From One Circle Of Hell To The Next

Sexual Abuse Of North Korea's Women
(Part One)

For many North Koreans the life they live and that which the outside world imagines are rather different realities. A small percentage of North Koreans can be considered privileged and have access to the luxuries their South Korean neighbors enjoy daily. These lucky few are able to flaunt their wealth behind closed doors as they pretend to be serving their country's goals of a worker's paradise. For most there is the reality that many outside North Korea first think of... death, starvation, oppression, and state sponsored terror.

In North Korea everything the common Korean does is watched and monitored. Secret police can make anyone, at anytime, simply disappear. The very appearance of being an individual in state that idolizes conformity can be a fatal flaw. There just isn't any room in North Korea for self expression or individual thought. These two things alone are perceived to be the worst threats the state faces even as it's citizens continue to starve to death.

Citizens who are unlucky enough to be deemed an "enemy of the state" find themselves crossing from their current circle in North Korea's hellish existence to the next. These unfortunate souls join an estimated 200 thousand North Koreans in gulags across the country. The "great leader" (and his offspring) have operated these concentration camps for nearly 12 times as long as the Nazis had operated theirs. Yet unlike the Nazi camps, these souls, damned by the state, know that the work they will be doing will not "set them free".

Three Generations

North Koreans who are deemed to be a threat to the tyrants in Pyongyang don't just risk having themselves sent to death camps, but also have their entire families rounded up. North Korea's state policy is that three generations must pay in blood for the accused person's supposed offense. This policy is meant to stamp out the "seed" of the state's enemy.

The three generations policy creates a paralyzing fear in a society that is driven by terror. It creates within the household (a founding base for all civilization) a paranoia that never dissipates. Citizens are encouraged by this fear to monitor their family members. The fear that their brothers', sisters', or parents' mistakes could land them in a prison camp is enough encourage the worst acts of betrayal. Fathers are thus encouraged by the system itself to walk out on their families. Parents who can't provide for their children are encouraged by the system to abandon their children. It is this sense of defeat that chips away at the building blocks upon which North Korea's tyranny is balancing.

In camps the three generation policy is emphasized by a perverse system of bartering with prisoners by camp guards. Family members are told that they can receive rewards for reporting their family members for any given offense. Even though it is well known that many of these such reports will inevitably lead to the public execution of their family members, the rewards are often just enough to break the prisoner. Bribes of food and other vital necessities are the most common rewards. Other times the rewards are just lies and false promises.

This sadistic policy is also applied to the children of prisoners who are born into the concentration camps. Little is provided for the inmates in the way of medical treatment and provisions for raising a newborn. So it is hard to tell just how many children born into these conditions ever actually grow up beyond infancy. The practice of "infant executions" also culls the number of children born into the system the death camps are meant to uphold. But for those who survive their childhood the reality of life behind barbed-wire is all they may possibly know as they are slowly worked to death.

Sexualized Violence 

Once in the death camps the women of North Korea face a reality that is as close to a living death as many will ever come. Every prisoner in North Korea's concentration camps is considered to be less than human in the eyes of the state. Prison guards are trained to view them as animals with whom they can do anything they wish. For the women of North Korea this means they are openly and regularly subjected to rape and sexual molestation. No matter where they are in the camp, at any time, they are expected to subject themselves willingly to rape in all it's forms. There are no exceptions. 

Women who cooperate are raped routinely till the guard or guards move onto their next victim. Yet for many, no matter how well they managed to remain silent during the attacks, this departure of their assailant can mean a sudden execution. For those who appear to have resisted in any way, real or perceived, these victims are often immediately executed. All of them will afflicted with physical, mental, and emotional torment before they are made to "disappear" or suffer in silence. 

Women who survive rape have an added concern if they become pregnant. It is common practice in North Korea's prison camps to force rape victims to have an abortion. These abortions are done without proper medical treatment and are rarely done by a trained doctor. If the woman survives the torment of a crudely performed abortion she must endure the added insult of being refused the right to clean herself afterward. Instead of being given even a shower, forced abortion survivors are left to worry about infection or complications of the procedure itself. 

