Only known photo taken inside N Korean Camp Yodok (Amnesty)
The galloping horse video dance by South Korean rapper, PSY, has racked up more than 900 million views on YouTube. PSY’s performance was cheered Sunday night in Washington by President Obama, his family and all who attended the “Christmas in Washington” holiday concert. The world does the “Gangnam Style” dance while North Korea tortures, rapes, starves and murders its citizens in six huge concentration camps consciously ignored by the President of the “free” world, the national media and the UN.
34-year-old Park Jae-sang who is now riding the crest of a monstrous Internet wave apologized two nights before his Washington appearance for his anti-American song in 2004 which called for attacks on American troops and protested U.S. military presence in South Korea. In a pathetic 2002 concert PSY painted his face gold and, wearing a red glittery costume, lifted a huge model of a U.S. tank and smashed it against the stage. The crowds cheered his anti-American performances at a time when South Koreans were angered by U.S. efforts to improve its relationship with North Korea. PSY has since appeared in front of American military audiences that have either forgiven him or were unaware of his past anti-American vitriol.
PSY has a golden opportunity to do much more than apologize to Americans for his past. Park Je-sang should use his command of the world’s stage to call attention to the hundreds of thousands of prisoners being held in concentration camps in North Korea. Political dissidents are imprisoned three generations deep for the offenses committed by their relatives.
Speech and actions considered offensive to the regime get dissidents and their relatives locked up for life.
Six camps are currently holding as many as 200,000 prisoners. More than 400,000 have died in the camps since the 60s. Only three people are known to have escaped the camps alive.
Children born in the camps are subjected to the same brutalities as adults. They are forced to live on as little as 120 grams of food per day. Some parents kill their own children to stave off their own hunger. Children are taught to report parents, brothers and sisters for violations of the rules and death is always the punishment. Here are the “10 Commandments” of the concentration camps:
1. Do not attempt to escape. The punishment is death.
2. Never gather in groups of over three people or move around without the guard’s authorization. The punishment for unauthorized movement is death.
3. Do not steal. If one steals or possesses weapons, the punishment is death. The punishment for failure to report the theft or possession of weapons is death.
4. Obey your guards. If one rebels or hits a guard, the punishment is death.
5. If you see outsiders, or suspicious-looking people, report them immediately. The punishment for abetting in the hiding of outsiders is death.
6. Keep an eye on your fellow prisoners and report inappropriate behavior without delay. One should criticize others for inappropriate behavior, and also conduct thorough self-criticism in revolutionary ideology class.
7. Fulfill your assigned duties. The punishment for rebelling against one’s duties is death.
8. Men and women may not be together outside the workplace. The punishment for unauthorized physical contact between a man and a woman is death.
9. Admit and confess your wrongdoings. The punishment for disobedience and refusal to repent is death.
10. The punishment for violating camp laws and rules is death.
Shin Dong-hyuk was born into slavery in Camp 14 in 1982. He escaped the camp in January of 2005 when he was 23. Shin tells the grim story of how he had reported his mother and his brother for plotting an escape. He did it in exchange for more food and a promotion to “grade leader” at his school. The guard he reported to double-crossed him and took credit for discovering the plan.
Shin was handcuffed, blindfolded and driven to an underground cell where he was tortured for days. He was stripped, bound and then hung from a hook in the ceiling. They lowered him over a fire and burned him while they pelted him with questions about the plan. Shin’s friend, Hong, saved Shin from near certain death when he confirmed that it was Shin who reported the plan and not the guard who had claimed credit for the discovery. Shin was taken to another dark, cramped cell where he wondered for months when and how he would be killed.
Shin was brought back to his initial interrogation cell months later. At 14 he had not seen the sun for more than six months. Upon arriving he saw his father kneeling in front of two interrogators. His father, who had long ago been rewarded with a wife for his exceptional work as a lathe operator in the prison’s machine shop, was now a tortured, crippled, unskilled laborer. The two of them were then handcuffed, blindfolded, taken above ground and driven away.
When their blindfolds were removed Shin recognized the field near his mother’s home where he had witnessed several executions. Their cuffs were removed and they were told to sit down as Shin’s mother and brother were called out as “traitors of the people.” The two of them were forced to watch as Shin’s mother was hanged and his brother was executed by a firing squad.
As Shin watched his mother and brother die he believed at the time that they both deserved their executions. He had been more faithful to the guards than to his family. He felt no guilt over the lie he had invented about his family’s escape plan. He was starving and he needed more food to survive. The favors that went with the “grade leader” title would help him forget his misery.
Now that he is free and living in Southern California, Shin hopes that his public appearances will help the entire world understand what the North Korean prison camps are doing to innocent men, women and children inside the fences.
CLICK HERE for LINK (Liberty in North Korea) YouTube/Google presentation by Shin Dong-hyuk.
Books like “Escape From Camp 14,” “Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor,” and “Escape From North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia’s Underground Railroad” should help to get the word out, but few people have read them compared to those who have seen the “Gangnam” video.
Perhaps PSY can take some time out from his “Gangnam Style” dancing to remind our President, the U.N., the members of our military, the press and the entire world about his neighbors to the north and their human rights atrocities.
While Park Jae-sang owns the YouTube Internet stage, he could make a “galloping” difference . . . and upgrade his “style” at the same time!
Let’s see him prove his lyrics that “he’s a man who knows a thing or two” about North Korea.
“Now let’s go until the end”
. . . until we see and hear the end of the North Korean concentration camps,
and the prisoners up North can come “galloping” home!
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UPDATE 12/14/12
Time readers vote N. Korean killer/dictator “Man of Year” in show of ultimate ignorance! Read it to believe it at: http://ti.me/ZkbPlR
