners “as guinea pigs for developing chemical warfare technology,” according to information obtained by the Seoul Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights.

This stuff makes my stomach turn. And there’s more:

It’s bad luck to be an even moderately attractive young woman in the camps. High Communist Party officials troll the camps looking for victims to be used as sex slaves. If the women become pregnant, they are forced to have an abortion without anesthesia. When their usefulness is over, the women are murdered. Their deaths are covered up as “shot while trying to escape.” In much the same way, the Nazi “Death Doctor,” Josef Mengele, used to comb the arriving trains for an attractive evening companion, only to have her shot the next day.

No, this isn’t Germany 60 years ago. It’s happening in North Korea right now. And the world is content to do nothing about it, because North Korea is communist and communism is the solution to the evil capitalism of America and the Zionist Cabal and the evil Joooos that everyone’s so much more concerned about condemning. And besides, Kim Jong-Il has nuclear weapons probably and he’s crazy and he might use them so what can anyone do anyway? And it’s so far away so it’s easy to close our eyes and pretend it doesn’t exist, right? Especially cause nobody ever escapes from Camp #14 so there are no eyewitnesses to write books or go on speaking tours to raise awareness.

Sickening and disgusting, all of it.

Ending months of uncertainty, the office of Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan stayed Mr. Ri’s removal order yesterday and ruled he is not a war criminal — contrary to the findings of the Immigration and Refugee Board, which rejected his asylum bid last September.

The ministry ruled that the risk Mr. Ri would be tortured or killed if deported outweighed any danger he may pose to Canada.

This reprive was widely expected… but it raises more questions than it answers. Again, I sense the public hasn’t been getting the whole story.

Once again, I’ll state that without knowing all the facts of the case, it’s hard to judge. There have been numerous cases of people claiming refugee status who were clearly abusing the system.

But even Immigration Canada doesn’t seem to think that Ri is guilty of any crimes against humanity:

Robert Genier, a senior analyst with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, endorsed a much-criticized decision from the Immigration and Refugee Board. That ruling found Mr. Ri guilty of war crimes merely for being a trade official in North Korea’s secretive, repressive regime. No allegations of specific crimes against humanity have been made against him, and Canada’s War Crimes Unit found no evidence of wrongdoing.

[ . . . ]

“I am satisfied [Mr. Ri] would be at risk of cruel and unusual punishment if he were to return to North Korea,” ruled C. Lemonde, a pre-removal risk assessment officer with the Canadian Border Services Agency.

However, Mr. Genier, a more senior immigration official in Ottawa, reviewed the findings and concluded last week that Mr. Ri was not entitled to Canada’s protection “because of the nature and severity of the acts committed” by him.

Something doesn’t jibe here. There’s a contradiction. Either he’s a war criminal or he’s not… but IRB seems to want it both ways.

The deportation order can still be stayed on humanitarian grounds:

A source in the Immigration Department indicated that Mr. Ri would likely get a favourable ruling and be permitted to stay.

Still, critics suggest the fact that he was twice labelled a war criminal shows the refugee-determination system is flawed. There has never been any specific evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Ri. But IRB member Bonnie Milliner found him complicit in crimes against humanity because he willingly joined the government and did not leave at the first available opportunity.

It’s not as though you can just hop on the first flight out, so that criteria seems harsh in light of the facts. But as they say, something smells fishy here. I suspect we’re not getting the whole story, and I wonder what’s not being said.

Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board has rejected the asylum case of a North Korean dissident even though the board agrees the man will likely be executed for treason if deported to his homeland.

The IRB has allowed the man’s six-year-old son to remain in Canada, because as the son of a dissident he would face persecution, while a removal order has been issued for his father, his only living parent.

Song Dae Ri, a trade official, was posted to North Korea’s embassy in Beijing before he defected to Canada with his son and wife in August, 2001. His wife was lured home by her parents before she had a chance to make a refugee claim, and in April, 2002, was executed in North Korea.