There is no mercy shown to North Korea's female inmates. They are among the most common victims of public executions, public displays of punishment, and sexualized violence. Girls are targeted for rape from the moment they are old enough to satisfy the guards' lust for virgins and new victims. From that point on the rapes and molestations are a daily threat for female prisoners. 

Infanticide

Childhood in North Korea's concentration camps is almost unimaginable. Husbands and wives who are imprisoned together know that these camps are no place to get pregnant. Yet there is no access to prevention methods of any sort. And as mentioned above, victims of rape are not given access to preventatives either. So any child conceived is at risk from the moment of conception. 

Carrying a child to full term is near impossible. Expecting mothers have to endure severe malnutrition and starvation on a daily basis. Hard labor adds to the stresses of being pregnant in one of North Korea's death camps. Rape and barbaric molestation brings on even more trauma with which the pregnant mother must endure. Then there are the beatings guards use to cause miscarriages in pregnant women.

If a woman under these horrific conditions does manage to give birth to a living child they then face yet another form of perverse barbarism: infant executions.

It was the first time I had seen a newborn baby and I felt happy. But suddenly there were footsteps and a security guard came in and told the mother to turn the baby upside down into a bowl of water. The mother begged the guard to spare her, but he kept beating her. So the mother, her hands shaking, put the baby face down in the water. The crying stopped and a bubble rose up as it died,” 

~ 34 year-old Jee Heon-a.

This story is just one of the tales of such barbaric acts committed by North Korea's prison guards. Not only did this guard attack the mother but then forced the woman to kill her own child. This sort of sadistic hedonism is a long standing undertone to the tales of barbarism carried out by guards who are rewarded for their savagery. The more grotesque they behave, the greater status they achieve in the eyes of a government that values loyalty to it over the lives of it's own citizens.

Ethnic Cleansing 

(Culling Of "Racial Impurities")

Forced abortions are a common treatment in North Korea (both inside and outside prison camps) for the state's policy of riding it's society of "racial impurities". Women are detained upon even the most remote suspicion of having an "impure fetus". At times the forced abortion are ordered by doctors while at other times they are demanded by guards and other agents of the state. In every case they are painful and risk the death of the victimized woman. 

One account of this was given to the United States Human Rights Council and tells of women who were detained for the purpose of causing forced abortions:

"A drug that in diluted form is used to treat skin wounds was injected into pregnant women’s wombs, inducing labor within hours. As there had not been the normal widening of the hipbones during the advance stages of pregnancy to enlarge the birth canal, the labor pains were the same as when delivering a fully grown baby. When the women moaned or cried out in pain as they lay on wooden and cement cell floors, they were hit with wooden stoves and cursed as "bitches who got Chinese sperm and brought this on themselves."'

via Women Under Siege Project

The added insult in many cases is the brutal abuses committed against the victims while and after they are being forced to have brutal abortions. Physical assault is often applied along with verbal abuse as the women are being put through the agony of painful abortions. Yet at times physical assault is also the very tool used to cause the abortions themselves: 

"Mrs. Bang Mi-sun observed ten pregnant women in early 2002 taken to a hospital from the Musan An-jeon-bu detention facility for the purpose of aborting their "half-Chinese babies." Another seven-month pregnant woman adamantly refused to go to the hospital and guards compelled male prisoners to jump on her stomach until the woman aborted on the floor. The woman was then taken to the hospital where she died."

via Women Under Siege Project

The children who do manage to survive are not afforded the basic dignity that any human life merits. Instead of being treated as a human being, these newborn babies are wrapped up in newspaper or bags and tossed into the garbage to die. In a state that supposedly values the worker and all his potential, entire generations of potential lives are discarded callously by an authoritative state.

