Horror of North Korean Prison Camps Exposed at U.N. Panel Hearing | Washington Free Beacon

Shin Dong-hyuk, a former North Korean defector, attends a public hearing at Yonsei university in Seoul, Aug. 20, 2013. 

REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

BY: Reuters
August 20, 2013 3:52 pm

By Ju-min Park and Michelle Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – Public executions and torture are daily occurrences in North Korea’s prisons, according to dramatic testimony from former inmates at a U.N. Commission of Inquiry that opened in South Korea’s capital on Tuesday.

This is the first time that the North’s human rights record has been examined by an expert panel, although the North, now ruled by a third generation of the founding Kim family, denies that it abuses human rights. It refuses to recognize the commission and has denied access to investigators.

Harrowing accounts from defectors now living in South Korea related how guards chopped off a man’s finger, forced inmates to eat frogs and a mother to kill her own baby......

FULL ARTICLE HERE: Horror of North Korean Prison Camps Exposed at U.N. Panel Hearing | Washington Free Beacon

A Child of the North Korean Gulag

‘Because I am surrounded by good people, I try to do what good people do. But it is very difficult. It does not flow from me naturally. . . . I am evolving from being an animal. But it is going very, very slowly.” Shin Dong-hyuk was speaking to Blaine Harden, a reporter for Frontline and a contributor to The Economist who has served as the Washington Post’s bureau chief in East Asia. Harden has recently authored the gripping memoir Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West.

As Harden recounts, Shin was born in 1982 in Camp 14 in North Korea, a “no exit” political camp largely populated by entire families. It is one of six camps that may hold a total of 200,000 prisoners, the biggest of which occupies an area larger than Los Angeles. These camps are clearly visible in satellite reconnaissance photos, but North Korea denies that they exist.

FOR THE FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE: A Child of the North Korean Gulag

North Korea's Kim Jong-Il has died - Asia-Pacific - Al Jazeera English

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il (C) and his son Kim Jong-Un visit a factory [Reuters]

North Korean media has reported that long-time leader Kim Jong-Il died.

State television reported on Monday that he died on Saturday and the announcer said the cause was "physical and mental over-work".

The official news agency KCNA said Kim died on board a train during one of his field trips outside the capital of the communist country.

Meanwhile, the Yonhap news agency said the South Korean military has been placed on emergency alert, as shares on the stock market in Seoul fell nearly five per cent.

South Korea's presidential Blue House has also called an emergency National Security Council meeting.

Reclusive 'dear leader'

Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but appeared relatively vigorous in photos and video from recent trips to China and Russia and in numerous trips around the country carefully documented by state media.

FOR THE FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE: North Korea's Kim Jong-Il has died - Asia-Pacific - Al Jazeera English