[ . . . ]

IRB member Bonnie Milliner ruled that Mr. Ri will likely be executed for treason if returned home, but said he was not “deserving of Canada’s protection” because he was complicit in crimes against humanity merely for being a member of Kim Jong-il’s government. She made that ruling despite written assurances from Canada’s War Crimes Unit that Mr. Ri was “not a person of interest to them” and that there was no evidence he had committed crimes against humanity.

I don’t like to leap to judgments about individual cases, because there is usually more to a story than what makes the paper. That said, if the Globe and Mail article is accurate, this is a terrible miscarriage of justice on the part of the Canadian Government.

Even the IRB isn’t claiming that Ri was involved in wrongdoings beyond simply living in North Korea. Obviously, they have some kind of rule that any member of the government is ineligible for refugee status… but in a communist country, where virtually everyone is a member of the government in some way, this rule is pretty ridiculous. Furthermore, they are allowing Ri’s son to stay on the grounds that his life is in danger because of persecution of his father. That seems pretty self-contradictory to me.

Ri is becoming yet another “poster case” for activists lobbying for a more open refugee system in Canada. If he deserves it, I hope the government reverses its decision and allows him to stay. The flip side, of course, is that if it turns out he really was involved in the horrible crimes against humanity being perpetuated by Kim Jong-Il’s regime, that it will only make it that much harder on legitimate refugee claimants to garner sympathy. From the looks of it, though, all Ri did was lose his wife and just barely manage to escape with his son. If that’s true, than sending him back is tantamount to state-sanctioned murder.

Auschwitz Under Our Noses

Nowadays, it seems impossible to understand why so few people, at the time of the Auschwitz liberation, even knew that the camp existed. It seems even harder to explain why those who did know did nothing. In recent years a plethora of respectable institutions — the Vatican, the U.S. government, the international Jewish community, the Allied commanders — have all been accused of “allowing” the Holocaust to occur, through ignorance or ill will or fear, or simply because there were other priorities, such as fighting the war.

We shake our heads self-righteously, certain that if we’d been there, liberation would have come earlier — all the while failing to see that the present is no different.

[ . . . ]

In the days since the documentary aired, few other news organizations have picked up the story either. There are other priorities: the president’s budget, ricin in the Senate office building, David Kay’s testimony, a murder of a high school student, Super Tuesday, Janet Jackson. With the possible exception of the last, these are all genuinely important subjects. They are issues people care deeply about. North Korea is far away and, quite frankly, it doesn’t seem there’s a lot we can do about it.

Later — in 10 years, or in 60 — it will surely turn out that quite a lot was known in 2004 about the camps of North Korea. It will turn out that information collected by various human rights groups, South Korean churches, oddball journalists and spies added up to a damning and largely accurate picture of an evil regime. It will also turn out that there were things that could have been done, approaches the South Korean government might have made, diplomatic channels the U.S. government might have opened, pressure the Chinese might have applied.

Historians in Asia, Europe and here will finger various institutions, just as we do now, and demand they justify their past actions. And no one will be able to understand how it was possible that we knew of the existence of the gas chambers but failed to act.

That emphasis was mine. And it pretty much sums up why I keep coming back to this story and feeling that it’s so important. Sure, there are plenty of horrible human rights abuses going on right under our noses. But the parallels with this one have crept under my skin, because of how we – as individuals and as a society – may go down in history for failing to pay any attention.

Yad Vashem is appalled by reports of North Korea’s use of gas chambers to murder and perform medical experiments on political dissidents and their families. Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev has sent an urgent letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in which he calls for a full investigation of this insidious abuse of human rights. The issue is all the more severe due to North Korea’s status as a member of the UN. The internment, torture, and murder of North Korean political dissenters and their families was recently reported by the BBC.

In his letter, Shalev states with alarm that only six decades after the utilization of gas chambers to exterminate European Jewry, North Korea has apparently employed them against thousands of its own citizens. “The lives of untold thousands of North Koreans are in danger because their totalitarian government perceives them as a threat”, Shalev writes. “Although the rationale, scale, and context are vastly different, the chilling image of the murderers coolly watching their victims’ death agonies is all too reminiscent of Nazi barbarism.”

