February 01, 2004

Warning: This article contains very graphic descriptions of horrific torture and death.
I won't quote from most of it here for that reason:
Revealed: the gas chamber horror of North Korea's gulag

The number of prisoners held in the North Korean gulag is not known: one estimate is 200,000, held in 12 or more centres. Camp 22 is thought to hold 50,000.

Most are imprisoned because their relatives are believed to be critical of the regime. Many are Christians, a religion believed by Kim Jong-il to be one of the greatest threats to his power. According to the dictator, not only is a suspected dissident arrested but also three generations of his family are imprisoned, to root out the bad blood and seed of dissent.

With North Korea trying to win concessions in return for axing its nuclear programme, campaigners want human rights to be a part of any deal. Richard Spring, Tory foreign affairs spokesman, is pushing for a House of Commons debate on human rights in North Korea.

'The situation is absolutely horrific,' Spring said. 'It is totally unacceptable by any norms of civilised society. It makes it even more urgent to convince the North Koreans that procuring weapons of mass destruction must end, not only for the security of the region but for the good of their own population.'

And this from the Leftist Guardian no less which supposedly hasn't met a Stalinist régime it doesn't like.
But I don't mean to make light of a very grave situation.
While all of the West's talking heads carp about the "perfectability" of our governments' human intelligence and continue to quibble over whether or not Saddam had WMD and was an "imminent " threat, very few pundits even mention Saddam's mass murders and mass graves, which were the result of his gassing of the Kurds, his use of BCW on the Iranians in their 8-year long war or the savage put-down of the Shi'ite revolt in 1991, all of which involved the use of WMD!
Clearly, Saddam was the consummate WMD.
Likewise, Kim Jong-Il is exactly like him, whether or not he has nukes, which I think he does.
If the those on the Left, like Democrats Bill Clinton and John F'ing Kerry, care about "human rights" as they claim to, they shouldn't be so willing to stand idly by and do nothing about the horrific situation in North Korea.
Kim Jong-il is killing thousands of his own people, if not by gassing, then by starvation.
And he also just happens to be proliferating nuclear weapons.
And he's kicked the IAEA inspectors out.
You tell me how much intell we need and proof that the threat he poses is "imminent" before the West needs to act.