While officially the state does not recognize the procedure of forced abortions (like all other abuses it commits), North Korea's obsession with racial purity helps to propagate this atrocious act. It's desire to create a society in which an "ideal Korean" worker exists only serves as a prop for the barbarism of it's corrupt military and political upper-class. In the end it is the upon the backs of North Korea's women that the burden of these disillusions falls. And it is the mother and child that pay in blood for a government that lust after the unachievable. 

Survival Sex

The act of forcing women to have sex for supplies of basic nourishment is an act so perverse that it's name alone seems lacking in it's ability to crudely fit it... survival sex. 

Taking advantage of women who are desperate to provide for their families or find that ever illusive next meal is abhorrent. It would be inconceivable if it wasn't such a defining trait across the spectrum of similar events to that of North Korea's prison camps. Survival sex was present in Nazi death camps during the Holocaust. It showed up during the genocide in Bosnia. And has been seen in Sri Lanka's ethnic cleansing of the Tamils. So it is sadly of little surprise that survival sex can be found in the accounts of North Korean refugees. 

In camp inmates the use of survival sex is often applied when a woman or girl becomes the target of a guard's intent to rape. The victim knows that they have a greater chance at surviving if they cooperate with their assailant. Through not fighting back the victim hopes they will not be killed by their attacker. In addition there comes the hope that they will be shown some "mercy" and given access to food and/or clean water. It is a perverse "game" (as referred to by a camp survivor) that guards use to keep a rape victim under their control (since all rape is about violent domination more so than it is about sex).

The gaining of food or water through rape is not assured for North Korean rape victims. Survival sex for them is something that they don't always know they are being subjected to. Instead they are only treated to just enough resources to keep them alive as their assailants see fit. This highlights the brutality of their plight since it best demonstrates the absolute minimal value the state (and the guards themselves) place upon the lives of these female captives.

The Outer Circle Of Hell

In our next post on this subject we will be taking the journey out of North Korea's inner hell and venturing over the border into China. For many North Korean women this is a journey from one circle of hell to the next. It is plagued by human traffickers, forced marriages, and the ever constant threat of forcible repatriation to North Korea. Even with the hope of crossing over into a better life, many will find this journey a living hell as they are transformed into the walking dead.

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Source Documents
(note: not all sources listed)

A Safe World For Women
http://www.asafeworldforwomen.org/trafficking/ht-asia-pacific/ht-china/821-escaping-north-korea-to-slavery-in-china.html

Women Under Siege Project
http://www.womenundersiegeproject.org/conflicts/profile/north-korea
http://www.womenundersiegeproject.org/blog/entry/the-fine-line-between-obedience-and-rape-in-north-korea

Russian Times
http://rt.com/news/un-north-korea-torture-732/

The Forgotten Diaspora

Chechen Refugees Attempt To Escape Oppression
(Footsteps In The Dark series)

After the Boston Marathon bombing the United States was stunned to learn that the attackers were from some country that most Americans had never heard much about. The name Chechen comes up from time to time in TV shows and movies in American pop culture. And from time to time the media will drag out a story about Chechnya. But for many Americans who were around in the 90's it was simply one of those countries Russia was bombing into submission. Other than that, we couldn't have spotted the place on a map.

For some in America the question quickly became "why the hell are they even here". The immediate knee-jerk reactions included everything from fear to ethnic hatred and bigotry. Insults about the family were most common on social media outlets, yet hate filled tweets and status updates about Chechens all together were prolific. Two individuals had almost instantly painted an entire nationality an entire community as the "enemy".

So what do we know about Chechnya and it's people today?

There are currently less than 1,000 Chechens living in the entire United States. The vast majority of which are refugees seeking asylum from a devastating war perpetrated by old Soviet aggression. It is a war that Vladimir Putin himself helped carry out and a battle that continues under Putin's command. Thus why this diaspora of Chechen refugees is reluctant to go home today.