The important thing here is Yad Vashem’s reaction, not the seemingly ridiculously benign steps that it is requesting the UN to take. Everyone knows that in these situatuions the UN has no real power. But if enough organizations such as Yad Vashem start speaking out, maybe they can make a difference.

North Korea has indicated it is prepared to resume talks soon on its nuclear arms program, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Tuesday.

One round of talks involving North and South Korea (news – web sites), the United States, China, Japan and Russia was held last year in Beijing but ended inconclusively.

Come to think of it, it’s doubtful, given how little news coverage the torture and experimentation reports have gotten. Maybe the regime is just trying to head it off. Or maybe they don’t understand how willing the world is to ignore such atrocities.

Among NBC News’ findings:

* At one camp, Camp 22 in Haengyong, some 50,000 prisoners toil each day in conditions that U.S. officials and former inmates say results in the death of 20 percent to 25 percent of the prison population every year.

* Products made by prison laborers may wind up on U.S. store shelves, having been “washed” first through Chinese companies that serve as intermediaries.

* Entire families, including grandchildren, are incarcerated for even the most bland political statements.

* Forced abortions are carried out on pregnant women so that another generation of political dissidents will be “eradicated.”

* Inmates are used as human guinea pigs for testing biological and chemical agents, according to both former inmates and U.S. officials.

Chris wonders why there’s been so little interest about North Korea this past year:

Why Does The World Ignore North Korean Concentration Camp Atrocities?
This article was published around a year ago. But, even though it was in a major news outlet, it seemed to have little or no impact on American policy. Why?

Now the evidence on North Korea’s gas chambers has proved that the stories told by the defectors about the depraved chemical weapons tests on prisoners are true. A director of security for one of the biggest camps has defected and has even been interviewed on the BBC. Nobody is disputing what he has to say. But how many care? Asia has for so long, had a degree of suffering unmatched elsewhere on the globe.

[ . . . ]

Certainly, Kim Jong Il is a diabolical Hitler-like figure who is so blind to his people’s suffering that he uses them to test weapons. But human rights figures near the bottom of the list of the US’s goals for negotiating with North Korea. Can anyone, anywhere, be safe while this condition in North Korea persists? NO!

It’s 13 months later now. And who posted about this last year? I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t. But if embarrassment over not covering the story then prevents me from writing about it now, then shame on me.

I implored the blogosphere to do better. And some, at least, have.

Damian Penny wrote about the “People’s Democratic Republic of Death Camps”. David Janes astutely observed that “there’s no obvious way to blame the US for this, so it’s not really happening, is it?”. Lynn B. urges us to read up and talk about it. Meryl Yourish has a brilliantly-written post entitled “North Korea is Not Our Problem”.

I’ll update this throughout the day with (hopefully) more. Let’s not allow this to become a one-day headline.

Update: Paul Jané finds the words that failed me. Jonathan is feeling “curiously dispassionate”… which I find interesting in light of my reaction to the story, which was more emotional than even I expected. And Spin Killer weighs in.

Report: N Korean prison camp has gas chamber

Witnesses say North Korea operates poison gas chambers at its largest concentration camp, Camp 22, media sources reported Sunday.

“I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber,” said one defector, former military attache at the North Korean Embassy in Beijing and chief of management at the camp. “The parents, son and and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.”

The defector, Kwon Hyuk, is to appear on the BBC’s This World program. He says he wants the world to know what is happening.

“The glass chamber is sealed airtight,” he explained. “It is 3.5 metres wide, 3m long and 2.2m high. [There] is the injection tube going through the unit. Normally, a family sticks together and individual prisoners stand separately around the corners. Scientists observe the entire process from above, through the glass.”

Hyuk explained how he had believed this treatment was justified. “At the time I felt that they thoroughly deserved such a death. Because all of us were led to believe that all the bad things that were happening to North Korea were their fault; that we were poor, divided and not making progress as a country.”

