Human Rights Abuses in North Korea

‘I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber…The parents, a son and a daughter, the parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save their kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.’ This is just one example of the atrocities being committed in North Korea to ordinary citizens just like you and me.

North Korea is one of the most isolated nations on this planet. Not because of distance however. The government of North Korea has segregated its country from the rest of the world by choice. In North Korea newspapers and television are strictly monitored by the government. Mobile phones are banned, effectively ensuring that the people of North Korea are brainwashed by a constant feed of propaganda that convinces them that their government is doing well by them.

At the head of this scheme is Kim Il Sung. To the people of North Korea he is like God. From the day they are born his so-called goodness is drummed into them. The first phrase that parents are ordered to teach their children is ‘Thank you, Father Kim Il Sung.’ A picture of him must be in every household and soldiers make regular checks of houses to ensure that it is in good condition.

In North Korea the people live in poverty. Over two million people have died of starvation in North Korea over the past few years. It isn’t an uncommon sight to see the rotting, dead bodies of starved citizens strewn across the street. However, while his people are starving Kim Il Sung spends the nations money on nuclear weapons and a military that is designed to control North Korea’s people as much as it is to keep invaders out.
What’s worse than these alarming figures is what happens to those who attempt to undermine the regime. By undermining the regime I mean complaining of the meagre rations they are given, singing a foreign song or attempting to escape the endless cycle of death and starvation by fleeing to China.

These people are taken by guards to the many concentration camps around the country. The so-called offenders are not only taken, but three generations of their family also disappear to these death camps. If you are unfortunate enough to be the child of someone who said the wrong thing to the wrong person one day you are also shipped off to these places that have been described by prisoners as “hell on earth.”