Their plight began when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. It was that year that Chechnya declared itself independent of Russian rule. However in 1994 the Russians decided that they didn't care to let Chechnya out from under their boot. With a massive blitz style invasion the Russian bear rolled into Grozny. This battle would be the reason that many of Chechnya's civilians decided to take up the role of refugee rather than be subjected to Russian siege.

Accounts of extremely brutal guerrilla and urban warfare leaked out of Chechnya all throughout the 90's. Refugees told of civilians disappearing to never be heard from again when Russian troops occupied an area. Chechen men and boys were often the victims of Russian roundups that were meant to destroy morale amongst the Chechen community. The Chechen women and girls were kidnapped and subjected to rape as a weapon of war. Yet such war crimes committed by Russia's military were never prosecuted and the international community largely looked the other way.

Today the Chechen government still attempts to push the envelope when dealing with "mother Russia". This testing of it's limitations under Russian occupation keeps Chechnya at threat of further oppression by Putin's rule in Moscow. There is always the reality that war is never that far over the horizon as Putin waits for the slightest indiscretion to excuse another military showdown with "terrorists" in Chechnya.

For Chechen refugees around the world this persistent threat of a sudden outbreak of war in their homeland is reason enough to stay abroad. However for some the decision to remain a refugee may very well be out of their hands. Countries with an unstable relationship with Russia often play politics with these refugees. For these refugees the relationship their host countries have with Putin's regime determines whether or not they stay or go.

In Turkey the fear of forced repatriation is a reality that Chechens have to live with daily. Chechens in Turkey have never officially received refugee status. As "temporary guests" these Chechens are persistently faced with the threat of expulsion and extradition to Russia. Their fate currently relies upon the Erdogan regime and it's hospitality... something that the Occupy Gezi movement has placed at risk.

Across Eastern Europe the Chechen refugees face discrimination and isolation as their hosts governments play chess with Russia. In Georgia the Chechen community is almost constantly under threat of expulsion as the local government attempts to hold back another Russian offensive. The threat of politics leaves Chechens the only option of applying for asylum in Western European countries (a short term solution for many).

But the West isn't a safe bet for Chechen asylum seekers either.

Many Western European governments have also used Chechen refugees as chips in their games with Putin. The United States and Canada however have for the most part left the Chechen refugees off the table when attempting to maintain their stance with Moscow.

So why would all these Chechens want to stay away from Russian dominated Chechnya?

“If you go when they call you, you never come back."

~ Chechen female refugee talking about Russian soldiers.

Russia's war crimes in Chechnya has left a legacy of bitterness and terror in a community that wanted out from under Soviet boots. When the Russians used SCUD missiles, fighter jets, and artillery on Grozny in 1999 they sealed a level of hostility in Chechnya's soul that remains unparallelled. Acts of terrorism against Russia are the results of the seeds Russia sowed in the two Chechen Wars it carried out. Yet these acts of revenge are also the excuses Russia uses to continue pushing it's heel down upon Chechnya today.

An official stance of targeting Chechens by Russian police and military keeps Chechens in their homeland on edge. Disappearances of Chechens linked to resistance movements keeps Russia's dominance in the region. In this way Russia imposes as much terror upon Chechnya as it blames the Chechen community for. Through the constant application of steady pressure the Russian government encourages radicalism of both nationalist sentiment and religious ideology.

This reaction shown by Chechnya's fringe is however not a phenomena solely possessed by Chechens alone. It can be seen in every society that has ever had to live with the assiduous oppression of a tyrant. You can see the violent reaction of a community held under the boot of an oppressor in the history books of American society. When pushed to the limit of our own ability to tolerate exploitation by British dictators we rose up as guerrillas in a war that pitted violent militias against loyalists. Chechens have had to face the same in their history with Russia.

One can see the struggle of a people to obtain self-governance and the right to self determination in the history of Russia itself. Was it not the Soviets who rose up to overthrow the Tsars? Was it not Putin's role models that led violent and partisan wars against the ruling class? And is it not the Russian government today that acts as the Tsarists did when dealing with peoples' desire to determine how they would live and be governed? 