The article goes on to describe other horrors, such as poisoned cabbage and “medical experiments”. I don’t use comparisons to Nazism lightly, but what other conclusion is there to be drawn here other than that the past is repeating itself in the worst possible ways?

Where is the public outcry over this? Where are the demostrations in the streets? Where are the plans of the governments of the civilized world to stop it? Where is the reaction from all of the people who spent their lives saying “Never Again”?

I don’t know. But it’s high time to find out, and to do something to stop it.

Update: The BBC has more about the information coming to light from a defected intelligence agent on Camp 22. His account of torture, chemical experimentation, and the massive bureaucracy built to support it is absolutely chilling. Almost as chilling is how little remorse even he seems to feel:

“For the first three years” he explained ” you enjoy torturing people but then it wears off and someone else takes over. But most of the time you do it because you enjoy it.”

One of the big questions about the Nazi regime was, why didn’t the Allies bomb Auschwitz? Why, with all the information that came to light in the middle years of the war, was no action taken that could have spared millions of innocent lives?

Well here we are, in 2004. Sixty years later, where is the action in North Korea? Who will step up to stop what’s going on there?

Oh, I know it’s not that simple. Attacking North Korea could risk all-out nuclear war. The United States has a president with a worldwide reputation for being a war-monger, and he’s trying to get re-elected. The European Union is gutless. The United Nations is even more gutless – when it’s not being controlled by despots and dictators. There are a million excuses. And besides, North Korea just seems so far away, doesn’t it? There are people dying every day in other horrible ways all over the world. People do what they can.

So here I am, wondering what one lone person can do in light of news that was always suspected but is now being shockingly confirmed. I don’t know exactly, but I think that we need to start somewhere. I’d like to begin by urging people reading this, including other bloggers, to publicize these reports and raise awareness online. It may be a woefully inadequate first step, but at least it’s something.

Update #2: For those of you looking for further information, a couple of good links are freenorthkorea.net and the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, which has an October 2003 report on the prison camps that should make any normal human being’s skin crawl.

The good news is the comments seem to be working again!

If we wait around for Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, I somehow doubt he’d even give the world a warning. With one push of the button he’ll obliterate Israel, attack the United States, and probably take over many of his neighbours. I mean, we’re talking about Saddam Hussein here.

The world has a responsibility to see to it that Iraq never develops nuclear weapons. If it is allowed to, G-d help us all.

But reclusive North Korea remained defiant, denouncing Washington’s missile defense system and threatening the United States with destruction if it launched a nuclear attack over its suspected atomic weapons program.

North Korea said it had “increased its self-defensive military capability” to cope with the “U.S. intensified policy to invade and stifle it with nukes.”

“If the U.S. unleashes a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula, it will not escape its destruction,” Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

That’s of course of little comfort to South Korea, which is hoping to avert a crisis through diplomacy. While appeasement of hostile nuclear threats is of course extremely dangerous, it makes sense that South Korea is scared, given the fact that it’s the most likely to suffer if North Korea launches an attack.

With the escalation in North Korea, inevitable comparisons to Iraq are being made on a daily basis. Jonah Goldberg in the Washington Times explains why the two must be treated differently.

Um, yeah. That’s because North Korea has the fifth-largest standing army in the world, huge supplies of weapons of mass-destruction, probably including nukes, and the ability to inflict staggering casualties on South Korea, Japan and our own troops.

[. . .]

Of course, Iraq wants to be treated like North Korea. That’s why Iraq is pursuing weapons of mass destruction. And that’s why the Bush administration wants to keep that from happening. The whole rationale for stopping Saddam now is that the price might be too high to stop him later, like it already is with North Korea.

A heavy dose of reality is needed here. Some oppose all war on principle, not recognizing that you can’t stand in the middle of a battlefield holding up a white ribbon when you’re being shot at, and that the our enemies’ bombs can’t distinguish between activists and pacifists when they fall. Others say that we can’t right one wrong if we’re not going to right all the others at the same time. To them, I say that we’re doing the best we can, one situation at a time, and that if they really wanted to change the world, they should start backing those efforts.