Chechnya's issues with Russia may be far to complex to explain in a short blog post. But the direct correlation between the oppressive nature of their relationship to the annual growth of the Chechen diaspora cannot be ignored. As long as Russia insist upon dominating Chechnya the people of Chechnya will seek other ways to resist. Some will flee while others will fight. It pretty much boils down to that.

While I dare not speak for Chechens anywhere in the world. I can only imagine what it must be like to live so far from a place your family once called home. Let alone imagine what it must be like to be threatened with being forced to return to a place that is only a shadow of what it once was.









Source Documents
(note: not all sources listed)

National Geographic
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130607-refugee-crisis-war-migration-turkey-syria-afghanistan-iran-chechnya-gay/

IHH.org
http://www.ihh.org.tr/en/main/publications/reports/4/story-of-a-chechen-migrant/121

International Business Times
http://www.ibtimes.com/chechens-little-known-global-diaspora-refugees-1204971#

Derry Journal
http://www.derryjournal.com/news/local/russian-journalist-deported-on-way-to-derry-peace-conference-1-5188359

Sacrificial Lambs

Children Used As Gifts To Appease A Fanatical Tyrant
(Footsteps In The Dark series)

(From My Personal Visit To South Korea)

If the wire came down tomorrow and the DMZ was dissolved overnight South Korea would be overrun. Without the landmines and hostile armies guarding the gate to hell on earth the prisoners of the world's largest open air prison would rush toward freedom. This is the fact that most of the world ignores or denies. We claim that we don't know what happens behind the darkness of North Korea's veil. We pretend that we don't see the torment in which the North Koreans have lived for over 60 years. In this aspect we believe the propaganda that the Kims have dictated to us. We, a world of so called humanitarians, swallow the lies willingly so as to avoid the fight that would come with the fall of a tyrannical dictatorship.

Every since I became aware of the fact that there were two Koreas I have been told how evil the North is. This wasn't entirely false in the sense that the ruling class of North Korea is in fact evil. However the generalization has always been that All of North Korea is evil. It has been fed to me over the course of 15 years or so that if the wire came down the North Koreans would grab their guns and sweep over Seoul. It never occurred to anyone that told me these things what might happen if the North just simply ceased to be. What would happen if North Korea's ruling class just happened to be deposed?

For now we may never really know.

But I have always speculated that the vast majority of Koreans in the North would happily welcome the freedoms that the South enjoys today. Sure, Koreans raised on a steady diet of propaganda would most likely be skeptical of the current American military presence in the South. And sure there would be a massive struggle as governments and armies all rushed to fill the power vacuum that the fall of Kim would bring about. But in the end the Koreans of the North would all rather liberty over tyranny. No matter how steady the diet of propaganda might be, no matter how long one has lived under a repressive regime, the natural desire of man to long for freedom always rises to the surface eventually.

For nine young North Korean refugees this desire for freedom came to the surface as they defected from their brutal homeland. They are believed to be orphans between the ages of 15-23 that had been traveling thousands of miles in hopes of reaching Thailand. Then, just as the end was in sight, the government of Laos slammed the door shut on the dreams of freedom that these refugees had been chasing.

In their final hours in Laos the nine detained refugees held out hope that the Laotian government would do the right thing. They could almost taste their freedom as they waited. However this all ended as the Laotian officials decided to play politics with the fate of nine orphans. Instead of allowing the North Koreans to flee from certain death, Laos damned the nine refugees as the Laotian officials chose appeasement of North Korea over humanity.

So why did these orphans flee in the first place if North Korea is telling us the truth? Everything in North Korea is perfect right?

The Ggotjebi

A permanent underclass in North Korea's perverted form of classical communism. The ggotjebi are orphans that are often abandoned by their parents or loose their parents through the direct and indirect oppression of the North Korean government. They have no hope for the future if they stay in North Korea. They are reduced below what the upper class in the North consider to be human. Instead of incorporating these members of society into the fabric of society like Marx supposedly taught his pupils, Korean communist leave the ggotjebi to die of starvation and exposure to the elements.

Life for the ggotjebi becomes a life of begging for food and seeking work at very young ages. Many orphans that escape this life of simply existing by fleeing North Korea report that they had resorted to eating grass and tree bark to survive. They tell of being beaten by other Koreans as a result of being defenseless and vulnerable to abuse. Others are simply arrested and sent off to one of North Korea's concentration camps (these victims are almost always never heard from again).

This is the life that the nine refugees that Laos betrayed had fled from in North Korea. They were fleeing some of the most inhumane conditions that North Korea could provide. And yet now they face almost certain death as both China and Laos violate international law (which bans forced repatriation of defectors from North Korea).

Lambs To The Slaughter

North Korean refugees that are about to be forcibly repatriated almost always know what is waiting for them back in Kim's prisons. It isn't easily ignored when you grow up in a country where people vanish all the time. After all, North Korea is a country where children are literally born in prisons only to be kept as prisoners themselves. These nine refugees knew exactly what was awaiting them as well.

In North Korea it is a "crime against the state" to defect. This crime is almost always punished by endless torture that ultimately ends with the execution of the victim. The defector is tortured as long as they can be kept alive so that they might "name names" and hand over other "traitors" and runaways. The information they give is most certainly flawed in the fact that torture only elicits what the tormentor wants to hear... not the truth. And yet despite this, these nine refugees will be subjected to the standard punishment for defection from a police state.

So why did the world remain silent? We have known (even if most don't admit it) that the North uses these tactics since the day it first sealed the country off. So why hand over the nine orphans?

China has long practiced a policy of forced repatriation as a method of maintaining control over North Korea. Through appeasement and bribery, China keeps the Kim dynasty in power and thus preserves it's puppet government. This allows China to maintain a proxy war with the American military complex in South Korea. It keeps the cold war hot.

With the awakening of China's sleeping economy the world has become dependent upon an under-payed and repressed labor force. Free markets across the West rely upon China for the importing of cheap goods while using Chinese loans to pay for their excesses. American debt, for example, is paid for by the communist Chinese. All of this has led to a weakened "free world" as the repressive Chinese government grows more unruly and bold.

Puppet regimes like North Korea may flaunt their "staunch independence" and ideological differences (as minute as they might be) with China, yet they rely upon China for almost everything. This is evident when China can use it's disproportionate leverage when dealing with North Korea's "independence" by simply withholding cash or food. It is with this muscle that China forces it's neighbors back in line with Beijing.

The silence of the West when dealing with forced repatriation is just another sign that China is calling the shots when it comes to North Korea. When world leaders, such as President Obama, will no longer stand up for the freedoms of others and basic human rights then our own come into question. If oppressive regimes like that of China are allowed to take their oppression beyond their own borders (in this case crossing countless borders) then just how safe are we? And where has the bastion of liberty gone? Are we meant to accept the suffering of others simply because their oppressors tell us to do so?

North Korea's oppression must be challenged at every opportunity. China's violations of international law must be challenged every time they occur. We can no longer accept these crimes so that we might appease tyrants. It is long past time that the world grow a spine and start listening to its conscience more than its pocket book.

Nine lives lost to the brutality of a tyrant are nine lives too many.
















Source Documents
(note: not all sources listed)

PRI's The World
http://www.theworld.org/2013/06/laotian-officials-send-north-korean-teenage-defectors-home/

The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/03/un-repatriated-north-korean-defectors

Express
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/405520/What-will-become-of-them-North-Korean-defectors-forcibly-returned-to-horrors-they-escaped

CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/31/world/asia/laos-north-korea-refugees/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/13/world/asia/north-korea-orphans